Orton's Arm

Both teams had about the same number of drives. The Giants chose a clock-hogging style of offense for their drives. The Bills chose exactly the opposite style. At the end of the day, what matters is the points per drive stat, because that's what drives the final score. The Giants' defense held the Bills' offense to 17 points in eight drives, or an average of 2.1 points per drive. Just to get a feel for the number of offensive drives that's usual during the course of a game, I looked at three games from this past weekend. In the Cowboys game, the Cowboys had ten drives. (Excluding a meaningless drive at the end of the game with almost no time left.) In the Broncos game, the Broncos had 12 drives. In the Bengals game, the Bengals had eleven drives. If you figure eleven drives per game is normal, then at 2.1 points per drive the Bills' offense would have scored 23.1 points in that Super Bowl. That's still below their season average of 27 points per game, let alone the gaudy averages they'd put up in the postseason. But I agree that the Giants' offense and its clock-hogging deserves the majority of the credit (if credit is the word I'm looking for here) for the fact that the Bills' offense had only eight possessions instead of a more usual number like ten or eleven.

During the regular season, the Bills' offense led the league in points scored, with 428 over the course of the season. That works out to about 27 points per game. In the playoffs, the Bills scored 44 points against the Dolphins, and 51 against the Raiders. Holding the Bills' offense to 17 points--as Belichick did in the Super Bowl--was considered an impressive feat, because the Bills' usual offensive output was so much higher. As far as the last minute field goal drive went, the Giants defense prevented the Bills from getting closer than 47 yards. On grass. That is not an easy kick to make by any stretch of the imagination. During the regular season, the Bills had been held below 20 points only twice; and one of those games was against the Giants. People tend to forget exactly how good the Bills' offense had been at scoring points.

Or, he puts in the study time, but it doesn't do him much good because of his mental limitations. A lot of college quarterbacks don't have the mental gifts necessary to succeed in the pros.

I fully agree with the bolded text--especially as it relates to the Levy era. In fact, I would think it's self-evident that a kid with a draft guide would have done a better job of drafting than Levy did. Levy's only two success stories--including both the draft and free agent signings--were Poz and Kyle Williams, with an emphasis on Williams. Give that 18 year old kid two drafts with which to work, some money to spend on free agents, and sign him up to receive the reports of National Scouting Service, and if he was reasonably intelligent and motivated he'd probably do better than just that. But either things improved in 2008, or else the mistakes made that year haven't yet become fully evident. (Or some combination of the two.) Potential success stories from that year include the following players: McKelvin Corner Demetrius Bell Steve Johnson Of those four guys, probably only two or three will turn into long-term answers at starting positions. That's a pace of about 2.5 answers per year, as opposed to the one answer per year we saw under Levy.

I agree with your first paragraph while having mixed feelings about the second. From the Wikipedia article about the Bills/Giants Superbowl:

Thanks!

What did Losman do to gain your approval that Trent failed to do?

I know a guy who spent several years trying to make an NFL team. Ultimately it didn't work out for him. Right now Losman is in the same position that guy had been in a few years ago, with a few exceptions. The first round pedigree means he'll get more chances than he otherwise would have received. It also means that unlike the guy I know, Losman doesn't have to worry about money. And it may mean that for Losman, failure to even make an NFL roster would be harder to take, because there's a difference between falling from grace and being an undrafted college player trying to make the final roster cut.

I think that we're 80% of the way toward being on the same page. So I'll discuss the remaining 20%. The way I see it, you will normally need a complete team if you're going to win the Super Bowl. A good quarterback and passing attack are part of that, but not the whole picture. If (for example) you have an elite quarterback but a mediocre defense, odds are that sooner or later, you'll encounter some other team that also has an elite quarterback, and has a good defense to go with him. All else being equal, the elite QB + good defense will beat out the team with the elite quarterback alone. A "run the ball and win with defense" team that has a mediocre QB may well do okay in the regular season. But in the postseason, they will very likely encounter some other team that also has a good running game, a good defense, and has a very good QB. That QB is going to give the latter team considerably more options than the former has. Someone at the [i}New York Times[/i] conducted a regression analysis, and found that an improvement in the passing game or in pass defense was four times more important than an equal improvement in the running game or rushing defense. The recent game between the Bills and Kansas City is a good case in point. The Bills brought their league-worst rushing defense to try to defend the Chiefs' league-best rushing offense. Despite that obvious disparity in talent, the Chiefs only scored 10 points during regulation. (Even though they ran for over 200 yards.) Another example of that is the Patriots' offense when they won their first Super Bowl. They had Antowain Smith as their starting running back; and yet their Brady-led offense was among the best in the league. So you want your overall team to be complete, but you need to have a good passing attack and good pass defense. Obviously, there's more to a good passing attack than just a good QB. But without a good QB, you won't have a good passing attack. As you advance in the playoffs, your competition will get progressively tougher. Sooner or later you'll come across a team that's able to stuff your running game and put up more points against your defense than it should. When that happens, you're going to need your quarterback and your passing attack to bail you out. A team in that situation that doesn't have a good QB is going to be eliminated from the playoffs.

There are several things I'd like to mention with respect to your post. The first is that everyone in your former category--Montana, Brady, and Elway--led his team to multiple Super Bowl appearances and multiple wins. Montana led the 49ers for four wins, Brady led the Patriots to four appearances and three wins; and Elway led the Broncos to five appearances and two wins. In contrast, every quarterback on your second list--Dilfer, Hostetler, and Brad Johnson--was associated with only one Super Bowl appearance and only one win. Only one team nucleus from the latter list--the Giants of the late '80s/early '90s--was associated with more than one Super Bowl appearance/win. And they had Phil Simms for their first win. To the average Bills fan, one Super Bowl win would be enough. But if you design a team to win only one Super Bowl, and if you get a little unlucky, you won't win any. But if you design a team to win multiple Super Bowls, you can have an unlucky year or two and still come away with a Super Bowl ring. The only model associated with winning multiple Super Bowls requires an elite franchise QB. It's also useful to take a closer look at the play of the quarterbacks you mentioned. Trent Dilfer was nothing special--I don't think anyone would argue that! But in 2002--the year the Bucs won the Super Bowl--Brad Johnson had a 92.9 QB rating, and averaged 6.8 yards per pass attempt. He was a Pro Bowl quarterback that year, and rightly so. The Bucs received very good play from the quarterback position that year! Then consider Jeff Hostetler. No one would argue he had an elite career! But in his postseason games, he averaged 9.0 yards per pass attempt, and had a QB rating of 112.0. ESPN ranked his performance against the Bills as the 30th best QB performance in the Super Bowl of all time. The Giants received elite-level play from the QB position in the postseason. Had Hostetler played a little less well, the Giants would not have beaten the Bills. To break things down a little further, Super Bowl winners have consisted of 1) teams that have elite QBs, like Montana or Elway, 2) teams that have solid QBs who play significantly above their usual level for a year or two, or during the postseason. Examples include Brad Johnson, Jeff Hostetler, and Terry Bradshaw. Teams in this category don't necessarily receive elite-level quarterback play all the time. But they do receive it when they need it the most: during the postseason. 3) teams which receive middle-of-the-road quarterback play during the regular season and postseason. Trent Dilfer and the Ravens of 2000 are a good example of this. But they're a very rare example, in part because the Ravens required one of the three best defenses in NFL history to mask Dilfer's shortcomings as a QB. Finding an elite QB is not easy--but building a Ravens-like defense is a lot tougher! Even with that defense, plus a really good OL, plus a 2000 yard RB in Jamal Lewis, the Ravens won just one Super Bowl.

I have to admit to having been very pleasantly surprised by what Fitz achieved against the Ravens. He threw with improved accuracy, made quick decisions, and made the right decisions. But this game against Kansas City was about what I would have expected from him before the season began. A few good plays here and there. But an overall performance which demonstrated why, when he'd been a free agent a few years ago, no general managers saw him as more than a backup. Alphadawg's point about the dropped interceptions is well-taken. Fitz came away from the game with bad stats: a low completion percentage, a lousy yards-per-attempt, only 10 points in five quarters of play. I'll grant this was just one game. Kansas City is a tough place to play, and maybe Fitz's small hands worked against him in the windy conditions. And as has been pointed out, every quarterback has a bad day now and then. But Fitz came into this game with a lot to prove--at least if his goal is to be a long-term starter. Obviously, he took a significant step back in achieving that goal. We still have the rest of the season to evaluate him, and to determine whether the Ravens game or the KC game was the real fluke.

I disagree: I think it's a bad rule. A normal timeout gets called in real time. Meaning, that if I call timeout before the other team snaps the ball, I get the timeout I wanted. If I call timeout a second after the ball is snapped, nothing happens. This particular timeout involves a sort of imaginary form of time travel. Basically, a coach tells the ref, "You know what? When you see them snap the ball--my timeout will have occurred just before that." That tactic is cheesy, to say the least, and adds nothing to the game. Even the idea of teams calling timeout to ice the kicker is annoying, although I suppose there's not much that can be done about that. But if they do want to go down that road, at least make them call timeout in real time; rather than prearranging something with some ref.

Below are the stats for Joe Montana, Kurt Warner, and Jim Kelly Montana: 7.5 yards per attempt, 92.3 QB rating Warner: 7.9 yards per attempt, 93.7 QB rating Kelly: 7.4 yards per attempt, 84.4 QB rating Kurt Warner had over 32,000 career passing yards, as compared to over 40,000 for Montana and over 35,000 for Kelly. So it's not like you're comparing one or two good years from one player against a career's worth of numbers from another player. Kurt Warner is the only quarterback to have passed for over 400 yards in a Super Bowl. In fact, he has the three highest passing yardage totals in Super Bowl history. He also owns the record for the most passing yards in any one playoff season (1,147 yards in the 2009 postseason). He and Montana own the record for most TDs thrown in a single postseason (11 in 2009 for Warner, 11 for Montana in 1990). He and Steve Young own the record for most consecutive games with 300 yards passing. (Six each.) He and Dan Marino were the two fastest NFL quarterbacks to reach 30,000 yards (114 games each). He has the second-highest passing yards-per-game stat of any QB in NFL history. (Peyton Manning is first.) His completion percentage in the playoffs is the second-highest in NFL history. Kurt Warner deserves to be listed as one of the best quarterbacks of all time.

Just watched it. I counted five pass plays, including four completions, and a play that should have been a completion. There were a lot more running plays than passing plays! Kaepernick looked competent on those passing plays. Four out of the five passes looked fairly standard-issue, with the only "special" pass coming on the play where the defender knocked the ball away after it had been caught. (Thereby causing the incompletion.) It looked to me like their offense was run-oriented; and I didn't see much indication of Kapernick making multiple reads. Possibly the Bills could take him later in the draft, but would he really be an upgrade over Brohm or Levi Brown?

This thread inspired me to examine the Bills' first round busts from 1997 until the present. Below are the Bills' first round busts of recent years, listed in order of the point value of the picks used to acquire them. Bust___Year___Position in draft___Point value Mike Williams___2002___4th overall___1800 points Donte Whitner___2006___8th overall___1400 points Aaron Maybin___2009___11th overall___1250 points Marshawn Lynch___2007___12th overall___1200 points Drew Bledsoe___2003___13th overall___1150 points J.P. Losman___2004___22nd overall___780 points Willis McGahee__2003___23rd overall___760 points Antowain Smith___1997___23rd overall___760 points Erik Flowers___2000___26th overall___700 points John McCargo___2006___26th overall___700 points If you're measuring the size of the bust strictly by the point value used to acquire the player, Mike Williams is the biggest recent bust, followed by Donte Whitner. But as has been pointed out, both players brought at least some value to the team. At least at the present, Aaron Maybin looks to be the highest up player on this list who will have contributed absolutely nothing to the team. On the other hand, Maybin only cost the team 1250 points, as opposed to the 1800 points spent on Mike Williams or the 1400 points used on Whitner.

I used this inflation calculator to determine the value of Die Hard's contract. $63,000 in 1967 was worth $412,000 today. In today's dollars, he was making $137,000 per year.

Thanks! We're on the same page with respect to Ponder and Luck. But I'm not really a big fan of Mallett. But right now, the quarterback I'm most interested in is Ryan Fitzpatrick. I'm still digesting what he did to the Ravens' defense! I can't think of a single thing that a franchise quarterback would have done in that game that Fitzpatrick didn't do. Not one. If that continues, the Bills will be able to ignore the QB position in the upcoming draft, and can take a defensive front seven player with their first pick.

I have very mixed feelings about this. I like Ponder, and think he could be a real steal if drafted in the late first or early second. But I don't want to see the Bills use a top-5 pick on him. I also have to admit Fitzpatrick is playing much better football than I thought he could. I'm not saying he's necessarily the long-term answer at QB, but I'm not as quick to rule out the possibility as I'd been a few weeks ago. If Ponder was to fall to the Bills in the second round, they could always snap him up there. If Fitzpatrick is the answer, Ponder could become their backup--their Frank Reich. If Fitzpatrick fails to become the answer, Ponder might become the next Drew Brees. That is, a quarterback taken in the early second round, primarily for his skill as a pocket passer, who goes on to have a good career. By no means am I promising that Ponder will have a Brees-like career. It's a distinct possibility, not a certainty. The other option would be to pass up Ponder even in the second round, and to use that pick on a RT or on the defensive front seven. That option would make the most sense if the Bills liked Fitzpatrick as a starter and Brohm as a backup; or if they felt they could get a better football player than Ponder with that second round pick. There's also the distinct, strong possibility Ponder will be taken in the first round. Which is probably where he belongs.

Thanks for the compliments--they mean that much more because they're coming from one of my favorite posters on this board. If I understand your argument correctly, you're saying that being elite in one area of the game can mask weakness in another area. The idea (if I understand it correctly) would be to build an offense that relies on the things the quarterback can do well; while de-emphasizing his weaknesses. A good example of this would be the way Bill Walsh created a new offensive philosophy to take advantage of Joe Montana's strengths. Montana didn't have a ton of arm strength. The offense Walsh built didn't require a lot of arm strength. Instead, it asked the quarterback to throw highly accurate short to intermediate passes which hit the receiver in perfect stride: which was exactly where Montana excelled. If a Walsh-like offensive coordinator wanted to design an offense for Mallett, the offense would have to strongly emphasize arm strength, while de-emphasizing the areas where Mallet is weak. I think that Tom Donahoe might have envisioned something along those lines. He quickly acquired the strong-armed Bledsoe, and later replaced him with the strong-armed Losman. He used early picks on players like Lee Evans, Roscoe Parrish, Kevin Everett, and even Willis McGahee, in an apparent attempt to upgrade the speed of the skill position players. Any time you see a collection of fast receiving threats, and strong-armed quarterbacks who specialize in throwing the long bomb, it at least suggests a specific kind of offensive approach. Obviously, TD's failure to build an offense based around a strong arm QB + fast targets doesn't necessarily mean that all other similarly themed offenses are destined for failure. Perhaps the fact that Mallett's arm is significantly stronger even than JP's arm would let him succeed where Losman failed. Possibly Mallett doesn't bring the same mental limitations with him that Losman did, or has some other edge over Losman. Back in the '80s, the 49ers' bread-and-butter play was the quick slant to Jerry Rice. They'd use that play several times per game, and they practiced it incessantly during the week. It was very, very difficult for defenses to stop that play even when they knew it was coming. More generally, the entire 49ers offense--based as it was on death by a thousand small cuts--was very hard for teams to stop. If I was running a football team and thinking of using a top-5 pick on Mallett, one of the first things I'd try to do would be to identify some bread-and-butter play that defenses couldn't stop even when they knew it was coming. A play that Mallett could run better than almost any other quarterback. Once I had that one play, I'd start thinking of other, similarly-themed plays to start forming the core of my offensive playbook. But before I went ahead and used a top-5 pick on the guy, I'd want to be reasonably certain that a) the plays would work fairly consistently, and b) that Mallett really could run them significantly better than could an otherwise standard-issue QB with Losman-level arm strength. In other words, the plays would be designed such that you'd need Mallett to be ridiculously strong-armed, just as the 49ers needed Montana to be exceptionally accurate and able to hit receivers in stride for the quick slant to Rice to work as intended. Off the top of my head, I can't think of an offensive philosophy that would work on the NFL level where the quarterback would be required to have an almost superhuman level of arm strength. An offense where a merely Losman-level of arm strength just wouldn't cut it. Just because I can't think of such an offense doesn't mean that no one else can either. In fact, I'd be happy to hear the thoughts anyone has on the subject. Let's say that Mallett finds himself in an offense in which the quarterback merely required Losman-level arm strength to be successful. That would be similar to a quarterback capable of quickly seeing multiple reads finding himself on a high school offense with just one read. In both cases the quarterback has a special trait, but in neither case is the offense challenging enough to make that special trait particularly relevant. Or to take another example: suppose Montana had found himself in an offense where a Trent Dilfer could have made 95% or more of the throws exactly as intended. That too would have been an offense too non-challenging to bring out Montana's greatness. For Montana's potential to be maximized, he had to be put in an offense where Montana-like traits were needed on the majority of passing plays. If only a Dilfer-level of traits had been required, defending against that offense would have been a lot like defending against Dilfer. I fully agree with your implication that first round picks should be used on players with the potential for greatness. Guys like Whitner, Lynch, Maybin, and others clearly fall well short of that standard. Mallett's potential for greatness largely depends on an offensive coordinator's ability to design an offense in which a Losman-level of arm strength is not good enough. An offense which utilizes and requires a Mallett-level of arm strength to make itself significantly more difficult to defend than it otherwise would have been. I'm not talking about four plays per game here: the arm strength needs to be a constant factor exerting significant influence throughout the course of the game. That influence needs to be strong enough to mask whatever other weaknesses he may bring. Unless the Bills can devise an offense like that, Mallett will not achieve greatness in Buffalo. In fact, he'd be hard-pressed to beat out Ryan Fitzpatrick for a starting position; especially if Fitz continues playing as he has. Fitz seems to be one of the best quarterbacks in the league at reading defenses, and at knowing exactly where he's supposed to put the football. He gets rid of the ball almost instantly. Giving up all that--as the Bills would do if they transitioned from Fitz to Mallett--would be very difficult. Unless the Bills figured out a way to build the above-described Mallett offense, there would not be enough of an offsetting benefit to justify the QB switch.

Let's say that you have a FG kicker who's making 0% of his attempts. This team has a bunch of losses and no wins. So then he gets replaced with another field goal kicker--a guy who makes 100% of his attempts. But the team as a whole is still lousy, and continues to lose every game. Would you use the W/L record as evidence that the change in field goal kicker didn't make a difference? Would you say that the team is equally well off with both the old and new kicker, because the winning percentage is the same with both guys? I think the answer here is obvious: if a FG kicker is making 100% of his attempts, he's clearly part of the solution, and not part of the problem. The same logic applies to any other player who's playing well for a losing team. There's no special reason why quarterbacks should be any kind of special exception.

Your post raises the more general question about how we should go about evaluating quarterbacks. Which traits are most important, and which are merely helpful (as opposed to essential)? My own list looks like this: Crucial traits Accuracy Ability to read defenses Ability to see multiple reads/process information quickly Passion for football and sheer strength of will Very important traits Leadership Ability to hit receivers in perfect stride Pocket awareness Toughness/avoiding injuries Useful traits Arm strength Mobility Height Take a guy like Joe Montana. He was very strong in every trait on the first two lists, but was only so-so with respect to the things on the "useful traits" list. He wasn't the tallest guy in the world, and didn't have the world's strongest arm. (Hence the fact that he wasn't drafted until the third round.) His mobility was decent but not special.

A few weeks ago, I would have written the same thing--especially if I felt Luck would declare for the upcoming draft. Now, though, I'm not so sure. Fitz is handling the mental aspects of the position better than any other Bills quarterback in recent memory--and that specifically includes Jim Kelly. His physical tools are limited, but they seem good enough to get the job done. My one concern is his accuracy. In the past, he'd follow up a good throw with an errant pass. Now, the ratio of good passes to bad has significantly improved. Another thing I like about him is his elite level of passion for the game and will to win. A lot of times, raw desire separates the merely good from the great. I'm not saying Fitz has yet earned the right to be called "great," but the same could also be said about the quarterbacks of the 2011 draft. If Luck doesn't declare--which he probably won't--there will not be a QB worthy of a top-5 pick in the 2011 draft. Assuming the Bills use the pick on a defensive front seven player, that will give the Bills the rest of this season and all of the next to evaluate Fitzpatrick. (Barring injury, of course.) Clearly, the worst-case scenario would be for Fitzpatrick to play well enough to keep us from getting Luck in 2012, but not well enough to be the long-term answer himself. But that said, Fitz is playing a lot better than I thought he could, and he looks like a real quarterback!

Any time there's an argument about who a team's consistently best player has been, and any time that argument comes down to a choice between the kicker and the punter, it's a bad sign!

The problem with the rules is that "incontrovertible evidence" is required to overturn a call made on the field. I personally felt that it was pretty incontrovertible that Miami recovered the fumble, because there were no Steelers at the bottom of the pile. But that said, I tend to feel they should get rid of the "incontrovertible evidence" requirement, and replace it with "whatever the call would have been."

If you want to reverse the culture of losing, one of the best things you can do is to bring in talented football players unwilling to accept the very idea of losing. Back in the mid-'80s, the Bills added guys like Jim Kelly, Bruce Smith, and others who turned the team from a laughingstock into a team that won four straight conference championships! Likewise, Peyton Manning played a key role in turing the Colts from a lousy team into a Super Bowl winner. Not every first overall pick will be a Bruce Smith or a Peyton Manning. But any time you add a guy like that, the effect on your team will be dramatic! In order to reverse the culture of losing, you have to increase the confidence of your players, and get them to believe that it's worth it to make the sacrifices winning requires. Winning football games is one way to do that, but not necessarily the only way. Back when the Patriots were on their way to a perfect regular season, they faced the Giants in a week 17 game. The Giants lost. But they played the Patriots very close--very close! It was obvious that with a little improvement on the Giants' part, that game could have had an entirely different outcome. Even though they lost, the Giants credited that game with giving them the confidence they needed to win in the playoffs and in the Super Bowl. The Bills' game against the Ravens might be like that too. The Ravens are a good team; and the Bills proved they could hang with them for a full 60 minutes! Any time you put up 34 points on the Ravens' defense, your offense has to feel at least some measure of self-confidence afterwards. The Bills' defense probably didn't get much of a confidence boost from the game--though it's worth nothing that they had several good stops late in the game. A game like the one the Bills just played can boost the team's confidence and help its draft position! It was a perfect game!