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Did they not allow this?
Sam Darnold had a press conference in Carolina on Tuesday and said he needs to “play my style of ball.”
“For me, it’s continue to play my game,” Darnold said. “When you get out on the field, you’ve got to have a flow. You can’t be thinking about doing something a different way. I’ve got to play my style of ball. That’s why they brought me here, play my style of ball and make plays the way I do.”
What exactly is that style of ball?
Perhaps it’s more a street-yard style of play, running around more and improvising. Maybe Adam Gase’s system put him in a box too much. You certainly could make that argument.
But while that street-yard stuff works sometimes, and is fun to watch when it works, you probably can’t consistently win with that approach.
“The bottom line is that I believe the one thing is that you’ve got to be able to win from the pocket,” said Denver Broncos President John Elway in 2018. “No matter what you do, I think the one thing that I’ve learned is as a quarterback you’ve got to be able to win it from the pocket. You can win games but you can’t win championships unless you have the ability to win it from the pocket. Then if you can get out and move around and create, and do those types of things, then that’s an added bonus.”
And we all know Elway has been searching for a QB since Peyton Manning, an elite pocket passer, retired in 2015.
Hey, Lamar Jackson is terrific, and is electrifying with his feet, but look what happens to him in the playoffs. The wheels kind of come off.
The bottom line is you need to be able to read defenses on a high level, go through your progressions, see the whole field, manipulate safeties with your eyes and so forth.
So while that Darnold’s amazing 46-yard TD run against the Denver Broncos last season was spectacular, those plays don’t happen a lot, and you need to have most of your success from the pocket, as Elway said.
Quarterbacks with limited field vision will always hold back an offense, there is no way around that. A big reason Rams coach Sean McVay moved on from Jared Goff was he wasn’t great at seeing the field. Here is what McVay had to say about his new QB, Matt Stafford, and was probably passively aggressively talking about Goff’s shortcomings in the same quote.
“[You need] to recognize and understand coverage and make all five eligibles come alive,,” said McVay.
He added: “When you’re asked to get through progressions, recognize reads, solve problems protection-wise, you’re seeing [Stafford] do a lot of those things.”
So if you are going to be an elite NFL QB, you need a strong understanding of defensive concepts, be consistent with your decision-making, not panic when the primary receiver is covered and go through progressions smoothly.
And not turn the ball over as much as Darnold did with the Jets.
“I think they are looking at [Zach Wilson] and saying Zach can be exceptional with ball placement and also be very exceptional with not turning the ball over, understanding that it is okay to punt,’ said former NFL GM Mark Dominick.
And they also feel he will go through his progressions and see the entire field well.
Playing “your game” is fine, but there are limitations to playing street-yard ball on the NFL level.
May 26, 2021
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