MasterAwesome

You know who else flashed a lot? Justin Fields, on his way to a 10-28 record as he was shipped off for a 6th round pick. Like I already said, it was an encouraging first preseason game for Milton. I just hear over and over and over from this board about "flashes" this and "flashes" that and it seems like that word is used to connotate exciting/wow plays, which I understand because this is supposed to be entertainment at the end of the day. I also understand the frustration because Bryce gave us neither winning nor excitement last year. I just think the whole "flashes" thing is so overplayed because obviously elite physical traits are going to naturally yield more flashes, and Milton is quick with a big arm. I also think NFL coaches don't care as much about flashes as they do consistency - I think they'd rather have a boring but consistent QB like Brock Purdy or Dak to an extent, over someone who wows you one play and has you pulling your hair out the next.

I think we're millennia away from the point where we are developing and trading late round quarterbacks for assets lol. Unless I'm missing someone, then I think the Patriots did it one time with Matt Cassel? And I think we'd agree that it was less that they "developed" him but that they made him look good in their system and then tricked another team into trading for him, only for him to never live up to what they gave up. Otherwise I'm assuming you're thinking of Garoppolo? He was drafted in the 2nd and later traded for a 2nd. The only other QB I can think of was way back in the day with Drew Bledsoe, but he was drafted 1st overall, played ~10 years, then traded for a 1st. So only Cassel would fit what you're saying about drafting a guy late, developing him, then trading him. 99.9% of the time (my unresearched guesstimate) it goes in the opposite direction where a team drafts a QB and then trades them for a huge loss. Like Mac Jones and Justin Fields going for a 6th round pick each, after costing their drafting team a mid-1st. Trust me I understand the idea conceptually. I just think it's an idea that sounds better on paper than it is in practice. If it was an untested theory, I'd be on board and say yeah sounds good let's try it. But there is a mountain of evidence already to the contrary. I'm not even by any means saying let's never draft QBs in the later rounds, I'm just in favor of following your draft board which is a culmination of months and months of scouting. tl/dr: If a QB you are intrigued by falls in the draft and is available in the 6th round when you're on the clock and his value lines up with your draft board, then hell yeah let's take him. Otherwise just grabbing a developmental QB every year late in the draft hoping one of them pans out just reeks of desperation IMO.

I think it's also kinda an "anyone but Bryce", "grass is always greener" thing. If you are really opposed to the starting QB, you're going to grasp to any other alternative as a replacement and often hyper-inflate that QB's value in the process. That's why we were seeing things like "what if Jack Plummer kills it" or w/e. I thought Milton had a promising first preseason game, but if Bryce made that throw that Milton made for the long touchdown, people would be nitpicking the hell out of it - "pass was thrown to the outside...receiver had to slow down and turn around...ball should've been thrown in stride to the inside...etc.".

But then that goes back to my point about the draft board. No team is going into the NFL draft room with a cheat sheet about NFL positional hit rates and all that kinda hindsight statistical noise. The philosophy of "none of these guys are likely to amount to anything so let's take shots at developing a QB" is such a fan-oriented position that I think NFL organizations (good and bad) would strongly oppose. Teams are looking at each prospect as individuals and drafting based on how much they like a guy and the potential they see in them. You are advocating for teams to essentially ignore their draft board and their scouting to just take shots at QBs they objectively value less until they hit - because otherwise if a team did have whatever QB at the top of their draft boards relative to where they are drafting, then they would simply take that QB. If a team likes a particular guy and doesn't want to risk them getting drafted or having to compete with other teams to sign him as an undrafted FA, then that's exactly what those late round picks are for. Your argument of "oh you can just pick up a similar undrafted guy later" ignores that these drafted players are hand-picked by their teams for a specific reason. I don't think teams are going "well hmm...I guess we're thin at OT. Let's just take a random one in the 7th". Also, back-up QBs (in an ideal world where your starter stays healthy) are among the lowest contributors to the team unless you want to get into arbitrary hard-to-measure metrics like "how much they pushed the starting QB in competition". Even 4th string linebackers playing Special Teams contribute more on the field than back-up QBs. So again, contributions are on a spectrum rather than saying so-and-so players didn't become starters so let's bucket them all in the same category.

Ok well then that would take me back to my original question of how many late round QBs have amounted to anything beyond journeyman back-up QB? If you want to argue that it's a worthwhile investment to keep spending late round picks on developmental QBs then I would expect you to at least give a few examples of franchise QBs taken in the 5th-7th rounds (again, other than Brady). I mean we could maybe eventually say Brock Purdy if he continues to perform admirably, but people in here are adamant that he's a bum who is carried by his supporting cast anyways so I doubt that's the type of QB they are hoping for when they advocate for drafting late-round developmental QBs. Sam Howell I guess is someone whose career is worth keeping an eye on, but it's not a great start so far considering his team shipped him away one year after drafting him for a negligible return. I spent a little bit of time trying to look into it and it looks like we're having to go back to the late 90s/early 2000s for success stories like superstars Marc Bulger, Matt Hasselbeck, and Ryan Fitzgerald - basically fringe starters when they were at their peak. Maybe Hasselbeck could've been considered a franchise QB in his day, but I don't think he'd cut it in the present era.

Sorry, you misunderstand my 2% vs. 10% thing but I can see how I worded that confusingly. I wasn't referencing some researched statistical analysis of hit rate. I was basically just trying to quantify how much a team might like or value a certain prospect, but I probably should've just left out the random percentages and just stuck with the draft board. If the Panthers are on the clock in the 6th round and there's a developmental QB who's 250 on their draft board vs. a linebacker who's 180 (i.e. a fairly sizeable difference), then I wouldn't want them to ignore their more coveted prospect just because maybe they'll get extremely lucky and strike gold on that QB when that has almost never happened historically. If it was more like 250 vs. 245 then yeah sure let's just cross our fingers and take the QB because the opportunity cost is relatively minimal. I'm just speaking theoretically here cause I obviously don't have access to the Panthers' draft board, but I think it's a safe assumption to say that they liked their late round selections significantly more than whatever bottom barrel QBs were available.

Is that to me? I can't tell cause I guess you forgot to quote again lol. I think when it comes to the later rounds, you're drafting for things like potential, depth, and niche positions like Special Teams. You're essentially consulting your draft board as your blueprint. If you're drafting a guy in the 6th who you think has a 10% chance of becoming a meaningful contributor within 3 years vs. a developmental QB who you think has a 2% chance just because "why the hell not" and maybe you'll get extremely lucky, then I think every team is taking the former aside from maybe incredibly stacked rosters who can afford the luxury of likely throwing away late round picks on the miniscule chance that they strike gold on a franchise QB. Certainly not our team with holes everywhere. Now if it's 50/50 and you have two equally rated players on your draft board and one is a QB and your QB room is awful, then yeah I'd agree that it's worth taking a shot on a developmental QB.

Do we really put a meaningful difference between a mid-6th round draft pick vs. undrafted FA? Tom Brady aside, how many 6th round QBs have panned out in the NFL? Maybe some decent back-ups in there, but I doubt Maye feels threatened because the Patriots spent a 6th round pick on a QB lol. That's basically what we did when we drafted Jimmy Clausen as our "guy" with our first pick and then Tony Pike (remember him?) in the 6th round in the same draft...I don't think anyone considered that as a bold praise-worthy move to push Clausen and maybe strike gold. Chances are that some of these late-round QBs are available after roster cuts, in which case we'll ultimately be in a position to grab one without investing a draft pick of our own.

The more I think about it, the more I can kinda rationalize the approach of sitting virtually all the starters in Game 1. The objective of the preseason is about two things IMO: preparing your team for the regular season with real in-game reps, and also properly evaluating your depth. People wanted the former and are getting a heavy dose of the latter. And I think it makes sense to heavily prioritize evaluating your depth in the first game so that you can adjust reps accordingly in the next two games, especially considering there are only three Preaseason games now. Maybe you see someone who flashed in Game 1 and you want to give them more reps or even time with the starters in Game 2 and 3. Maybe you saw someone who was flat out trash and you decide to reallocate their snaps to other bottom-of-the-roster guys to give them a chance instead. All of that is better to sort out in Game 1 then to find yourself in Game 3 still feeling undecided about certain players and wishing you had distributed reps more effectively throughout the preseason. Now that being said, if he truly ends up sitting Bryce (and/or a large number of starters) for the entirety of the preseason, then yeah I'll probably feel differently about it and it won't sit right with me.

Still a decent number of players worth watching tonight. Accounting for all the players sitting out, the notable ones I'm keying in on: Mingo, JT Sanders, Jalen Coker, Trevin Wallace, DJ Johnson, Brady Christensen, Dane Jackson, Jordan Matthews, Mevis/Pineiro, Smith-Marsette, Smith-Wade, Deven Thompkins (would like to see him returning kicks), and I guess Zavala to see if he's improved enough to earn a roster spot.

I really don't understand this argument. Unless you believe all of that, then since when do we give merit to what people *say* and *feel* during the offseason? The same posters you're talking about, are the ones who said Bryce Young would take the league by storm and "super processor" this and "Mini Mahomes" that, and that Miles Sanders was a great signing and dominant feature back, that Icky was a stalwart franchise LT, that Brian Burns would have a dominant career year in the 3-4 with Evero, that we were primed to win the division, etc. We're talking about the super optimistic subset of posters who every year predict big things for this team. Why favor those preseason opinions over the actual product we saw on the field?

People really taking that "Mini Mahomes" draft moniker too literally if we're already putting their stat sheets side-by-side as some kind of slam dunk indictment.

Not just any 8-year vet...but the 8-year vet with probably a Top 2-3 supporting cast (I only struggle to put them ahead of the 49ers). Gibbs/Amon-Ra/LaPorta at RB/WR/TE is as good as any in the league. They have the #1 rated o-line according to PFF. And Ben Johnson is the most sought-after young offensive playcaller in the league. These things matter immensely, whether people acknowledge it or not.

I just am shocked we're going down this road where we're walking back everything we saw with our own two eyes last year and trying to delude ourselves into thinking maybe our receivers, o-line, playcalling, coaching staff, etc. were not so bad and it was all Bryce's fault. Just to clarify, is it really your position that we actually had a talented roster and coaching staff (particularly on the offensive side) that were all held back by Bryce? Or am I misunderstanding? Cause to me, that's a much harder position to defend than what the "Bryce cope" squad is saying, which is that Bryce was surely part of the problem but our team was an absolute shitshow that made it hard to properly apportion how much blame falls on his shoulders. I truly don't understand why that is such an unreasonable position.

It seems like a stretch to assign so-and-so personal preferences to Canales from his years as QB Coach for guys like Russell Wilson and Geno Smith. I think lumping Canales' entire employment history together muddies the water, when the specific role he played is pretty damn important. His role as QB Coach and his role as Offensive Coordinator shouldn't be indiscriminately bucketed together broadly as "offenses he has been involved in". Like I don't think McCown deserves to have Bryce Young linked to him as a personal preference in QB type, simply because he was tasked with coaching him. Canales has only had one season with any kind of play-calling authority to try and deduce what offense he likes to run, and it's a matter of cause-and-effect as to whether he utilized the deep pass because that's his general preference, or if he did it because he had a roster that was built to take advantage of it (Baker + Mike Evans). Whether intentionally or not, I think treating this pairing as a mismatch prematurely paints Canales as some kind of stubborn one-trick pony who is unable to adapt his scheme to his roster's strengths/weaknesses. I don't know whether he is or not (because his sample size is way too small), but at the end of the day I think that's the bare minimum we would expect of a head coach/offensive coordinator - designing an offensive system that complements your roster. I don't think that requires him to be a "grand wizard". If he's the type of coach who is trying to fit a square peg in a round hole, then he's not the right guy with or without Bryce Young at QB.

Meh, it's hard enough to sustain excitement for the preseason and this will make it that much harder lol. But my bar for this season was always just hoping to see significant growth from Bryce and the team from the start to the finish, rather than expecting to come out the gate swinging from Week 1 (new coach, new offensive system, new o-line, huge roster turnover, etc.). So this doesn't necessarily change anything if Bryce ultimately does end up sitting out the entire preseason and we come out looking sluggish and out of sync Week 1.

Yeah, old school as in stout D + heavy run. We had the most conservative dink-and-dunk gameplan under Wilks. That first half against the Rams was the wildest thing I’ve ever seen. What part of that is incompatible with Young at QB? I would think that’s a match made in heaven in your eyes.

You think my original post you quoted was even remotely suggesting it's not possible to get a deep pass off in 2.7 seconds? Maybe you should re-read it...it seems your irritation stems from your own confusion. Don't quote me to make a redundant "point" that I agree with and then get sassy for how I respond to it. Even though your point is obvious and bland, the entire crux of your argument revolved around irrelevant calculations involving average velocity; so I don't think it's nitpicky to have questioned that.

I follow your logic but that's an overly simplistic and reductive approach. It doesn't really make sense to just apply a blanket average velocity to every type of NFL throw. Certain passes are going to require a bullet pass into a tight window. Certain passes are going to require touch. Launching a 50 yard pass downfield to an Adam Thielen in 2.7 seconds of pocket time is going to require a lofty rainbow pass with a lot less velocity. Even simply swapping Thielen for a receiver like Ja'Marr Chase is going to drastically change the velocity requirement on that throw. A metric like "average velocity" when accounting for every single type of NFL throw is pretty meaningless.

That's true but I also hear so many of the usual suspects complaining on those deep passes that the ball "floats in the air" too long. That's the only way to throw <2.7 second deep shots. There's no such thing as a <2.7 second deep bullet pass considering the receiver needs time to actually run down the field.

Yeah I agree, I didn't mean to make it sound like I shared their concern. Just that I have confidence that Canales would step in if Bryce isn't doing what he's supposed to be doing. I do feel like things are going by design; Canales seems to be very hands-on with his offensive vision which makes sense because that's his background. He for sure has repeatedly emphasized the 2.7 seconds thing so I think you're spot on with that. Yep I've seen a few of those deep passes you've mentioned but I can't remember if those were all 1-on-1s? Or were any of them during 11-on-11s? Cause I would draw a distinction between the two, but I can't remember off the top of my head and it's also still super early in camp. I think people act like this is a pattern this offseason because they're carrying over grievances from last season when I think we need to not necessarily give Bryce a 100% clean slate, but the Bryce/Canales combo.

You've gotta think Canales would step in and "demand" (for lack of a better word) some deep ball attempts during practice if it's a glaring pattern with Bryce. There's no way fans notice it and Canales doesn't, and Canales doesn't seem like the type of coach to coddle Bryce. He's already been about as critical as a coach can be towards his starting QB: called him "streaky" one practice, and "good, not great" last night. Which makes me wonder if it's by design for some reason...or if in cases like last night, the o-line was just getting manhandled all night (with Zavala and Traore starting) which in turn created a lack of opportunity. If it's genuinely just Bryce being extremely conservative, then I almost put at least equal blame on Canales for not intervening since practice is THE time to be incorporating downfield shots for a QB who lacked that weapon in his arsenal last season. Especially if we're to assume, as some people are, that Canales' offense leans on a healthy dose of downfield passing as with Baker and Geno in previous years.

So can someone clarify if the starting o-line was out there? I’m seeing something about Clowney destroying some RT named Badara Traore. Did Moton have the night off? Cause that would explain some of the o-line struggles tonight. I also saw some mention of Zavala getting a lot of snaps (which would DEFINITELY explain the o-line struggles), but not sure if that was 1st team or 2nd team.

I still don't see why Bryce's ceiling can't be a Drew Brees. We're talking about ceiling...i.e. the absolute best case scenario (not what he is likely to become). So he's miles away from that comparison, but I think they have similar strengths (brain, poise, anticipation) and similar weaknesses (physical limitations in size and arm strength). I think the biggest obstacles to Bryce being in remotely the same league as Brees are his accuracy (particularly with his deep ball) and his sloppy footwork. But Canales is making it a point of emphasis to coach up his footwork, and footwork is inextricably tied to a QB's accuracy.

It's hard to say cause the NFL obviously takes a huge backseat to college football down here (I live in Greenville SC). I haven't met many Panthers fans either, but I don't know how much of that is because Clemson/USC overpowers all football conversations.