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New Jersey – I’m not much into rankings, but as far as these goes, Mike Sando worked his tail off, talking to scouts, coaches, GM’s, and compiled a 1-32 NFL QB ranking, Geno Smith was 32.
The first thing that stuck out to me, was seeing EJ Manuel at 27, five spots ahead of Geno Smith.
To me, that is just flat-out wrong.
At the very least, these guys are even. No doubt, the jury is still out on both of them, but to me, there is no way that Manuel is five spots ahead of Smith.
I would have them in a tie, somewhere in the lower tier.
And ties did happen in this poll – four guys tied for the #1 spot – Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, Drew Brees and Aaron Rogers.
One former GM, who was part of the panel, said about Manuel, “He can process information that the Geno Smiths and Jake Lockers of the world cannot.”
To me, there is no evidence of that.
Manuel had a telegraphing problem at Florida State, and that continued in Buffalo. This might improve in time, but that former GM is taking a leap with that one. The Bills kept things very simple for Manuel last year. What he was asked to do, didn’t involve a lot of reading. There were a lot of check-downs.
And Manuel, like Smith, was given very simple reads in college, often cutting the field in half.
Smith needs to take a quantum leap as a reader of defenses, and so does Manuel.
To me, they are a tie right now. A five slot gap is unrealistic.
Locker was 31. I don’t think he’s better than Geno. Probably a tie also.
RG III was 19th.
Griffin was pedestrian last year with 16 touchdowns in 16 games. He was telegraphing a lot. I keep reading people expect him to get back to form this year. Does one good year in the NFL constitute form? Forget about Baylor, that wasn’t an NFL offense. I just don’t think you can talk about “form” based on one good NFL season where he and the Shanahan’s caught the NFL off-guard with how they used this rare athlete.
I’m going to say something pretty radical, but here goes – there wasn’t a big difference last year between RG III and Smith last year. They were both wildly inconsistent young QB’s who did a lot of telegraphing. The Redskins were 3-13, and the Jets went 8-8.
The quarterbacks in the ranking were broken up into four tiers. I’m telling you this to set-up this quote that appeared in the Smith analysis.
“Would a five be an Akili Smith or JaMarcus Russell?” one coordinator asked. “I think the way Geno Smith played last year was close to that. He was a rookie and he struggled and some of his reads were poor, but I would give him a four.”
That person obviously not a Smith fan.
We will see how Smith does this year. The proof will be in the pudding.
But there is no way you can say at this point that Manuel is better than Smith.
There is no evidence of that.
July 3, 2014
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