NFL 2019: Week 16

Winston is now who he always is; he gets over-excited, pushes too hard, and throws picks. I don't think people really think about what Mike Evans has done for him; Evans has a ridiculous catch radius, and is great at adjusting to balls that aren't quite right. He's made Winston better, and Winston hasn't been good. I think getting genuinely better requires looking at yourself and accepting you have flaws you need to work on, and Winston is far too much of an arrogant asshat to do that on or off the field. He believes he can make every throw, and he can't. He's has a history of getting hyper early and throwing picks on the first drive. Six times this year, in year five. He is who he is, an interception machine who is also a sexual assault-loving scumball. It's been kind of fun to hear people talk about him having watched him since his rookie year. What he's done now? I think Legion pointed out, it's just Arians' scheme. More attempts, more yards, more picks. Arians increased his volume, his general rate of sh*ttiness is about the same.

staygold wrote:

I guess I just am thinking about the log jam that’s going to happen at quarterback in the next 15 years. Rodgers has had 6 years of top-3 quarterback play. If that’s a sufficient bar to get into the Hall of Fame then I guess he’s in. But then you should also warmly welcome Phillip Rivers, Matt Ryan, Ben Roethlisberger, Matt Stafford, and Eli Manning. Each of those guys hasn’t had the peak brilliance of Rodgers, but have had more consistent and long term success (except Eli because he’s an oddity)

Just to pile on with everyone else, there is a logjam for QBs for Rodgers like there was a logjam for DEs for Reggie White or LB for Ray Lewis or Derrick Brooks. There is no logjam when you are that good. Brady and Brees are going to retire before Rodgers will, and both will clearly walk in first ballot. After that? Nobody is vaguely (and I mean VAGUELY) close to Aaron Rodgers. He has the accolades, the numbers, the big win, and so much else, and the big knock on him is he only won the one big game.

I cannot even conceive of a situation outside of him running a secret ring where he freezes puppies and stabs babies with the puppies and then maybe he has bet on football with the very souls of yet more puppies. I mean, he's been a starter for 12 years. I've been looking at his stat page on PFR, and it's more insane than I thought it was. His INT% has been above 2% four times. He has fewer INTs the last five years combined than Winston did this year. Even going QB WINZ, he's played 16 games 10 seasons, and the team has double-digit wins in all but two of them. And now I'm mad at the Packers for having him after Favre again.

Paleocon wrote:

Funnily enough, there were a LOT of "experts" saying that Lamar Jackson's mechanics were fundamentally broken and three months with Joshua Harris turned him into the NFL MVP.

That sounds like people trying to come up with explanations as to why their terrible takes on Lamar during draft season turned out to be so wrong.

Lamar wasn't broken coming out of Louisville. He had footwork issues for sure, which kept him from having a top 10 caliber of draft grade, but nothing red flag-ish. Usually I'm pretty rough on draft QBs who throw sub-60% in college, but it was just so damn evident watching Lamar's tape that he was a couple of tweaks away from solving a lot of accuracy issues. The rest of his throwing mechanics were sound.

I recall the FO discussions back at draft time and Winston was expected to be less than great, largely because of his accuracy issues, but also because his accuracy dropped and INTs went way up his senior year; he got significantly worse that last year, but, thanks to a great earlier year, his cumulative stats still looked really good. FO's metrics I believe expect improvement year to year otherwise it's a red flag, and there was a notable change in Winston's last college year.

On the other hand, they were really high on Mariota, so . . . there's that. Then again, it very much feels like Mariota with a more stable environment and better coaching staff might have really blossomed, and Winston, well, he was going to be an arrogant dickbag anywhere he went.

A decade of Philly fan clips

https://twitter.com/dhm/status/12120...

*Legion* wrote:
Paleocon wrote:

Funnily enough, there were a LOT of "experts" saying that Lamar Jackson's mechanics were fundamentally broken and three months with Joshua Harris turned him into the NFL MVP.

That sounds like people trying to come up with explanations as to why their terrible takes on Lamar during draft season turned out to be so wrong.

Lamar wasn't broken coming out of Louisville. He had footwork issues for sure, which kept him from having a top 10 caliber of draft grade, but nothing red flag-ish. Usually I'm pretty rough on draft QBs who throw sub-60% in college, but it was just so damn evident watching Lamar's tape that he was a couple of tweaks away from solving a lot of accuracy issues. The rest of his throwing mechanics were sound.

Possible, but I don't remember anyone in September saying that his throwing mechanics were "a couple of tweaks away". All I heard was "he's a running back".

Paleocon wrote:

Possible, but I don't remember anyone in September saying that his throwing mechanics were "a couple of tweaks away". All I heard was "he's a running back".

Well I said it.

Plenty of other people liked Lamar as a QB prospect too. It's just so unusual (and undoubtedly rooted in a combination of racial bias and lazy scouting) to have a prospect with his skill set treated like a position change guy that it probably seemed like that's all anyone was saying. But the vast majority of mock drafts had Lamar being drafted as a quarterback within the first 3 rounds.

To me, what was much more common than treating him as a position change player was people who projected him as a QB but undervalued his skill set. 2nd round grades were common, 3rd round grades not unheard of. But 1st round grades weren't exactly rare either.

TheGameguru wrote:

A decade of Philly fan clips

https://twitter.com/dhm/status/12120...

And yet the comments are filled with "You forgot this one..."

*Legion* wrote:
Paleocon wrote:

Possible, but I don't remember anyone in September saying that his throwing mechanics were "a couple of tweaks away". All I heard was "he's a running back".

Well I said it.

Plenty of other people liked Lamar as a QB prospect too. It's just so unusual (and undoubtedly rooted in a combination of racial bias and lazy scouting) to have a prospect with his skill set treated like a position change guy that it probably seemed like that's all anyone was saying. But the vast majority of mock drafts had Lamar being drafted as a quarterback within the first 3 rounds.

To me, what was much more common than treating him as a position change player was people who projected him as a QB but undervalued his skill set. 2nd round grades were common, 3rd round grades not unheard of. But 1st round grades weren't exactly rare either.

Yeah, he was all over the map. It's the older generation of talking heads who said they didn't think he was a QB or whatever. They think you need to be Peyton-like and stand in the pocket for an hour (see: John Elway as GM).

Too many people saw how much he ran in college and assumed he's a running QB, but he's not. He's a passer first, run last, except on designed runs.

ccesarano wrote:
TheGameguru wrote:

A decade of Philly fan clips

https://twitter.com/dhm/status/12120...

And yet the comments are filled with "You forgot this one..."

I take it It's Always Sunny is actually a documentary series?

TheGameguru wrote:

A decade of Philly fan clips

https://twitter.com/dhm/status/12120...

No shirtless dude with the bird mask while someone stood on a car in the background after you guys won the NFC championship? Fail!

There we go!

https://youtu.be/_ENqFbMUQAE

I mean you could make a 2 hour video but it’s the Twitter era. Gotta keep it short and simple.

My sig never goes out of style.

garion333 wrote:

Too many people saw how much he ran in college and assumed he's a running QB, but he's not. He's a passer first, run last, except on designed runs.

I went back to look at what I wrote on him in the 2018 draft thread:

Tier 2 (mid-to-late 1st)

(...)

3. Lamar Jackson. Lack of consistent accuracy and concern with boundary throws slide Jackson down a little from where Deshaun Watson went a year ago. Probably the best QB at working through progressions after Rosen. Elite running ability is a weapon. A lot of his issues stem from footwork, which is an issue of Darnold's too, but Darnold's throwing power gives him more margin for error. Jackson has more of a "flick" delivery than really driving the ball, which can be great for a short timing pass game, but you don't see him driving many passes on out patterns to the sideline. Jackson won't fit in every offense, and needs things tailored to his strengths, but he has some amazing upside.

Rosen has sadly not lived up to my confidence in him, but I'm pretty comfortable with this assessment of Jackson. Like you said, he was not a run-first guy at all, which I express here with the comment about his ability to work through progressions. He reminded me less of previous "athlete" quarterbacks and more of the previous Louisville QB, Teddy B, which was the trait that made me like Teddy so much (and still do).

The part about boundary throws is somewhat on the mark too. Though he's clearly capable of NFL boundary throws, he excels most with throwing the drags and seams. 23 of his passing TDs this year have been on throws targeted between the numbers. His PFF grade on between the numbers throws exceed his grade throwing to the boundaries in either direction at basically every field depth. He's not that big tall cannon-armed guy that's going to be among the league's best at making those boundary throws, but he's definitely still good enough at those throws. But his money is clearly made attacking the middle of the field, along with his ground game.

Accuracy and throwing power were both compromised by his footwork issues, and cleaning the feet up took care of the rest.

Meanwhile, Sam Darnold's footwork still isn't there. That's the thing with footwork. Sometimes all it takes is for a guy to get NFL caliber coaching and it all falls into place. Then there's the guys who struggle with it in perpetuity.

Can't imagine what Lamar would have done with actual coaching in college. Back to back Heisman and championships? f*ck Bobby and his stupid son QB coach