Drew Brees was a great athlete. The argument that some guys that were bad (statistically) became great doesn’t prove anything to me. The problem with your guy right now, is by the eye test, he is a fringe athlete but he is smart and can see the field. Pennington is the ceiling and that’s a guy you can win with but that’s the ceiling. My guy, who is sidelined right now has the opposite problem. Great athlete, ridiculous arm but if he has the brain for the NFL is TBD.
I'm picking guys who started slow or had regression years and got better, like HOF better, and I'm comparing people against their peers (not 2022 Mac against 2002 player X). I do so as means of saying that the book isn't written on a guy with 19 starts and pedestrian numbers, not that I think that he'll be a super stud. We're in agreement that Mac's ceiling is nowhere near those guys.
Drew Brees was 6'0" 213 and ran a 4.81 at the combine. He wasn't a great athlete. He became a great passer.
I get it, but I'm saying it's pointless and not really useful, because you're cherrypicking to prove a thing can happen, which sure, nobody doubts that in the history of the NFL some guys have gotten way better, but it's not really telling us much other than that outliers exist, and there isn't a particular reason to think Mac will also be an outlier. I mean, any more than say comping him to Cody Kessler is an indication he'll be done in 3 years.
Sure, the entirety of his season equalled out to average, but from games 1-10 Mac was pretty good (PFF had him ranked 5th) and then he basically was trash from games 11-18 and playoffs (ranked 24th) once teams adjusted to him. We're continuing to see that this year. We'll see if he can adjust and get better, but let's not pretend that last year was some super amazing rookie season. The team won in spite of him (and because of a great defense) and not because of him.
Yeah I definitely missed your point about eras. If what you mean is that the league is more likely to draft toolsy guys with less understanding of pro concepts and let guys slide who are possibly arm-capped, that's totally fair. I wouldn't say that it's wise given that last year's top three picks are 7-27 collectively and none has hit 60% for career completion rate yet, but sure, guys with lower ceilings are definitely given fewer chances and shorter leashes.
I think this undersells Mac's contributions in the first half of his rookie season--those numbers and my (unreliable, subjective and rose tinted) eyes told me that the team wasn't winning those games in spite of him. Latter half of the season is another story. It sure looked to me like the league adjusted a bit as more game film became available (particularly from the bye week on forward), and the numbers seem to bear that out.
It's also a question of new practice rules, offseason work caps, short leashes, and lower margin for error given defensive improvements. There are a lot of factors in why QBs have less time to slowly develop over time, particularly pocket QBs.
As one of those who was disappointed in his game yesterday, I will just note that not having a great arm means everything else needs to be better. And, yesterday, it wasn't. He's got to hit the throws that are there for him that he CAN make at a well above average rate. He's got to read and understand defenses and coverages better than most. He's got to be a great game manager. He's got to make fewer mistakes than the typical QB.
This is entirely where I'm at.
Actually, it looks to me like he's stationary. He's not stepping forward, he's planting off a foot that is already down. The balance on them is pretty good, and it's a quick release, but that is going to limit the zip and where he can throw on the field. It might explain why so many of his throws to the outside seem to float more than those over the middle. He's throwing against his body because he's not shifting his feet to face where he's throwing.
Thats exactly what I see, although I don’t purport to be any kind of qb mechanics savant.
Yeah this is where I am. He's an average QB as a kid and may end up as an average quarterback as a grown-up (and may end up better). There's a half dozen teams that most of us can name off the top of our heads that wish that they had our problem, as they keep drafting QBs in the first round and bringing in retreads to compete.
To me it looks like he's taking very short steps, not really "stepping in".
So his ceiling is Denver Peyton Manning. The reason people don't suggest this is because it's ridiculous as Peyton had all the experience in the world and is incredible at reading defenses. He also had a stacked offense.
Well, for starters, we certainly don't make extremist claims such as he's been trash for two years.
I mean....
I guess I'm not sure what get concerned means.
My thing with Mac is I thought he's made more poor reads and just outright inaccurate throws in two games this season than in most, if not all, of 2021. He was incredibly lucky not to have come out of yesterday's game as the main reason they lost. Agholor making a ridiculous play on a pass that was destined for the CB's breadbasket and one of the worst dropped INTs you'll see (followed immediately by the muffed punt) made his performance look respectable on paper, but I thought he was their main problem on offense on a day in which he was extremely well protected. I'm obviously not making any definitive statements on the kid based on two weeks under a Patricia/Judge offense while integrating a new system, but still, I really thought his baseline of performance was higher coming out of 2021, guess I underestimated the Josh effect a bit. Still think he'll be okay and settle comfortably in the top 12-15 QB range, which you most definitely can win with.
We all have different opinions, mine just happen to be on the extreme end.
My problem with this is that we'd expect a QB to adjust and if he's not doing that and we're still making excuses about defenses being too hard or surprising, then it feels worse. Maybe it's lack of prep on the coaching side, but Mac has demonstrated he can't overcome any limitations on coaching scheme with any of his talents.
I would ask then what about his rookie season led you to believe he played like "trash."
Is this a Mac isn't good out of structure argument? Because any play Mac runs and executes is by definition part of their scheme. Brady largely executed in structure too. Really the vast majority if not all successful QBs operate primarily in structure which is part of the scheme. I thought Mac actually looked good scrambling and I had concerns about that coming out. He can't throw on the run well, that's true, but he isn't a statue.
I already pointed that out, once defenses adjusted, he was garbage. His last 9 games of the season were well below average. I'm not giving him a ton of credit for running an over simplified offense in the first half of the season where he was completing a really high number of passes in safe areas, but not really doing anything to win games. He played mistake free football while the defense and running game won them games.
Not at all. In the first two games he's not making standard throws and can't complete anything on the outside. I was responding to SD saying that maybe he's getting surprised by defenses, which hopefully we start to see some improvement on.
I don't know what you mean by we'd expect a QB to adjust or we're still making excuses about defenses being too hard. Brady had some bad games, gets confused here and there (often against the Jets and dolphins for example), played poorly in particular when his oline struggled, and the like--and he's the best of all time. There will be days like that and I don't think it's a reasonable expectation that every game a QB is going to play great.
The first 3 of those last 9 games (assuming you are counting the playoff game) he was:
I think you're being a bit hyperbolic here. Mac played great games againt the Titans and Browns last year, If you want to argue those were injury ravaged teams that were in no condition to compete at the time of said matchups and the Pats didn't really need excellent QB play to win that's fine, but Mac was basically flawless in both.
Cleveland, Dallas, Jacksonville last year. Maybe Tennessee, I'd have to go back and look at that one.
That's not really particularly responsive to what I said. It seems that you expect a QB to routinely be better than Mac was in his best games (games where he didn't throw picks had 250 yards plus, throw some touchdowns, didn't get sacked). I think that expectation is insane--it's a level not even Brady or Manning or Brees played at.
I think that the source of any "being spoiled for 20 years" accusations may come from what your expectations are. Mac's numbers say that he's currently a middling QB. If your POV is "fuck, we simply can't have an average quarterback in New England", that's fine (but that's where you might end up being called spoiled). If your POV is "I don't care what the numbers say, Mac isn't even in the middle of the bell curve, he sucks", then you might not have consensus there.
Nobody is excusing anything. Some here are repeatedly telling us that the Patriots cannot win with Mac Jones because of his lack of athleticism.
I think very few people are saying they'd rather have Jones than Mahomes/Allen/Hebert/if you don't mind sexual abusers Watson. Or that Jones is more valuable (short term) than Lamar Jackson/Brady/Rodgers. But I think it starts getting murky in a hurry about how good players are after that especially when you start thinking about where in their career guys like Wilson or Stafford or Ryan or even Tannehill are, how good the supporting cast is (Burrow started having much better numbers once he got Chase, e.g.) and how one rates things like the relative importance of size, athleticism, arm strength, decision making, etc. IMO opinion how hard you squint really tells you where Mac comes out in the roughly 9th-18th QB rankings in the league, and he was ballpark 16 last years, and hopefully up a little more this year.)
