Yeah, if Forte gets franchised, I think he's got a lot of league and fan support if he holds out. They fucked up with him.
Well, Brees won't get the record this drive, but I have this vision that he's going to break it shortly, not on a 10 yard screen, but a long bomb.
And as a Dolphins fan, who remembers watching the crazy ending of the 1984 Miami/Dallas MNF game where Marino and Clayton set a variety of records, I tip my cap to Brees and can't help wonder if the dimwit Dolphins exec who decided to sign Duante Culpepper instead of Brees still has a job in the NFL.
Can't say I am a fan of Schottenheimer, but I do think that if the Jets could secure a top 10 franchise back a lot of their problems would be over. Also they need a better pass rush, which on paper it looks like they should have - but they don't.Originally Posted by Brandon Clements
I figure Reid stays and so does Shady. Desean might leave depending on whether or not San Fran^H^H^Washing^H^H^Hanyone is dumb or desperate enough to overpay for him. A new DC is probably in order, but also in order is bolstering both lines. I mean this is the problem with this team. They overdid on skill players and passed on O line and front 7 defensive players outside of Jason Babin. They should hire Spags if St. Louis fires him. Or Jack del Rio.
Mike Mularkey? Russ Grimm? Jeff Fisher? JIM TRESSEL? (lol) Beats me but Morris needs to go.
Assuming Cowher has the pick of any available coaching gig, he really should take this one in terms of easiest club to turn around.
That wouldn't be the most shocking development given KC's "Hay let's just do what the Patriots did!" approach to coaching and front office.
Honestly I don't see a pressing need to clean house here. The Bears were a solid playoff contender with the tools to go deep in the playoffs before losing Cutler. Hell I'd say that was the best team they've fielded since or maybe even before their (non-winning) Superbowl team. Losing Forte sure didn't help - I figure they franchise him for a year and draft his replacement in the offseason, kind of like what they did with thomas Jones and then Cedric Benson. The Bears have no trouble shipping off RBs while they are still productive.
Congrats to Drew Brees on the record! Oh how I wish he was in a Phins uniform.
Ryan is safe IMO. I think it's pretty clear that the Jets will never win a Super Bowl with Sanchez under center though. The guy got worse this year.
I'm starting to be skeptical about a Cowher return to the NFL. How many coaches have had success after about five years away from the game?
Thinking about Brees history, I noticed something that is pretty crazy. Look at the top 5 QBs this season (based on passer rating), and then look at where they were drafted:
Rodgers - 24th pick (1st round)
Brees - 32nd pick (2nd round)
Brady - 199th pick (6th round)
Romo - undrafted
Schaub - 90th pick (3rd round)
I'm not saying top of the first round QBs are a mistake, but damn, I wonder if they are worth it when you look at something like this.
The Eagles front four is actually pretty decent, especially at DE. Between Babin and Cole, they have 28 sacks. And behind them they have Daryl Tapp and their 1st round pick from 2 years ago, Graham. It's sick, but they overprioritized at that position. Where the Eagles need a lot of help is at safety and linebacker. I'm not sure there's even one quality NFL starter at those positions.
Jackson is gone. He's insulted by what the Eagles did this year; they refused to pay him any additional money; guy is severely underpaid as he's making like $650k this year. What's worse from his standpoint is while the team refused to renegotiate, they signed broken down Steve Smith to a $2 million contract. Pretty much showed what they thought of him right there. I'm not sure he's worth what he thinks he is, but he's certainly worth more than $650k.
However, they have to pay McCoy; it's not even up for debate. Guy was the MVP of their team, by far.
What this seaon has done is reinforced to me how arrogant Andy Reid is. Not only in skimping on linebacker and safety, but in shifting resources to acquiring superfluous talent (Nnamdi, DRC and Samuels at corner is a joke when you field chumps at safety). He also the job of DC to a guy who had never coached defense (aside from in HS about a century ago), assuming it'd work because Reid is just smarter than everyone else. It failed miserably, so the DC may be canned. Reid will be retained, however.
Last edited by Eightball; 12-26-2011 at 09:43 PM.
WOOOOO! GEAUX SAINTS!
(In before Damien)
PFT has rumblings of an AJ Smith/Gruden combo either in San Diego (if Smith survives there) or in St. Louis. Good luck Rams fans!
Well Brady and Romo really throw that off. Brees and Rodgers were actually the second QBs taken in their respective drafts and many were surprised they weren't drafted sooner. Plus the next five QBs in passer rating this year were all drafted early in the first round. While there's going to be Andy Daltons in the draft, you'll still have Cam Newtons at the top.
The flip side of that, though, is how many highly drafted quarterbacks bust. Admittedly, as a Browns follower my experience may be biased. Quarterback strikes me as one of the hardest positions to evaluate, and the one position almost no team can afford to develop over time (though the Browns certainly stuck with Tim Couch). Furthermore, while a great system (teammates, coaching, play calling, etc.) can't make a bad quarterback look good, I think the reverse is true: that a bad system (no offensive line, etc.) will make a good quarterback look bad.
There are plenty of lower round busts as well though.
I just think its an interesting factoid to note just how wrong the people making the decisions can be and how you don't have to draft high to have a chance at a top QB. Which is a particularly relevant thought in Seattle right now where a lot of people assume the Seahawks will have to trade up in the draft to get a long-term answer at the position next time around. Assuming they don't sign Flynn from GB or something, anyway.
Yeah I don't see that as much of a trend. For total yards the list switches to include Eli Manning and Matt Stafford. For 2010 you get names like Vick, Peyton Manning, and Phillip Rivers.
If anything, it seems top tier QB picks are becoming more reliable recently.
Actually outside of linemen, I think QBs are one of the most accurately evaluated positions in the draft. Most of the notable QBs were drafted early rather than late. There are plenty that emerge from the lower end of the draft but this might have more to do with coach-ability and the competition at the position. The busts that do happen are just higher profile. Some years, their just isn't much to pick from. For instance JaMarcus Russell is now an infamous bust, but out of his 2007 class, Kevin Kolb is only QB with a starting job. If a team is in desperate need of a QB, the ones evaluated at the top of the list are their best bets. There usually is a late rounder that emerges each year, but good luck picking who it will be.
Man, what happened to the Falcons tonight? What an awful game for them (not that I'm complaining). 39 rushing yards, averaging 2.5 yards per rush while the Saints rushed for 164 yards. Atlanta had the ball longer, passed for more yards, forced more turnovers and still couldn't do anything. New Orleans' offensive line looked practically invincible.
They are not a good team. Them being in the playoffs surprised the hell out of me.
Here's the kind of hard-hitting stuff we've come to expect from the Washington Post. In today's paper, Mike Shanahan admits that improving the Redskins is taking longer than he thought.
Well, there ya go. Now we know!
How the hell are the Jets still in the playoff hunt? They're like cockroaches, impossible to kill off.
And you know Rex loves it that way :)
Seriously I feel like Jets have lost to every team, but they will still make the playoffs. All the guys that need to lose to help the Jets this week have a good chance of losing and wtf is Miami going to do, blitz Sanchez? Lol. They should rush 1 guy and encourage Sanchez to throw, that's the winning strategy.
They have a lot of talent and they can win games, but damn they're inconsistent. The spread on last night's game was 6.5 and recent games between the two teams have been decided by 3. Nobody expected an outright blowout.
Last edited by Zuwadza; 12-27-2011 at 11:33 AM.
Another rumor is Fisher for the Rams.
One thing is certain in my mind, after experimenting over the last six years with two head coaches who were rookie head coaches (Linehan and Spags), I'd like to see a proven HC get the job. I'd be fine with Fisher. If he could get the team to 8-8 in a couple of years that would be glorious.
Gruden I would worry about. He sort of destroyed the Bucs. He was supposed to be an offensive genius QB coach and he kept running different QBs out there and never showed a lot. They won the Superbowl with the defense Dungy built more than anything Gruden did.
I like Spags but the team slipping back to 2-14 after going 7-9 is hard to stomach. They probably have had more than their share of injuries but still that's a terrible record. And McDaniels hasn't shown anything as the OC. It looks like Bradford may have a third offense to learn in three years next season if they clean house.
His first step towards improvement: cutting Ryan Torain.
BOLD MOVES.
This may be worth a read, and the prior article on qbs drafted outside the top 50 picks.
As a comparison,How unlikely is it to find a good QB once you get beyond the middle of the 2nd round? Check out these facts:
QB’s drafted after pick #50 since 1995: 148
# of those who have attempted 1000 or more passes: 15
# who have been/were full time starters for 5+ years: 9
# of undrafted QB’s since 1995 to throw 1000+ passes – 5
# of undrafted QB’s since 1995 to start for 5+ years – 4I prefer the 5+ years starter as a comparison point, as throwing 1,000 passes can happen if you back up a injury prone QB, or play a couple seasons for a QB needy team like the Redskins (cough Rex Grossman).Between 1995-2010, there were 49 QB’s selected in the top 50. 18 have started for 5+ years
5+ year starters: Picked in the top 50: 18/49. Pick 51+? 4/148.
Looking back to all QBs drafted since 1970:
Going by the 5+ year starter metric, 51 to 31 doesn't seem so bad, except then you factor in how many QBs were drafted in those picks. The 51 is out of 113 QBs, whereas the 31 is out of 364 drafted QBs.As you can see, a majority of Top 50 QB’s hit 1000 pass attempts in their career, whereas only 16% of QB’s taken after pick #50 do. In that 40 year time period, 51 Top 50 QB’s were 5+ year starters compared to an aggregate 31 from the later portions of the draft.
You want a QB? Draft one highly. Or continue to draft in the later rounds, and hope you win the Tom Brady sweepstakes.
Yep. Later round QBs (past the 2nd round -- although even 2nd round QBs almost always flame out, the only exception being Brees in recent memory) are drafted or signed as known risks.
The risks include:
- small school or program, so no way to project if they'll work against higher competition
- coming off injury
- strong early performance that faded (Brian Brohm, Marc Bulger)
- lack physical tools but hope that they're 'good enough'
- have physical tools but expectation that coaching can fix it
There's a direct correlation between the number of reduced variables and how high they're drafted, but even then if you're good enough in some areas people will overlook the question marks.
All that said, having a late round QB that you can develop behind your starter can reap results. In particular having someone with the physical tools but lacking quality coaching can reap rewards if you have them for a year or two to sort things out.
It's still pretty early in his career, but Andy Dalton isn't doing bad.
No doubt, and judging on 'round' is sort of misleading since Brees was one pick away from being a first rounder. That said, these are all the 2nd round QBs picked the past 15 years:
A. Dalton
C. Kaepernick
J. Clausen
P. White
B. Brohm
C. Henne
K. Kolb
J. Beck
D. Stanton
K. Clemens
T. Jackson
D. Brees
Q. Carter
M. Tuiasosopo
S. King
C. Batch
J. Plummer
T. Bans
T. Collins
K. Stewart
Brees is the only bona fide star out of that group, and most of the others either flamed out, had some intermittent starts, or had a couple good seasons and disappeared.
Eh, Jake the Snake wasn't bad (and Charlie Batch is a pretty capable backup), but I do see your point. One thing I would like to see is to run each of those QB's through how many OC/HC they had just to check if it was "they suck" or if it was multiple coaching changes that caused them to not be as good as they could have been.
You'd find that it's not statistically different than those in the 1st round that didn't pan out. Which makes you wonder - did the coaching changes make the QB fail, or did the lousy QB play make the coaches lose their jobs? Probably a bit of both...
As Eightball quoted above, I specifically was talking about top of the first round QBs versus guys taken after. So after pick 10 or so. As such an article about how guys taken after the middle of the second round don't tend to pan out doesn't really disprove my point. Nor does looking at 2nd round only QB success.
Again, this seems relevant to me when looking at whether the Seahawks need to trade up this coming draft to get a top QB versus taking their chances with somebody after their likely middle of the first round or so pick. Luck is #1, but with Barkley out of the mix the rest of the guys are more of a risk and probably not worth trading up for.
On a different note I'm surprised there is not talk of the 49ers cutting Braylon Edwards today. As the piece on PFT points out, the only way it makes sense is if the 49ers decided there were chemistry/behavior issues with the guy and they needed to get rid of him ASAP.
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