Mariota or Winston?

We've all had some clunkers.

I don't know that any of us has missed as badly as Phil Simms (I posted it on the playoff thread too).

On Andrew Luck, in the fall of 2011:

“But the one thing I don’t see, I just don’t see big time NFL throws. I don’t care what anybody says. I’ve watched a lot of him. He never takes it and rips it in there. And you can say what you want but, man, you’ve got to be able to crease that ball every once in a while. We see it every week in these games. Hey, he can develop it but even in the USC game, you know, he’s very careful with it, guides it a lot, Rich. That’s what I see. There’s not a lot of rotation on the ball and there’s not a tremendous amount of power. Not that you need to have that power arm. I’m not saying you’ve got to have that exclusively but, man, it sure helps when you can do that because there’s four or five plays a game it is about arm strength. And sometimes quarterbacks who don’t have it, they pass those plays up. Why? Well, they go, ‘I don’t know if I can make that throw,’ so they throw it short. That’s why I’m a little more reserved in my judgment than everybody else.”

 

Our misses are bad, but they pale besides the actual misses. I don't think anybody on this board was a big E.J. Manuel or Geno Smith booster. Half-a-dozen teams are probably looking to kill the scouts who went to Teddy Bridgewater's pro day.
Point being, for every miss where a team takes a player it shouldn't, there are two where a team doesn't take a player it should. The latter are just easier to disguise.

 

Simms has some pretty bad misses. IIRC, he was really high on Leinart.

 

Well, he is most certainly a better athlete than a large number of NFL QBs. But is he a better NFL QB than McCown from day one. Highly unlikely. He has a lot to learn, and I'm pretty confident he can learn it, but it's likely going to take at least a season.
I wouldn't be stunned to see the Bucs trade out of there. Lord knows they have plenty of other needs, then maybe pick one of the less heralded guys like Hundley or Petty or Bo Wallace(!) a bit later.

 

LOL.

Guys don't sit with their thumbs up their asses for a year anymore.

And although there might be some quarterbacks who can hold the fort better in the short term than Mariota could, Josh McCown most certainly is not one of them.

Even if he is better than Cutler!

 

Unless every single scout/pundit is wrong, Mariota just simply won't be ready to run an NFL offense. As a Bucs fan, I'm with you on McCown, but Mariota is highly unlikely to be starting early next season. He has a lot of adjustments to make, and he is smart and athletic enough to do it, but it will take some time.

I would be OK with Hundley, but Winston might be the only one with all the tools. Would not touch Petty either ... just an example. I hope Mariota does well, and he has tremendous talent, but he's going to need time to learn how to throw in much tighter windows than he did in college. Winston can make those throws more often. When they aren't picked off, of course, which is why Winston's INT rate was so much higher. He had to make those throws. From what I've seen of Oregon, the Ducks WRs are WIDE open more often than not.

 

That's a big reason I wouldn't be surprised if the Bucs trade out of that spot if they can. It's a hell of a tough decision, and one I wouldn't want to make. But it would be cowardly to avoid making it, I suppose. But they could easily explain it away that they have many other needs.

 

Just skimmed the 2012 thread. I don't look all that dumb. Woohoo!!

Some hits. Some misses. By everyone. Pretty entertaining, nonetheless.

In related news. I have entirely too much time on my hands.

 

If you draft a QB in the top ten picks of the first round, he'd better be a franchise guy, because you're skipping over potential All-Pros at other positions. Is Mariota a franchise QB? Not convinced yet.

 

Mariota is the future of quarterbacks. By now, college kids have been running the spread offense since they were in Pop Warner. It is the predominant style. Teams are either going to adapt to that fact or they are going to sit around and wait decades for the next Luck, a super talent who was in a conventional pro offense. You're limited to drafting QBs from Alabama, Stanford, USC and now Michigan.