DawgTalkers.net Forums The Archives 2018 NFL Season 2018 NFL Draft Sam Darnold ... Chapter two ...

Question, for the thread:

What do you view as Darnold's weaknesses?

Question, for the thread:

What do you view as Darnold's weaknesses?

I don't see what makes him so special. But I assume I'm just missing it and that it's there, because everyone else sees it to some degree.

So I think his flaws are that he has a lot of turnovers and makes bad decisions with the football sometimes. And he got destroyed by Ohio State, where Mayfield shined.

Full disclosure, Darnold is my guy.

His windup is an issue, but his delivery is quick enough to mitigate that. He's said to be working on shortening but not eliminating that wind up. He tends to carry the ball with 1 hand while scrambling, a correctable issue. Greg Cosell mentioned that many of his interceptions were over the middle, that he may have difficulty reading coverage in that area of the field. If true, that is a major concern. That is what the FO needs to determine.

What makes him special in my eyes is his leadership. Especially in his first year, but he showed it later in the 2nd year as well, he rallied his team to overcome deficits late in games. That is a rare quality. Rosen wins with his precision. He has rallied his team, but not as consistently as Sam. Both show accuracy. But in my mind, it's that intangible 'it' factor that Darnold has in spades.

If you want proof that nobody really has any handle on who has the It Factor when it really matters, go back to the two most prominent cases of the It Factor in football. Ask 100 personnel executives around the league to name a player with it, and the top two names that are going to come up are Tom Brady and Russell Wilson. You could build a cottage industry around ex-coaches, personnel men, and anonymous scouts who swear up and down today that they knew Brady and Wilson were going to be stars in the NFL because they had the It Factor.

You remember what happened at the time, right? Every single team in the league passed on Brady several times during the 2000 draft; the Patriots were9 debating whether to take Brady or Louisiana Tech quarterback Tim Rattay, eventually settling on Brady with the 199th pick because he was four inches taller than Rattay. In 2012, Wilson fell for the opposite reason, as his 5-foot-11 frame didn’t fit the quarterback paradigm. The Seahawks eventually snapped him up with the 75th pick, and like Brady, he was a Super Bowl champion by the end of his second season.

Think about that. Coaches swear up and down that they’re looking for a guy with the It Factor and how they can see it in a player by looking in his eyes or having a conversation or watching him practice. Every team in the league that might have been interested in a quarterback talked to Tom Brady and Russell Wilson. They saw each of them work out at the combine. They saw them on game tape and talked to their college teammates. And yet, because Brady’s arm was too erratic and because Wilson was too short, every team in the NFL passed. Presented with the most obvious It Factor guys in football, not a single team trusted their read enough to snap up Brady or Wilson with their first- or even their second-round pick. The next time you read about somebody having the It Factor, remember that the professionals couldn’t see it even when it was staring them in the face.

Why so wound up? It's called an 'it' factor because it's impossible to define. And maybe it doesn't exist, but people still use the phrase to indicate that a player has an unmeasurable ability to find a way to win against the odds. And that is what I like about Darnold. He has repeatedly shown an ability to rally his team to win against the odds. (He certainly failed to do so against tOSU, but in that game the OL was way over matched.)

This is from an article by Josh Edwards;


NFL Network's Daniel Jeremiah polled five executives to gauge which player has the advantage early in the process.
All five executive picked Darnold, plus Jeremiah.

"They are both going to be good. Rosen is more polished and a finished product now, but I'm a Darnold guy. He (has) 'it,'" one anonymous executive said.

Jeremiah explained his conclusion.

"It's rare to get a unanimous result with these weekly Ask 5 questions. However, all five of these executives prefer Darnold over Rosen at the moment. I thought it was interesting that three of the executives mentioned the "it" factor. I hear that a lot when discussing Darnold and I agree with their assessment of him. He has a special quality that's hard to define. He's clutch and thrives in chaotic moments. I think Rosen is a more refined passer, but Darnold would get my vote right now."

https://247sports.com/nfl/cleveland-brow...Rosen-110621672

You might not like the term, but it is still used by NFL people. And it conveys a message, that's why they use it. I use it because I see what I think they mean.

I agree w/your takes. The "it" thing is real and anyone who actually played the game knows that. Those who just read do not.

Everybody can choose who they like but at least watch enough to make a educated guess.

My comment was that people lump fumbles in with the interceptions and tend to think of all the turnovers as interceptions then criticize that.

While interceptions and fumbles are both turnovers, the mechanisms are different and need to be discussed separately.

I think some players get better with good coaching and some don't. I've seen it work both ways. We've drafted some of the winningest QB's in college football that never progressed. Yet I was a huge proponent of drafting Wentz who had never played in a pro style O and had a lot to learn.

So I believe the evidence is overwhelming that it can go either way. There's not a pat answer to that question.

Ball security.

From the perspective of fumbles is a matter of holding on to the ball.

Darnold is 20. Has not until recently been coached by professionals full time.

He fell into a bad habit of holding the ball in one hand. That to me is very coachable.

Int's is different. His TD to Int's is actually better than Rosens.

When you remove tipped balls; it is bad decisions. They all throw int's.

Mayfield has been the best at that part. But he has other concerns.

We'll just bave to agree to disagree. Hell, RG3 couldn't even be coached to slide with the ball. Some RB's never get over fumblitous. It works or doesn't work on an individual basis. There's no one size fits all answer here. It's a question left be to be answered.

I don't believe that you can tout a QB's ability to scramble without speaking about his lack of ability in securing the ball. They are directly related.