If Bridgwater is anythign less than elite, the front office screwed up

[Davidson Deac II]

7 minutes ago, *FreeFua* said:

I can’t believe I’m going to say this but I actually think Teddy CAN be a franchise QB IF****** he can stay healthy. I use the term franchise QB as a QB who you can win with. 

Teddy possesses a few very desirable QB traits. Teddy understands different coverages and defensive schemes. Teddy is a good anticipation thrower and is very smart. Teddy doesn’t possess that great arm strength but a QB doesn’t need to have great arm strength to be successful when you have those other two traits. 

Teddy never got the chance/reps to earn back his starting job after his injury. Teddy looked like the Vikings QB of the future based off his first two seasons. Take a look at other QB’s numbers their first few seasons (like Big Ben). 

Teddy also had one of the worst supporting casts in 2015. A WR group led by Mike Wallace until Diggs proved himself as a rookie.

I have seen so many different takes on Bridgewater, I don't know what to believe.  

https://www.si.com/nfl/panthers/gm-report/is-teddy-bridgewater-a-franchise-quarterback

Quote

When healthy, Bridgewater provides great decision making and quick legs to extend plays, which then leads to chances for him to show off his incredible arm strength. 

Guess I will just have to wait until I see him on the field for us.  

[*FreeFua*]

23 minutes ago, Davidson Deac II said:

I have seen so many different takes on Bridgewater, I don't know what to believe.  

https://www.si.com/nfl/panthers/gm-report/is-teddy-bridgewater-a-franchise-quarterback

Guess I will just have to wait until I see him on the field for us.  

The narrative around here (I was guilty of it too) is that he can’t throw the deep ball. That was the same narrative in Minnesota. I’ve read a few articles and I’ve watched all his deep throws from 2014 and 2015 and he definitely can throw it deep, accurate too. 

This was from the 2015 season. His last season as a true starter and only his 2nd year in the league at age 23. 
 

People in the comments quickly point out that it’s due to all the check downs but Teddy actually scored his best passing grade on throws 10-19 yards. 
 

After year 2 he’s never had a chance to really play again until last season. That’s a long ass time. But he was able to get his feet wet again in meaningful games. Teddy continued to demonstrate his ability to make good decisions despite not getting into any meaningful games prior. 
 

Not a lot has made sense this off season to me but as I poke around more the “analytics guys” really seem to like the Teddy we saw in 2014 and 2015. 

I’m kind of excited to see what Teddy can do now that he has a starting job again especially with expectations for this team overall are so low. 
 

 

[stbugs]

3 hours ago, Davidson Deac II said:

Don't get me wrong, I am not exactly expecting Bridgewater to be the next Tom Brady, but your numbers are misleading.  The Vikings don't throw the ball much, regardless of who the qb is.  With five years as a head coach, Mike Zimmer's teams have been in the top half of the league in passing attempts exactly once (their worst season).  Zimmer is an old school, run the ball and play defense style of coach, so any qb that plays for him is going to have lower td and yardage totals by default.  

 

His passing efficiency is more important to me and a better indicator of his ability (and the possibility of a career best year).  He has decent pass completion percentage, relatively few negative plays, and a decent td to interception ratio.  I personally think our offense will be better than last year simply because Bridgewater is a better qb than Allen, (assuming he can stay healthy).  He could have a career year, although as you pointed out, a career year for him isn't setting the bar that high.  But we could easily be better on offense, in part because of Teddy B.  

Not sure why you talked about attempts because 2017 is Zimmer’s best team and that team had the most passing yards (11th in NFL). Bradford, Keenan and Cousins have all performed better than Teddy under Zimmer. It’s that simple. You only use attempts because it makes it look like Minnesota has never passed the ball. They’ve been top half of the league in passing yards or TDs or both 3 out of the 4 non-Teddy years and with Teddy they were 28-31st in those two stats.

If you want efficiency, in 4 years without Teddy, Zimmer’s passing attack in Net Yards per Attempt has been 5th and 18th with Cousins, 9th with Keemun/Bradford and 21st with Bradford. In Teddy’s two seasons they were 25th and 27th.

I’m not trying to bag on Teddy but he’s not a franchise QB and people are hanging a lot on him based on last year which was mainly 1 great game and then being a game manager on a much more talented team than ours. I just think it’s a waste of cap space, loss of a 3rd round comp pick like the one we gave NO for signing Teddy and possibly a potential loss of a franchise QB in a year where we aren’t going to be close to a playoff team.

 

[Madwolf]

1 hour ago, AU-panther said:

It wouldn't surprise me at all if he did in fact have a career year.  I actually think some of his skillset translates nicely to what we want to do offensively.

I'm just not a big fan of paying a guy big money for what I hope he can become.  We are basically asking him to play better than he ever has to justify his contract.  That's what we did with Kalil and that is a gamble that over time you will probably lose more than you win.  Nothing in Kalil's recent history was indictive of an elite LT but we paid him as such hoping he would play better.

Best case he plays great, and we have our franchise QB, and we can spend draft resources on other positions next year.  Worst cases we wasted resources on a stopgap. 

Here is an article by PFF that talks about him and his fit with us,

https://www.pff.com/news/nfl-teddy-bridgewater-bridge-or-building-block-for-the-carolina-panthers

One interesting tidbit is that his deep passing might not be as bad as some like to say.

 

 

And this is my rub with the whole argument. I don't care about what you think he can be, I'm just saying he's not being paid big money by 2020, veteran starting QB money standards.

He's the cheapest starting veteran on any roster.

[Madwolf]

15 minutes ago, stbugs said:

Not sure why you talked about attempts because 2017 is Zimmer’s best team and that team had the most passing yards (11th in NFL). Bradford, Keenan and Cousins have all performed better than Teddy under Zimmer. It’s that simple. You only use attempts because it makes it look like Minnesota has never passed the ball. They’ve been top half of the league in passing yards or TDs or both 3 out of the 4 non-Teddy years and with Teddy they were 28-31st in those two stats.

If you want efficiency, in 4 years without Teddy, Zimmer’s passing attack in Net Yards per Attempt has been 5th and 18th with Cousins, 9th with Keemun/Bradford and 21st with Bradford. In Teddy’s two seasons they were 25th and 27th.

I’m not trying to bag on Teddy but he’s not a franchise QB and people are hanging a lot on him based on last year which was mainly 1 great game and then being a game manager on a much more talented team than ours. I just think it’s a waste of cap space, loss of a 3rd round comp pick like the one we gave NO for signing Teddy and possibly a potential loss of a franchise QB in a year where we aren’t going to be close to a playoff team.

 

They also changed offensive coordinators and really completely transformed their offense under Pat Shurmer in 2015 to 2016 after they got rid of Norv Turner. 

[mrcompletely11]

2 hours ago, *FreeFua* said:

The narrative around here (I was guilty of it too) is that he can’t throw the deep ball. That was the same narrative in Minnesota. I’ve read a few articles and I’ve watched all his deep throws from 2014 and 2015 and he definitely can throw it deep, accurate too. 

This was from the 2015 season. His last season as a true starter and only his 2nd year in the league at age 23. 
 

People in the comments quickly point out that it’s due to all the check downs but Teddy actually scored his best passing grade on throws 10-19 yards. 
 

After year 2 he’s never had a chance to really play again until last season. That’s a long ass time. But he was able to get his feet wet again in meaningful games. Teddy continued to demonstrate his ability to make good decisions despite not getting into any meaningful games prior. 
 

Not a lot has made sense this off season to me but as I poke around more the “analytics guys” really seem to like the Teddy we saw in 2014 and 2015. 

I’m kind of excited to see what Teddy can do now that he has a starting job again especially with expectations for this team overall are so low. 
 

 

My main thing is why did the Saints let him walk.  Payton saw him for 2 years and knew what he was or isnt.  Probably this coupled with the knee concern was a big part of them leaning on hill instead of investing in TB

[LinvilleGorge]

4 minutes ago, mrcompletely11 said:

My main thing is why did the Saints let him walk.  Payton saw him for 2 years and knew what he was or isnt.  Probably this coupled with the knee concern was a big part of them leaning on hill instead of investing in TB

Because he didn't see Bridgewater as the answer for Brees' long-term successor. If they wanted to keep him, they could've structured the contract to keep this year's cap hit very low while he sat behind Brees for another year. I might feel differently if the Saints were making a big push to retain him and Teddy chose to go elsewhere to start immediately. That would make sense. But it didn't seem like the Saints ever made any effort to retain him and then turned around and paid a gimmick player/emergency QB real money.

[*FreeFua*]

2 minutes ago, LinvilleGorge said:

Because he didn't see Bridgewater as the answer for Brees' long-term successor. If they wanted to keep him, they could've structured the contract to keep this year's cap hit very low while he sat behind Brees for another year. I might feel differently if the Saints were making a big push to retain him and Teddy chose to go elsewhere to start immediately. That would make sense. But it didn't seem like the Saints ever made any effort to retain him and then turned around and paid a gimmick player/emergency QB real money.

Do we know for sure the Saints didn’t want him back? Bridgewater had previously turned down a 2 year 10 million dollar deal from Miami before last season correct?

So maybe Bridgewater felt going back to NO for another year and trying again next year was in his best interest (I don’t blame him).

So the Saints bring him back last season with knowing the likelihood of retaining him for another year as a backup was slim. Given they signed Winston I’m assuming they would have loved to have Teddy back on a cheap deal. However after Teddy played well last season the market to start and money was there for him again. 

[LinvilleGorge]

2 minutes ago, *FreeFua* said:

Do we know for sure the Saints didn’t want him back? Bridgewater had previously turned down a 2 year 10 million dollar deal from Miami before last season correct?

So maybe Bridgewater felt going back to NO for another year and trying again next year was in his best interest (I don’t blame him).

So the Saints bring him back last season with knowing the likelihood of retaining him for another year as a backup was slim. Given they signed Winston I’m assuming they would have loved to have Teddy back on a cheap deal. However after Teddy played well last season the market to start and money was there for him again. 

They could've signed him to a three year deal with the same amount of guaranteed money we gave him and simply structured it to keep the first year cap hit low if they wanted to do it.

[*FreeFua*]

Just now, LinvilleGorge said:

They could've signed him to a three year deal with the same amount of guaranteed money we gave him and simply structured it to keep the first year cap hit low if they wanted to do it.

Yes but they couldn’t guarantee him a starting job. We all think this will be Drew’s last season but if they lose again, who knows? I wouldn’t put it past him to come back again. 

So from both sides it would makes sense as to why they’d part ways. The Saints find a cheap backup for this season and can reassess their QB situation after the year and Teddy gets to start in Carolina.

[AU-panther]

6 hours ago, Madwolf said:

And this is my rub with the whole argument. I don't care about what you think he can be, I'm just saying he's not being paid big money by 2020, veteran starting QB money standards.

He's the cheapest starting veteran on any roster.

So you are ok paying $20m for 6-10 when we probably could have had that by paying $3m, but its ok because $20m is fair relative to other starting QBs?

That's my point I was trying to make.  What other teams are paying their starting QBs is irrelevant to us.  If he plays well enough for us to not draft a QB next year then his contract is great.  If we draft a QB next year that means we don't think he is "elite", "franchise" or "good enough" and we could have been average to below average a lot cheaper, and got some draft picks out of it.

Either the front office made a decision that turned out well or didn't.  Happens all the time with FA moves and draft picks.

If Derrick Brown doesn't turn out elite, the front office screwed up.  That's how this works.

 

2 choices,

I can pay $20m a year to go 6-10 or $3m to go 4-12 and get an extra 3rd pick

I think I'll pay the $20m because that is what everyone else is paying starting QBs.

 

 

[mccjeff]

On 5/6/2020 at 2:22 PM, CRA said:

Teddy also has a unique value for Carolina that doesn't exist elsewhere.  Which IMO is money well spent.  Part of the Teddy appeal and why he works in Carolina....is he won't be learning the Joe Brady offense in the same manner as everyone else on O.  Having a QB who gets it from day 1 aids everyone. 

This is correct.

[jfra78]

2 hours ago, AU-panther said:

So you are ok paying $20m for 6-10 when we probably could have had that by paying $3m, but its ok because $20m is fair relative to other starting QBs?

That's my point I was trying to make.  What other teams are paying their starting QBs is irrelevant to us.  If he plays well enough for us to not draft a QB next year then his contract is great.  If we draft a QB next year that means we don't think he is "elite", "franchise" or "good enough" and we could have been average to below average a lot cheaper, and got some draft picks out of it.

Either the front office made a decision that turned out well or didn't.  Happens all the time with FA moves and draft picks.

If Derrick Brown doesn't turn out elite, the front office screwed up.  That's how this works.

 

2 choices,

I can pay $20m a year to go 6-10 or $3m to go 4-12 and get an extra 3rd pick

I think I'll pay the $20m because that is what everyone else is paying starting QBs.

 

 

Considering its obvious they want to win, you pay 20 mil.

[RASTAN66]

The Teddy signing was a bargain. 

Expectations were he'd command $30M/yr but he took less to sign at a place that was the perfect fit and would afford him a long-term opportunity -- and the opportunity to sign an extension for the major bucks.

It's Big Time Teddy Time.