NFL Week 16 thread -- Slippery like Jake the Snake

[sgreenwell]

As you note, the career timing worked out just great for Cousins in going on the free agent market, plus then he did have a decent-OK season for the Vikings which swayed them into offering the extension. But now he's a C-plus level starter at an age where a steady slide seems likely.

True! But also, because the NFL limits player movement so much, it means that there isn't really a free market for quality QBs - even a guy like Cousins was deemed so valuable, he got franchised twice.

 

[DanOregon]

Cousins is a good QB to measure your current situation against - and one of the reasons WFT had a hard time committing to him. He's better with the Vikes than he was in DC. Had a great first full season with WFT, but was more of a third starter/innings-eater guy.
Have NFL teams figured out how to simulate how a prospective QB would fare in their system/stadium, like baseball teams do? I often think the scouting departments evaluate a QB expecting him to have an ideal coaching staff and a system perfectly suited for his skills - when clearly that ends up not being the case most of the time. I'd say a "bust" is almost always 30 percent coaching, 30 percent bad eval, 30 percent player, 10 percent front office failure to build roster.

 

[Batman]

True! But also, because the NFL limits player movement so much, it means that there isn't really a free market for quality QBs - even a guy like Cousins was deemed so valuable, he got franchised twice.

The Redskins actually screwed up big time by franchising him twice. There was a point where they could have signed him to a longer-term deal for a little less money, but didn't want to commit to him for whatever reason. They played chicken with each other in negotiations, which forced them to use the franchise tag. Then it happened again. Cousins did the math and realized he could make more playing under the tag than he could by signing. He bet on himself and won, then landed the big money deal from Minnesota that he was never going to get from Washington.

 

[DanOregon]

I also have to believe that evaluating college qbs is getting even tougher with a rise of one-year wonders/transfers and the "rise" of the sub P5 QB ala Wentz, Allen, et. al.

 

[micropolitan guy]

QBs from non-P5 schools are nothing new in the NFL. In 2000, 10 of the 20 top-ranked passers were from non-P5 schools: Culpepper, Garcia, Gannon, Favre, King, Warner, McNair, Kitna, Fiedler and Batch. Another four (Blake, Frerotte, Dilfer, Pederson) threw at least 100 passes.

 

[Songbird]

Kitna lol

He was almost a thing and I think we all kind of wanted him to be.

 

[Starman]

Culpepper, Garcia, Kitna and Batch -- the fantastic four of disastrous Lions quarterbacks.

Not even including Harrington or Orlovsky.

A decade or so down the line it's all getting blurry, but I seem to remember Kitna getting huffy at the idea the Lions might draft Stafford -- not really dissimilar to Brandon Inge harrumphing that he didn't plan to give up his starting role at 3B to the newly acquired Miguel Cabrera.

 

[Scout]

So I just picked through Football Reference, and here are my semi-subjective results.

In the last 10 drafts, 25 QBs have been taken in picks 1-15. Six have been taken 16-32, and 96 have been taken second round on.

You have a 36% chance of drafting a stud in picks 1-15. You have a 40% chance of getting a starter. You have a 25% chance of getting a dud. So that's a a 76% chance of getting a starting QB, and many starters in other locations might be studs.

Of the six QBs drafted 16-32, one is a stud, one is a starter and four are duds. Not much of a sample size.

Now, once we get into the second round, there have been two studs out of 96, or about a 3% chance of hitting a jackpot. Nineteen, or about 20%, have turned into starting QBs at one point or another.

And I would like to list the thirteen QBs drafted 1-15 in the last four drafts.

Burrow
Tua
Herbert
Murray
Jones
Haskins
Mayfield
Darnold
Allen
Rosen
Tributsky
Mahomes
Watson

QBs are entering the league ready to play. Now, does the fact that they don't get the **** beat out of them anymore help them get better faster? Maybe. Sorry, Cincy.

 

[hondo]

It's not about the Jags as much as it is a matter of bitterness that a New York team was about to get Trevor Lawrence but will have to settle for somebody with less name recognition.

Why would they be bitter? Are they die-hard Jets fans? And what's so new about the Jets not getting a quarterback? The last one they had who was relevant was Namath. And God forbid a football team actually go out and do what they're supposed to: play like professionals and win a game. I get what fans feel, that they want the tank to get the franchise quarterback. But half the players on a bad team will be elsewhere next season, or they want to get paid by the team they're with, so they're going to put good tape out there. If they play like dogs, it gets noticed.
I understand if fans are upset with the Jets for not going 0-fer. But they shouldn't condemn guys for doing their job. Also, it's no one's fault but the Jets that Sam Darnold turned out to be a dog.

 

[hondo]

Where does Gardner Minshew end up? 16 tds to 5 picks (37/11 career), 66 completion pct (62) and a 95.9 passer rating (93) (this year better than Roethlisberger, Mayfield, Trubisky, Stafford, Murray, Tua and Fitz, Ryan, Goff, Burrow, and Garoppolo). PR has its flaws of course, but that's a solid TD/INT ratio. Plus he's still got three years under a rookie deal.

He's probably going to stay with the Jags because he'll be cheap labor for a year and already has a good rapport with the backs and receivers. Depends on the new coach and OC as far as whether he'll fit within a system. If it doesn't work out with the Jags, I think he'd be a good fit as a backup in New Orleans, San Francisco, Seattle, Houston or Arizona.
Something happened, however, to fracture his relationship with Marrone. It could have been when he hid his thumb injury at mid-season. Hard to get a read on anything when there's no locker-room access for the regular beat writers and bloggers to dig this stuff up.

 

[Cosmo]

re: Haskins, I might be wrong, but I was under the impression that he was always viewed as a "high ceiling, low floor" kind of player. Those type of guys always go earlier than they "should," because if you want a guy like Gardner Minshew - can make some throws, probably has a low chance of leading a team to the playoffs over 16 games - they're available late in the draft. There's about a dozen examples of this type of pick failing, but it works enough - see Buffalo and Josh Allen, who wasn't super accurate in college and played for a small program, usually the kind of guy you don't want to pick - that teams keep making the pick. (The NBA version of this - In the 1990s and early 2000s, if you were 7-foot and had a pulse, you always went earlier than you should, whereas a solid pro like Jared Dudley would go 22nd overall.)

I think Washington probably should have had a better #3 option heading into the year than Alex Smith, but I also realize the optics of cutting him would have been pretty awful. (That's never stopped Snyder before, but still.) Haskins was essentially a development QB that shouldn't have been playing.

It was as simple as this with Haskins: Snyder liked him. He played his prep ball at a high school near D.C. and Snyder thought that would engender some goodwill among the fanbase, to draft him.

In one of these threads way early this year, I was one who said it was way too early to give up on him. Then he continued to step on his own ****. He has a good arm but has no idea how to read a defense. And that **** about going to a strip club maskless? You know who wasn't there? Chase Young. DH has no sense of what it means to be a leader on a team, and that was it for him. I'm not holding my breath that he'll ever figure it out.

 

[tapintoamerica]

Why would they be bitter? Are they die-hard Jets fans? And what's so new about the Jets not getting a quarterback? The last one they had who was relevant was Namath. And God forbid a football team actually go out and do what they're supposed to: play like professionals and win a game. I get what fans feel, that they want the tank to get the franchise quarterback. But half the players on a bad team will be elsewhere next season, or they want to get paid by the team they're with, so they're going to put good tape out there. If they play like dogs, it gets noticed.
I understand if fans are upset with the Jets for not going 0-fer. But they shouldn't condemn guys for doing their job. Also, it's no one's fault but the Jets that Sam Darnold turned out to be a dog.

Bitter because they're NYC-centric.
NYC is the best place for Lawrence to go if he wants to build a national brand. Namath is the best example. The guy won one big game, threw a million interceptions thereafter and wound up in the Hall of Fame because of where he played.
But the best place to go to have real impact, as you suggested, is Jax because he could literally save the franchise from moving. That would be a nice legacy.

 

[outofplace]

Bitter because they're NYC-centric.
NYC is the best place for Lawrence to go if he wants to build a national brand. Namath is the best example. The guy won one big game, threw a million interceptions thereafter and wound up in the Hall of Fame because of where he played.
But the best place to go to have real impact, as you suggested, is Jax because he could literally save the franchise from moving. That would be a nice legacy.

Players can build a national brand anywhere now. This isn't the 1960s.

 

[outofplace]

 

[Sam Mills 51]

The best one of recent vintage was an afterthought, and then they screwed it up -- Kirk Cousins. He's not a Hall of Famer or anything, but he's certainly a capable starter and better than anything they've had in the last 20 years. For whatever reason, though, they never saw him that way and totally FUBAR'd his contract situation.

The funniest part is how the WFT has doubled down on quarterbacks twice in drafts of recent vintage. Once, they got Heath Shuler high in the first round, then Gus Frerotte later. Years later, they selected Cousins in the same draft in which they took RGIII.

The long(er)-term starters? Frerotte and Cousins. You Like That?

Go figure.