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It’s only a small percentage.
Bill Parcells feels only a small percentage of NFL quarterbacks are elite and the rest need to be managed.
You watch these playoff games and see guys like Josh Allen and you can see what he’s talking about.
Somebody said Parcells put the number at 7 percent of quarterbacks that are elite.
You will see a couple of elite quarterback on Sunday in Drew Brees and Russell Wilson
Tom Brady was that way up until lately.
Though talking to a long time New England Patriots writer over the weekend, he said that Brady’s problem recently isn’t his talent, but the fact that can’t trust players to be where they supposed to be on precision timing routes.
Brady is throwing to spots, and sometimes the targets aren’t there.
That is why it’s hard for Brady to be successful with targets acquired during the season. The Patriots run a precision passing game, and there are a lot of timing routes. When a guy comes in mid-season, or is a rookie, and he’s not exactly where Brady and Josh McDaniel need him to be, this leads to a lot of passes going awry.
The great quarterbacks throw a lot on timing or go through progressions smoothly and find third or four options.
So many young quarterbacks need to play-caller to dial perfect first reads – guys like Allen, and it’s impossible for the play-caller to do that on every play.
Or quarterbacks like Allen often rely heavily on the play-caller or a great running game so they can sell the play-action and get plenty of separation between the receiver and defensive back.
As Parcells put it, “they need to be managed.”
In other words, they don’t see the field great, so the play-caller needs to see the field before them – before the snap.
Chicago’s Mitch Trubisky is like that.
And did you see the Bears just fired basically their entire offensive staff.
This is what often happens with first-round quarterbacks who are struggling.
You often see the same cycle when the “prized” first-round quarterback struggles. Not in any particular order, but when the kid has issues, they will fire assistants, then they will say “he needs better weapons” and they load up on new receivers, tight ends and so forth, and then it’s the line, so they sign or pick linemen high in the draft.
But then going tough the alibi list, they will find out, after wasting sometimes four or five years, due to confirmation bias, that the problem is the quarterback, not all those other factors.
You could add an all-star team of targets, but if the quarterbacks doesn’t see the field well, isn’t good at going through progressions, isn’t accurate, it’s not going to matter much.
Playing quarterback in the NFL is SO HARD.
And it’s so hard to find a true answer at that position.
That is why most teams needs to settle for a quarterback, who can make the throws, but needs to be managed by the play-caller, and need to throw to guys who are clearly open, and generally can’t “throw guys open” with timing and precision.
We are still finding out whether Sam Darnold is elite or needs to be managed.
Year Three should give us more clarity on where he’s going to eventually settle for the long term.
January 3, 2019
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