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I don’t want to be disrespectful
but all these national pundits saying the Jets need to keep Sam Darnold because his issues are related to his supporting cast are howling at the moon.
And I really don’t need their help. I got this one.
Once again, has Darnold had the best supporting cast during his time with the Jets? Probably not, but the supporting cast has nothing to do with his tendency to lock on his first read and telegraph passes – NOTHING!
As we have pointed out many times, his issue with reading defenses goes back to college, and hasn’t changed in the NFL. Remember we had that information that a former college teammate of his at USC told a long-time scout we know that Darnold’s biggest problem in college was “reading defenses.”
So I’m not particularly interested in national pundits, who are ignoring the issues reading defenses and with big-dogging his passes to his first read.
I have nothing against Darnold. This isn’t personal. He’s a terrific guy,; a good person. I’m just pointing out a couple of issues with this game, issues that a lot of quarterbacks have, and that is why the NFL has an big-time shortage of elite quarterbacks.
So the Jets need to decide whether this is ever going to change, or, maybe, with Mike LaFleur’s “QB-Friendly” system, they can mask Darnold’s issues better than the previous two coaching staffs.
“Shanahan’s system, the stretch bootleg system, you create a lot of easy opportunities for the quarterback,” said former NFL scout Bucky Brooks of NFL Network. “You just need to be mobile enough to get to the edge of the tackle box on the bootleg. If you can do that, you can play in this system, and with all the play-action, they make it easy.”
Yes, it’s considered a QB-friendly system, but as I’ve pointed out before, if it’s so QB friendly, why did the Rams just trade Jared Goff (the Rams run the same offense with Shanahan-disciple Sean McVay) and the 49ers are looking to move on from Jimmy Garoppolo?
Brian Costello reported in today’s New York Post:
“A source said the Jets are still undecided about what to do at quarterback, with some people inside the organization in favor of keeping Darnold and others believing it is time to move on.”
This is an interesting anecdote, but my first reaction to it was, it doesn’t really matter what “some people” think, it just matters what Joe Douglas thinks. He’s now the football czar. He’s been around Darnold for two seasons now. He must have a strong opinion one way or another on the player. I know he will take input from the new coaching staff, but this is up to him. Robert Saleh’s opinion matters as does LaFleur’s, but this is Joe’s decision. Anybody outside of those three shouldn’t really matter that much, especially if some of them are non-football people. The days of non-football people making football decisions should be over in Florham Park, and I think they know that, since they finally have a true football boss in Douglas.
But here is the bottom line in my opinion. If they can get a high draft pick for him, like a late first-round pick, they will trade him, but if they get low-balled, they will keep him, and see what he can do in LaFleur’s offense this season, but Darnold won’t be handed the job for the entire season with no stipulations. He will have to win the job in a competition, and then not be beyond a benching, in-season., like in the past, if he struggles. So in other words, his days of being anointed are over, if he stays.
February 10, 2021
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