DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Pure Football Forum The NFL Prepares to Enter an Offseason of Quarterback Uncertainty

https://theringer.com/nfl-quarterback-carousel-tony-romo-jay-cutler-75953cd38cb2#.n8io6j68d

Click the link (there some banned words in the article).

A quick summary:

A bunch of teams have the QB position up in the air. Those teams include the Broncos, Texans, Bears, Vikings, Jaguars, 49ers, Washington, Bills, Cardinals, Browns, and the Jets. The article discusses the situation each team is in and what they will/should do going forward.

Here are a couple of nuggets that stuck out to me:



Oof.



Why did the Bills sign Taylor to this crazy extension? Why not just wait the season out and if Taylor plays well franchise him?



Double oof. Being bad is one thing. Being bad and having an aging team with no cap space is a whole different thing.

Jets are in a very bad place and it is getting darker, too. Too old, too broke, too young.

Pick your poison.

hackenberg was so over hyped...

The overall lack of QB talent in the NFL is really ruining the quality of the games. Lot of mobile QB who spend more time running that working on their craft of throwing the ball IMHO.

Which guys are you thinking of?

Most QB's are asked to do too much. The art of throwing the football has only been around for 60 or so years. ESPN was just showing highlights today of Sid Luckman and Otto Graham playing in the 40's and 50's. They were jumping and then throwing the ball 30 yards. That'd be the quickest way to get benched in today's world. That'd be Weeden-esque. The talent isn't there to throw it 50 times a game for 16-20 weeks in a row. You can see the talent isn't even there in the college game. That's why the Pac 12 and Big 12 suck. They constantly ask their QB's to over perform. We asks ourselves to do the same. Same why the NFL is sucking hard right now too. Asking players like Bortles, Tom Savage, and Tyrod Taylor to win you games with their arms. It's a discredit to that football team. Honestly, more teams would be better if they ran a spread option and just had these guys run it.

I've said this repeatedly. The spread offense will never work in the NFL. I agree that you can't rely on QBs to throw it non-stop. However, you're playing against guys that will actually hurt you. No QB can go his entire career running a zone read. Especially the smaller QBs.

If you want to recycle QBs after 5-6 years I'd understand it.

So? Why do you think colleges churn them out every two years? We have RG3 to ride us next year and then we have Hogan. But yeah, the last part was mainly said in jest, same with this post. Mainly -- not totally though.

Lol

It kinda is, but kinda isn't.

Jets radio was discussing this two days ago. Seems like a lot of fans wanna see Hack start the final two games to make a decision on what they have.

And then there was the discussion of who, if anyone on the roster, was worth a damn. And there certainly weren't many.

If the Jets are gonna do a total rebuild, they might nab a new coach, but the problem with that is that it sends a bad sign because Bowles almost took them to the playoffs last year. That and Woody Johnson doesn't have the patience to do it right.


It's crazy in Jets land

Based on the past few years, I don't have a lot of faith in the Jets ability to develop young QBs.

If they throw Hackenberg in now, I think they'll get more of the same happy feet he developed during his last year at PSU. I still think the right coach can develop him into a very good pro QB, but if he gets thrown into a situation where's he's getting beaten on, he'll be another David Carr, in my opinion.

I think the NFL is paying the price for the changes to the game in High School and College. Because Defenses at those levels do not have elite speed, spread offenses utilizing a zone read work really well. Thus, to compete, High School & College coaches use these offenses. This results in QB's coming into the Pro's not really prepared to run a pro style offense. Examples are the RGIII's, Geno Smith's, Manziels, etc. The exceptions would be those that played in pro style offense in college (i.e. Andrew Luck and Carson Wentz). Their leap to the pros is less steep.

Really, as I see it, it's almost as if HS & College plays an altogether different game. While the physical skills are the same, the mental and strategic side are entirely different.

Unfortunately, we now have a ton of bad football being played and QB play is a big reason why. Throw in the fact that when these guys get to the Pros, they can't outrun defenses anymore and are forced to play from the pocket and make reads they never had to before.

It'll be interesting to see which NFL coach develops a strategy to mitigate this trend and gain a competitive advantage. And for that matter, how they go about doing it. My thought is that you will see more teams follow the Dallas Cowboy model of building the O-line through high draft picks. Doing so has enabled them to have a strong run game and made the transition easier for Dak Prescott. Just my thought though.

Damn good thought.

lets look at the olinemen coming into the NFL.Many of them have never played with their hand on the ground,due to spread O's,plus the emphasis is placed more on pass pro than run blocking,even then it's more zone than power.
Building a good oline takes time and development.

The spread doesn't have to include the zone read.

Teams are currently running a ton of elements of the spread, but have adapted them to the NFL.

The college spread does not work in the NFL. Chip Kelly basically brought his playbook from Oregon, changed nothing, and eventually the league caught up to him and he didn't adjust.

How come when a "pro-style" QB fails no one's says "pro-style" systems don't succeed? Haven't QBS always had a low hit rate even before spread offense came along?

I think QB success is more about the individual prospect, the coaching and the talent then the system they came from in college.

Also NFL offenses are all combo offenses with elements from West Coast, Erhard the Perkins, Coryell, Spread, RPO, Read-option. No offense does 'one' thing.

Look at Dak, he came from a zone-read spread. Wentz a zone-read pro-style. Kessler pro-style. Goff air-raid spread. Marita zone-read spread. Winston pro-style. Bortles pro-style. Bridgewater pro-style. Carr spread.

an excellent question i hope somebody will answer.

I was talking in a general sense but take for instance Desean coming out this draft. He has great legs, great mobility. Works great in college. When you look at his throws though you see a lot of throws that cause his WR to twist backwards instead of being lead with the ball for YAC. You also see where because he trusts his feet so much to bail him out he will often rush his decision to just run with it. This causes him to lose patience when waiting for a guy to get open at times. I see this happy a lot with mobile QB. You can see it even with RG3.

The college coach is going to stick with what wins games for him. He is not worried about developing his QB to be a pro player.

This is one reason team will flock to trubisky because he has that higher level pocket awareness and is more of a pure passer. It's kind of rare these days.

I agree.

I believe it is mostly about the individual player. What system they come from has little to do with their future success, it just might make the transition a little easier.

Excellent observation.

I totally agree.

When a quarterback's first thought under pressure is to escape and run it destroys the proper order of what should be the mental process.

It should be avoid, move, create space to throw, keep eyes downfield, find open receiver.

It is understandable why guys like Griffin and Watson succeed in college and why college coaches promote that skill set. It works well in college. There are many reasons why.

Trubisky has NFL type skills. The issue with him is simply lack of experience and playing in a rather limited offensive scheme.

Because of that you have to bet upon his ability to learn and adapt to the NFL. It usually means it will take more time to develop. That part of analysis then takes on more risk because what you can't see now has to develop in the future. [/color]

j/c:

I see that there is some debate over spread qbs and pocket passers and who can succeed and who cannot.

I don't think that is the issue for NFL teams and anyone who likes to evaluate talent.

It's my opinion that it's harder to evaluate college spread qbs than it is for guys who run a pro-style offense in college.

The spread qbs don't have to make as many calls or as many reads as pro-style qbs. They are typically given one read, then it is either run or check down.

That is NOT to say that they can't make calls and reads after they reach the NFL. Some can. Others can't. Thus, it makes it harder to evaluate them when they are in the draft.

That is pretty scary because if a guy can't read defenses pre-snap and coverages post-snap, then he isn't going to ever be successful in the NFL.

But again, just to clarify...........I am NOT saying that spread qbs can't do those two things........it's just that evaluators have no idea whether or not they can when they are preparing for the draft.

I think that a spread offense can work in the NFL just as well as a pro system. Most coaches will tell you that any play will work as long as the payers are athletically suited for it and everybody does their job.

The problem is that in a league full of athletic freaks, running QB's take too many hits from 300 lb guys travelling faster than 300 lb guys should be able to travel. So unless your running QB is built like Cam Newton or Tim Tebow he's not going to last long.

So when Pro offenses use Pro Systems instead of a spread, they have to figure out if a guy being in a simpler system in college will be able to learn more complex concepts in a Pro System. It doesn't matter if that guy is a QB, O-lineman, WR, or TE. It is a more complicated system to learn and not everybody can process all that information quickly.

Just to clarify, just because you run the spread, does not mean you also run the read option. There are plenty of colleges that run the spread with their QB never running the ball (Washington State, Baylor with Petty, Oklahoma State with Weeden, etc.).

Now this thread is pure football. Enjoyable reads, no bitchin.

I have a question. Do the Patriots run a spread-style offence? It kinda looks like it to me.

And a comment: not news, but NFL defences are too fast and big to let a running QB get away with what he did in college.

But most spread concepts do require the QB to run. It doesn't have to be a read option for a QB to run. Some spread schemes use the QB on a delayed run without a fake, lots of spread plays roll out the QB to one side of the field or the other and when you have lots of vertical routes and no extra blockers in the backfield then the QB's only option is to take off when pressured. That is the main reason that you don't see pure spread offenses in the NFL in my opinion because QB's are too valued to risk losing in such an offense. Sure you'll see spread concepts mixed in, but a consistent spread offense is going to need a freak of an athlete at QB with both size and agility.

I think the offense would work fine in the NFL until your QB got hurt. That's the only reason that we don't see more of it in my opinion.

J/c

I think specificity always helps with these types of conversations because football doesn't lend itself well to generalizations.

These are many different types of "spread"- from Air Raid spread to run-shoot style spread, spread offenses that combine zone-read. Each type of spread offenses above are distinct form each other.

Some spread offenses are pass first and do not include the QB as a runner, some do. Some spreads are strictly 4 wide 2 x 2 and 1 x 3 some spread are multiple to include 5 wide etc..etc..etc....

There are certainly all types of spread elements in the NFL, heck in 2013 the Patriots practically ran a pure spread offense (pass first, air raid style w/o the QB as a run option).
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There is soo much that goes into evaluating college prospects. The NFL spends millions of dollars every year to scout, build metrics, investigate and analyze these prospects. Imho the most important aspects of evaluation can never be known to us from a million miles away on our couches and office chairs because they are all psychological.

But, lets put aside those aspects that are hard to figure for professionals and all but unknowable for the laymen..............EVEN if we look only at physical traits even then there are soo many variables that to boil down the evaluation of a prospect, especially a QB, to type any single variable is imho not gonna lead to any useful conclusions one way or another.

I always go back to Bill Walsh when it comes to football and especially QBs. I think what he said about QBs is true now and will always be true and is the reasons why QBs will always fail at a high rate: ~"...there are few people in the world who can coach a quarterback and even fewer who can evaluate them."

The opinions you mentioned on Watson and Trubisky are interesting.

IF you want to move even further away from generalities and into specifics when it comes to breaking down the QBs there are a a couple film breakdown threads. The aim is to take very specific approach to discussion/breakdown of the QBs by going through games 1 game at a time and looking at the individual plays...one play at time.

Because of the lack of QB talent in the league and all the QB injuries you may see teams start to go back to running the ball 1st and pass 2nd the way it once was. Everything is cyclical and football is no different. I'm not saying it will be 3 yards and a cloud of dust football, there will be some variation because of the rule changes that opened up the passing game, but how teams run their O could be coming.

So we won today by riding RG3 into the ground... Really makes you think.

Thank you for the compliments from you and bonefish. I do read that thread but when I watch film I am kind of looking at different things. I focus a lot on watching footwork, hand to ear throwing motions, touch, and ball placement. In other words mechanics and results from mechanics.

Vision is also very important but it's too unreliable to get a feel from watching film other than to see if he locks on or not. I watch to see if he scans the defense and makes adjustments or if he fakes it and yells gibberish which you can tell by if and how he changes things up.

I also look at the amount of time it took him to make a decision to throw. One or two long holds dont bother me but if I see it's a habit then alarm bells go off. I mean if he can't get rid of the ball quick in college he will be a darn statue in the NFL.

I don't sit down and write stuff out. I'm too lazy ^^ Still I can process a lot of things while watching footage and form a fairly accurate opinion of a QB. I am right a LOT more than I am wrong.

This is why I think Jimmy G. is going to be a very special QB. He has absolutely GREAT mechanics. He has beautiful touch and accuracy. He makes very good presnap reads and he usually gets rid of the ball very fast. His footwork is darn near perfect. You will always see him taking those short hopper steps in the pocket to keep his feet in position to throw and when he throws it his motion is blazing fast and hard for a defense to read. He has a pump fake that is out of this world when it comes to freezing a defense.

I would easily give up a first for him. Bill will never let him go for less than a first too. Bill praised him left and right before the draft and then went and drafted him right where he wanted to.

Trubisky is the only QB in this draft with excellent footwork and a very good throwing motion. He has great touch and really fantastic ball placement. He does read defenses and his coach is on record saying he is allowed to make any changes he wants at the line. From what I have seen he looks like a very good QB in the making. Like everyone else though the lack of experience is very troubling. I also worry about the speed of his decision making. Still if I had to draft a QB in the first this year he is the ONLY one I would even consider. None of the rest are even close in my eyes.

Again, I would be interested in reading your opinions in the QB threads to see the examples of the QB traits you mention. I'm always interested to read/discuss what other people see.