Thurman#1

He has a point and his post was reasonable. Consider mellowing out.

Went from Newsday to the News. Kinda following in Sully's footsteps. He turned down an offer from Newsday to be a columnist to come here.

But it's not an obsession. It's just that he's only interested enough to talk about the one thing. See the difference? He's only interested in talking about QBs, see? Not Peterman, of course. Tyrod. Not Yates. Tyrod. See? Quarterbacks.

You may well believe that there should be a stat called yards per dropback. Because if there were, it would reflect well on Tyrod. That's clearly the main attribute you look for in terms of whether a stat should exist. Thing is, there isn't. And for good reason. It's never been considered useful or as providing a good look. Not to mention being a horrible kludge of a name. What's a dropback? Is it what QBs do on passing plays? But don't they drop back in play action? And reverses? And handoffs, really? It's just a stupid name. QBs drop back on every play except the ones where they're in shotgun. And a horrible kludge of a stat too. And you say you're considering sacks ... and yet you're still using the 8.0 figure instead of the 6.1. Wonder why that is? Oh, yeah, because it makes Tyrod look better. Yet again cherrypicking, this time for the stat that makes him look better. When it's third and 14, teams don't run much. For obvious reasons. But hey, Tyrod can average 6.1 yards per dropback on average if he scrambles. And that's one of the higher averages in the league so since it makes Tyrod look good, everything's OK. There's a reason people look at pass and run stats separately. They go together awkwardly and for a QB passing ability is wildly more important. And that play is a perfect example of why. 1:15 left in the game, down by six, first down at the Seattle 23. Robert Woods is stunningly wide open in the deep middle third of the field - Tyrod's kryptonite, the deep and intermediate middle third - uncovered in the end zone for a 23 yard TD and Tyrod simply doesn't see him. Eight yard run. Looking at your stat, that looks great. But it cost us the game.

Yes, but you CAN'T just add in the running TDs. Not unless you're also going to add in the negatives that should come with them. Wanna add the TDs in? Fine, you need to add the 13 fumbles too. There are reasons why passing stats and running stats are kept separate. They aren't equal and putting them together leads to awkward results. And again, there are a ton of guys with a similar career arc, I already listed 13 or 14 in an earlier post in this thread. Here: 1) Cassel: 3 years on the bench. Got his chance to start for three years and didn't play like a franchise guy. Never improved to become one. 2) Schaub: 3 years on the bench. Got his chance to start for, what, six years, and didn't play like a franchise guy, He wasn't. Briefly looked close. But he wasn't. Never improved to become one. 3) Shaun Hill 3 years on the bench, though he got in around 12 games due to injury during those years. Picked to start in years four and five and didn't play like a franchise guy. Wasn't. Never improved to become one. 4) Seneca Wallace: 5 years on the bench with occaisional spot duty. In 2008, is an injury replacement for Hasselbeck and plays well enough that when Hasselbeck gets healthy, Wallace still starts for the last few games. Plays well but didn't play like a franchise guy. Never improved to become one. 5) Huard: 5 years on the bench, with 6 starts due to injuries to Marino during those five years. Started the season as starter the next couple of years but didn't play like a franchise guy. Never improved to become one. 6) Grossman: 3 years on the bench. Two years as starter, but halfway through the second it was very obvious he wasn't playing like a franchise guy and he was benched. Hung around the league for 10 years. Never improved to become a franchise guy. 7) Garrard: 4 years on the bench though he started five games because of injury in his fourth year. Halfway through his 5th year, was named the starter. Outplayed Leftwich in training camp and was named starter again. Had a very fine year that made him look like a maybe but not a sure thing. That had been his sixth year, so he looked like a guy who might become another Gannon. Then didn't play like a franchise QB while starting three more seasons. Never improved to become one. 8) Fiedler: 3 years in the league on and off with different teams. Started for three or four years and didn't play like a franchise QB. Hung around the league for nine years. Never improved to become a franchise guy. 9) Holcomb: Practice squad in Indy for a year, then another year on the roster, then let go. Out of football the next year. Back in as a backup in Cleveland for three years. Competitive with Couch and became the starter in his fifth year in the league but didn't play like a franchise guy. Never improved. *** Is this beginning to sound like a broken record? It has happened a lot. Some guys were out quickly and others hung around for a while. But the ones who hadn't proved themselves as franchise guys in six years ... never did. *** 10) Jim Miller: 5 years on the bench. Won the starting job in Chicago in his sixth year and had a PED suspension sideline him. Was starting by the end of his sixth year for a brief playoff run. Didn't play like a franchise QB but played well enough to get him the starter job the next two years. Never improved enough to become a franchise guy. 11) Beuerlein: This one's arguable, as he was started for a few games here and there early. In his first five years he started nineteen games. Got traded to his third team, Phoenix, who started him in his sixth season for nearly the whole year, though he was benched two games for Chris Chandler. As that suggests, he didn't play like a franchise player. Hung around the league for 14 years. Never improved enough to become a franchise guy. 12) Danny White: Drafted in 1974 as a punter, so played in the WFL instead, sharing the QB position with John Huarte. Signed with the Cowboys in '76. Four years on the bench. Took over as starter in his fifth year. A good year but in his sixth year he became a franchise guy (12th in yards, 8th in TDs, 6th in passer rating, 5th in YPA) And that's what he was, a franchise quarterback. Proved it in six years despite four years on the bench. 13) Romo: 3 years on the bench. Fourth year was OK but in his fifth year he played like a franchise QB. And that's what he was. Proved it before his sixth year despite three years on the bench. 14) Aaron Rodgers: Three years on the bench but still proved himself a franchise QB well within six years. 15) Tyrod: 4 years on the bench. Started two years. Hasn't proved himself a franchise QB within six years. And I just did NOT have to go back very far to find this list, and I didn't even comb through very carefully. Just looked at lists of QBs from 2009 and 2003 and picked the ones who I remembered had sat before having their chance. Found this group in less than ten minutes. So it simply isn't true that this is a rare career arc. Just the opposite, it's common, and Garoppolo appears to be only the latest to follow this very well-travelled path. Again, one guy in NFL history has proved himself a franchise QB after not doing so in his first six years. And dozens and dozens have followed this path if the large number I pointed out from only recent years is any indication ... and it is. And what has happened is simple. Out of this large group of guys who sat for a long time early, with the one exception of Gannon, they either proved themselves franchise guys within six years or they never ever proved themselves as franchise guys despite having had good chances to do so.

Cherry-picking is a problem, is it? Well, then it's a problem you suffer deeply from in this very line of logic. In referring to Tyrod's yards per scramble, how many of his sacks are you including? Or are you cherrypicking only the scrambles where he made it past the line? Hmm? Oooopsie. You're a superhero of cherrypicking, dude. As for my cherrypicking, you betcha, I cherrypicked an example of a play which shows the fault in your logic. You assume that missing opportunities in the pass game is made up for by having an 8 yard per scramble average (again, an average reached by cherrypicking). It's not, and that play is an example of why. That play lost the game for the Bills and yet looked to an extremely poorly thought-through stat like yards per scramble like a good play.

14-14, according to ProFootballReference. But again, win-loss is simply NOT a QB stat. It's a team stat. The official name of that stat is "TEAM Record in Games Started by This Quarterback (Regular Season)". And he wasn't the least of this team's problems. That was the run game. He was basically an average problem, ranking with most of the team except for the run game. The whole team was pretty much a problem outside of that terrific run game.

At a $1.4 mill average salary? For a second year guy? Nah. That's a reasonable price for a backup and he still has room to grow and improve, especially after missing his first year.

Right now they're paying Wood $6.35 mill per year making him the 9th highest paid center. At that new number he'd again be the 9th highest paid. My guess is they pay him. If Groy is as good as we're hoping, they could slip him over to guard and keep him as Richie-getting-old insurance or Miller not being as good as we hope. Center is the linchpin. I think they don't want to start over there. Sammy, I can't even begin to predict. We still don't know what he is in terms of injuries ... or his results if he stays healthy all year and teams start to figure how to game-plan for him. Too many unknowns for Sammy, IMHO.

Yup. He scrambles very well. Like that scramble for eight yards against Seattle on the final drive. 1:15 left in the game, down by six, first down at the Seattle 23. He has a guy absolutely wide open in the deep middle, uncovered in the end zone and simply doesn't see him. But yeah, he got an eight yard run out of it. That scramble wasn't nothing. But it sure wasn't the best option and we ended up losing the ball on downs. But the play looks great if you just look at yards per scramble. I looked at your post and thought, "Gee, those are some bizarre numbers from Benoit. Rodgers as the 6th best player in the league? OK, yeah. Prescott as the 16th best player in the league? What?" The way you expressed some of those was confusing, though maybe it was me, really. He has Rodgers as the 6th best player in the league. Luck as the 30th best player and the 5th best QB, slightly ahead of Brees. That's very reasonable, I think, though it would also be reasonable to have them switched. They're both terrific. He's trying to take the "valuable" out of it so there's no big clump of QBs at the top, to just pick the best players regardless of position. It's impossible to make any list that plenty of people won't disagree with, But I like Eli at 8th best QB. I think he's consistently undervalued. I might have put him at 10th instead but pretty reasonable, IMHO. Prescott 17th? Sounds reasonable to me. I think he's at least partly a result of an incredible group around him that let the Cowboys baby him. I'd agree that Wentz is too high here but maybe not by all that much. I think he's got a really good chance of taking a big leap up next year. Not going to go through the whole thing, but none of the things you pointed out seem to me indefensible at all. To each their own, but without reading much of the article (and yeah, that should be used against me, but I'm not commenting so much on the article and more on just my opinions of the specific placements you questioned) I don't see anything so very far off.

I can agree on all of that. Don't see it ending the discussion, though. People want - reasonably - to put a guesstimate on what the odds of success are. And I would argue many on here are far far too hopeful based on history. I'm sure they'd argue the opposite about me.

Jimmy G is NOT in that situation now where he's even close to his seventh year. He's going into his fourth. He will almost surely have a chance to start somewhere for a year or two or three before his seventh year. As Tyrod did; It's not like Tyrod didn't have a chance. And when Garoppolo does get that chance, again, history shows what it shows for everybody, that it's rarer than volcanic lightning for a guy who becomes a franchise QB to not have already done so by the time he reaches his seventh year. Meaning when Garoppolo gets that chance if he doesn't show franchise-type ability in those first few years, his odds of ever being a franchise guy will drop precipitously. The good ones trapped behind someone use the time to learn and make themselves ready so that when they get that shot they can quickly take advantage. Again, there have been a ton of guys trapped for three or four years who then got their moment. History shows that the ones who can become franchise QBs do it quickly, and we've seen a large enough sample of guys get this chance to know that this is an overwhelming tendency. One guy breaks it out of the many many who had a chance. I would strongly disagree Tyrod is "WAY" better than Fitz. Better? Yeah. But it's more a matter of different strengths. Fitz is more explosive, continually getting a higher TD percentage, but takes considerably worse care of the ball, especially under pressure. The Amish Rifle is quite a good runner, but not in Tyrod's league. The point is that Fitz had teams thinking that they could maybe make him into a franchise guy. Over and over. Tyrod has too. They're not all that far apart, though I'd certainly take Tyrod over Fitzy.

What can you say? It's true, he wasn't. Not everyone does get their ultimate chance, and some are actively mishandled. I'm not sure where Manuel falls on that scale. Not as far towards mishandled as Losman does, IMHO. Yup. And it's easier to say either one of those than to admit that we don't know for sure. We probably have a good idea about the guy, but there's always a chance we could have been wrong. No way to prove a negative in this case. I personally kept thinking there was a chance right up till the end, but when he still couldn't show improvement near the end, it just became really likely that he wouldn't ever be a good one. But yeah, maybe if handled better. No way to know, and at some point you just have to go with the best guess.

I'm not counting the time spent on the bench against them. Not at all. In many ways sitting the bench for a while can be a huge advantage, as it was for Aaron Rodgers. I'm simply pointing out what history shows, that guys who don't show themselves a franchise guy by their sixth year in the league don't do so, with the exception of Loose Gannon. That's true of guys who sat the bench and those who didn't. It's not impossible. And Tyrod's clearly a terrific guy, he's smart and he works himself to the bone. I hope it happens for him. I just think history shows very clearly that that's unlikely.

He really does make a lot of plays that others don't. The large majority of which are run plays. He is indeed polarizing. As for the rest of your claims, Tyrod doesn't have a winning record. The Buffalo Bills do in games when Tyrod starts. The other 50 or so players may have had some little bit of credit coming to them for those wins. Wins is a team stat. And I'm not sure who you're talking about who has 47 TDs, but it can't be Tyrod. He has 37 TDs. In 29 starts, I would indeed call that below average. If you're saying he's about 20th then we're in almost exact agreement, and yeah I call that "slightly below average," my words,and I find it hard to imagine how anyone could have an issue with calling 20th out of 32 slightly below average. We totally disagree about Alex Smith, though, I can see. However, as you point out, I do love the way Tyrod protects the ball. His low INT % is a real plus. The coaches must love that, and I certainly respect it.

Plenty of those guys played at starting QB level. They just didn't play at good starting quarterback level. Same as Tyrod. They played like guys who when you see them enough you want to replace them. Same as Tyrod. Which is why he is likely to be replaced unless he improves a lot. Being one of the top 32 QBs in the world doesn't earn you the right to be a starter for the rest of your career. It's being about top 16 or so. Much at all beyond 16 or so and unless you're a young, developing guy, your team is thinking about drafting a new guy. Further back and teams are looking to replace you. Tyrod is absolutely a top 32 QB. But so is Fitz. Siemian. Hoyer. Unlike most of those fifteen or so guys I named, many of whom are no longer playing, Tyrod could still improve. It's just quite unlikely, as it's never happened outside Gannon and maybe Plunkett that a guy with six years behind him in the league who hadn't yet proved himself as a franchise guy did still later in his career. As you so often do, you're mistaking what you said for what I said. And then asking me to "back up" words that are yours, not mine. Which, clearly I have no interest in doing, nor would anyone, really. For what is now the fourth time, I think, I said what I said above about nobody but Gannon becoming a franchise guy after having finished six years without already having done so. At that point, some people complained that wasn't fair because Tyrod had only started two years and I pointed out that it was plenty fair, and that a ton of guys had been in that situation, not starting for three or four years and then getting a significant chance to start for a year or two. That's the group of guys I was examining. I said there were a lot of them. Having found fifteen of them including Gannon in less than 10 minutes of non-exhaustive researching going back only around 13 years, it appears that there may be quite a bit more than 50. Of those there are a few real successes like Aaron Rodgers, but those successes didn't take till their seventh year. There's basically one exception, one guy who became a franchise guy in his seventh year or later, Gannon. Plunkett is maybe arguable. Maybe. And that's it. Again, you keep talking about them being my rules, but the ones you're looking at are yours. Mine are the ones above. If you'd like to make a different point about different guys, go ahead. But don't pretend you're dealing with something I said.

Yeah, I'd agree with a lot of that, but with the proviso that those guys, the new starters, the ones being asked to "not screw up" ... they're not going into their seventh year in the league.

He's leaving a higher rate of plays on the field than most do. I'd say that puts him at slightly below average, which is the problem.

Wow. Fun to watch. Thanks for posting.

They serving Kool-Aid at training camp? Every team looks like a playoff team in shorts. But hey, if you wanna get excited go for it. Nothing wrong with it, really. Hope you're right.

Already answered this. In this thread. Post #165. To repeat, you said you had asked me for ten guys according to some criteria. Didn't see that before and don't really care what criteria you asked for. I'm only interested in the criteria I've been addressing all along on this issue. I've said all along that Gannon's pretty much it for guys who hadn't shown themselves to be franchise guys by the time they had six years in the league and then did so later. Several times people have complained that that wasn't fair because Tyrod didn't play significant snaps his first four years. And I always pointed out that there are many people who also didn't play much in their first three or four years and then had a shot at starting jobs. And what happened is what you'd expect, that of all those many guys, the ones who succeeded, guys like Danny White for one and Aaron Rodgers, succeeded pretty quickly when given their chance. Unlike Tyrod, they became franchise guys before going into their seventh year. With again, the one exception of Rich Gannon. To quote myself from earlier in this thread: Ten? That's what, fourteen? Took me less than ten minutes to come up with that group. There have been tons of guys in Tyrod's position, guys who didn't have experience for three or four years and then got their chance to start. Problem is that nearly all of them aren't good enough. And the ones who are have shown it pretty much immediately. Again, of all guys who hadn't proven themselves through six years as franchise guys, almost none have later improved enough to become franchise guys. That's the likely result with Tyrod.

Yup, tons of NFL QBs were on the bench throughout almost all of their rookie contracts. But when those QBs got their chances, the ones who became franchise QBs became franchise-level guys in their first opportunity. Can't name a single guy who sat out for a long time at the beginning of his career, got his chance to start, didn't show franchise level QB ability early in his long-delayed chance to start and then did later. There really isn't a guy who's ever done that, with the one single exception of Rich Gannon. As you point out, many many guys were in a situation to possible make that kind of a leap after not playing much at all in their first three or four years. And out of those probably 50 - 100 guys, one has succeeded when he hadn't done so by the end of his sixth year. The odds against Tyrod are indeed very high. History shows it.

There were three main problems last year. Offense, defense and special teams. Yeah, the defense was the worst. But we didn't have one really strong unit. We had a strong part of a unit, the offensive run game. But nobody was intimidated by our offense overall, or any other unit.

Still so much anger? He said *ideally". Why wouldn't you ideally want to run the ball every play. It would mean you'd stopped the other guys and had run so successfully that you'd scored. And then you were ahead and didn't need to run and you kept piling the points up. In real life if you run every play they'll find a way to stop you. But he said "ideally." This is so not a story. In Marrone's first year here we were #2 in running. Year after that #25. Don't think it was the scheme that was the problem. As for turning it around after he left, bringing in McCoy probably didn't hurt, especially when they were replacing guys like Summers, Spiller and the aging Freddy. Getting rid of Pears and Urbik maybe didn't hurt either.

The difference being that it's not so much the offense as it is the quarterback. That's what you need. Four defenses out of the top twelve since 2000. One or maybe two QBs out of the top twelve, IMHO, though that's impossible to say qualitatively because nobody can agree on how to measure a QB. You need a very good passing game. And points is closer to being a team stat than a unit stat because it depends so heavily on field position which comes from the other units than the ones you're measuring, and in fact other units can even score points. I'd argue that points scored is around 80% based on the offense. Whereas yards is almost purely a unit-based stat.