NFL offseason thread

Okay, fine. We have addressed John Elway's weak spot. Now do Ryan Pace, the idiots in charge of the Jets, Giants, WFT, the Rams GM moving mountains for Jered Goff, and myriad other gms who can't identify a good qb.

 

The draft is hard, and even the best evaluators "hit" at a rate closer to .400? I mean, some people are clearly shitty at it. But even teams with great organizational reputations and stable coaching situations - Baltimore, New England, Pittsburgh - will have periods where they suck at the draft.

 

John Elway did. That's my point. Ditto with Drew Rocket Arm Lock.

 

Odds are most QB’s will be busts. I have no idea whether he will be good or not, but laundry lists of shitty NFL QB’s from Ohio State wouldn’t be a reason to not draft him.

Not beating out Jake Fromm means you would never draft a QB from a smaller school who wasn’t good enough to get a scholarship from a power school?

 

Somebody sandbagged Fields. His tape is every bit as good and better - against better competition - than Trey Lance. So somebody sandbagged him. Fields below Lance makes no sense otherwise. I can and would make the case for Lawrence and Jones, and Wilson seems to have caught some eyes with Favrian skills. But Fields over Lance seems pretty straightforward. Lance has accuracy and aggressiveness (throwing the ball) issues.

I think Fields probably comes with a little bit of an advisory group around him. But I think that's a lot of QBs these days. The Mannings sure as hell had them.

 

Both good points/questions. And those lists would not be a reason, just a reason to be leery. There are lots of other reasons, and scouts/coaches/GMs seem to be starting to see them.

 

His tape against better competition -- Northwestern, Indiana, Bama -- doesn't look very good. But sandbagging? Who would be doing that, and why?

 

His tape against Clemson (2020), Penn State (2x) and Michigan State (2x) is excellent.

I don't know why it happened or who. I speculated somebody from Georgia, because his leaving Georgia cost that team a CFP berth in 2020. (UGA had unbelievably good players everywhere but QB in 2020.)

I can tell you Lamar Jackson got sandbagged because of how he, I dunno, didn't take the Manning Camp seriously enough, or something, before his junior year. The Manning Camp is meaningless, but it is, at times, used as an evaluation tool for invited guests, and you'd better believe Archie and Peyton are asked by scouts their opinions about these guys.

Now, Jackson still went in the first round, and, as anyone can see, has to have an offense specifically tailored to his considerable gifts. I'm still not sure a college-style zone read offense can win a Super Bowl, or even make one, but the Ravens with Jackson sure do look better than a lot of other teams - like the Bears did with Trubisky. Or the Texans did with Watson, good as he was last two years.

 

I think we need to better define our terms on evaluation of quarterbacks. To me, anyway, a true bust is somebody like Akili Smith or Christian Ponder, a first rounder who really couldn't play at the NFL level. That sure isn't Garoppolo, for instance. But there are other people who see Lamar Jackson as a bust because he's only had one playoff win in three straight years of quarterbacking a team that made the playoffs.
PS: Alma, that last sentence is not referring to your post above mine in any way.

 

I think on-field Deshaun Watson is about 199th in line for people responsible for the Texans collapsing in a heap the last couple of years. (Off-field Deshaun may have just set the clock back another five years though.)

 

I’m worried that if he picks Jones Shanahan is getting so big headed he’s forgetting that it’s the players that win not coaches

 

If Georgia is torpedoing him, you don't think that would be taken with a grain of salt? Jackson went low because he's not a very good passer. And he still isn't. Trubisky, I have no answer for. That was a whiff. And the Texans look good because Watson is damn good. Hopefully he can stay in the field.