Which Failed QB Would Have Been Most Successful

[PDaDdy]

Compare that to the supporting cast Losman had in the second half of 2006. He had Jason Peters at LT; and overall was the recipient of much better pass protection than Johnson had while in Buffalo. He had Willis McGahee at RB who, while flawed, was a better player than Antowain Smith. At receiver he had Lee Evans, Josh Reed, Roscoe Parrish, and others. While that was not the equivalent of the receiving corps Johnson had, there was still some talent there (especially Evans). Admittedly he didn't have a Jay Riemersma at TE. But overall, he was nonetheless surrounded by an overall better supporting cast than the one Johnson had.

 

While we're going on about RJ, in the one playoff game for the Bills those QBs had, RJ arguably played better than the much-heralded Steve McNair http://www.pro-football-reference.com/boxs...00001080oti.htm, and came off the field having lead the Bills to the go ahead FG late in the 4Q while playing without a shoe at one point.

 

 

I remember that like it was yesterday. Lost in the passage of time is that shoeless flopping white sock drive Rob Johnson led us on to take back the lead with seconds left on the clock. We were a music city you know what away from victory, moving on in the play offs and potentially giving the team the boost and confidence it needed to continue to develop.

[The_Philster]

One decent stretch of about 6 or 7 games and he towers above everyone else? He was terrible with Buffalo, even losing his job at one point to Billy Joe Hobert. He was a big time draft bust with Buffalo and one of the worst QB's in team history.

He never lost his job to Hobert...there was a competition in camp for the starting job (basically between Collins and Hobert because AVP was injured) and Collins ended up winning. Hobert played in only 1 regular season game for us, when he came in off the bench after Collins for hurt in New England...the infamous game that Hobert didn't study his playbook for. AVP, the 3rd stringer, came in after Hobert stunk it up and held the starting job for 3 more games. Collins took the job back during the home game against the Pats and lost the job again during the Jags game with AVP getting the final start of the year

http://www.pro-football-reference.com/teams/buf/1997.htm

[BillsFan-4-Ever]

JP could go deep BUT he had a horrible short game!!!

[Bill from NYC]

I was a huge fan of RJ back then; I was taken in by his abundance of talent. Looking back, I don't think he ever would have been any good, except perhaps on a dynasty type football team such as the Steel Curtain of the 70s.

 

The same applies to Losman. Many are still scratching their heads, unable to figure out why, despite all the talent, he is a lousy quarterback. I would be wondering too but learned my lesson from RJ. Could Losman be good on the 78 Raider team with the best OL probably of all time and a million weapons? Maybe so, but not so many teams like this have ever existed.

 

The bottom line is they were both inferior qbs, huge amounts of talent notwithstanding.

 

Trent? He has less natural talent and more brains than the above, but so do most quarterbacks. He has a chance to be good I suppose, but my guess is that he won't be able to stand up to the beatings he will be sure to receive, and for that matter he might already be shot from previous maulings.

[DrFishfinder]

I was a huge fan of RJ back then; I was taken in by his abundance of talent. Looking back, I don't think he ever would have been any good, except perhaps on a dynasty type football team such as the Steel Curtain of the 70s.

 

The same applies to Losman. Many are still scratching their heads, unable to figure out why, despite all the talent, he is a lousy quarterback. I would be wondering too but learned my lesson from RJ. Could Losman be good on the 78 Raider team with the best OL probably of all time and a million weapons? Maybe so, but not so many teams like this have ever existed.

 

The bottom line is they were both inferior qbs, huge amounts of talent notwithstanding.

 

Trent? He has less natural talent and more brains than the above, but so do most quarterbacks. He has a chance to be good I suppose, but my guess is that he won't be able to stand up to the beatings he will be sure to receive, and for that matter he might already be shot from previous maulings.

All of the aforementioned QB's had NFL talent, some more than others, otherwise they wouldn't have been selected. Period. The FO may not make the best decisions, but they certainly wouldn't bring in a QB that didn't have NFL ability.

 

One could surmise that at least some of these guys were lacking certain skill sets and were also being plugged into offenses that didn't take advantage of the skill sets they did have. Some of them made game killing bad decisions, some couldn't throw the ball away, some tried to do too much, some (a lot) played behind atrocious offensive lines and some played under simply bad coaching. Take at least a couple of those guys and plug them into a team that really fit their skill sets and we may have a completely different story.

[Bill from NYC]

All of the aforementioned QB's had NFL talent, some more than others, otherwise they wouldn't have been selected. Period. The FO may not make the best decisions, but they certainly wouldn't bring in a QB that didn't have NFL ability.

 

One could surmise that at least some of these guys were lacking certain skill sets and were also being plugged into offenses that didn't take advantage of the skill sets they did have. Some of them made game killing bad decisions, some couldn't throw the ball away, some tried to do too much, some (a lot) played behind atrocious offensive lines and some played under simply bad coaching. Take at least a couple of those guys and plug them into a team that really fit their skill sets and we may have a completely different story.

 

Point taken, but JP and RJ had some awful habits that they couldn't appear to shake. RJ would stand there and get absolutely destroyed. Hard to say why; the guy was agile and very fast. JP's feet would start tapping up and down, then he would roll right, and when he rolled right didaster followed, be it a ground ball, moon ball, pick, sack, or fumble.

 

I saw RJ in college and thought he would go VERY early. He, as I recall, lasted until the 1st pick of the 4th round even with all that talent. JP had more raw talent than Bradford, yet he went very late in the 1st, and Parcells stated that he had no interest at all in him. So yes....sometimes GMs are wrong, but sometimes they get it right too.

[DrFishfinder]

Point taken, but JP and RJ had some awful habits that they couldn't appear to shake. RJ would stand there and get absolutely destroyed. Hard to say why; the guy was agile and very fast. JP's feet would start tapping up and down, then he would roll right, and when he rolled right didaster followed, be it a ground ball, moon ball, pick, sack, or fumble.

 

I saw RJ in college and thought he would go VERY early. He, as I recall, lasted until the 1st pick of the 4th round even with all that talent. JP had more raw talent than Bradford, yet he went very late in the 1st, and Parcells stated that he had no interest at all in him. So yes....sometimes GMs are wrong, but sometimes they get it right too.

Oh absolutely, JP and RJ had bad habits. I think just about every QB going from college to the NFL has some. I would guess that the FO has to weigh the good against the bad habits, assess if they think the bad habits can be corrected (or not), if the bad habits are going to be show stoppers for their particular offense, probably a hundred other decisions, and then make a decision. The current career status of RJ and JP would seem to indicate that they were not good choices by the Bills FO. And I'm not passing judgement on the Bills FO. There have been enough Ryan Leafs, JaMarcus Russels, David Klinglers and so on to share among GM's. As well as Brad's, Manning's, Brees' and Favre's.

 

I would imagine that teams want to develop a particular type of offense (for example) based on what the executives and coaching staff decide. And then they go out and try their best to acquire the personnel to achieve that end. In the Bills case, for whatever reason(s) they decided to stick largely with the current group of offensive players. So it would seem their philosophy is to develop the offense around the players they have rather than develop a particular offense per se. Luckily, that seems to be one of Gailey's strengths. As trite as this sounds, the outcome of any decision is: things get better, worse or stay the same. We're going to have to see how this one plays out.

[Orton's Arm]

I really have to disagree with you on this one. You could make a case for Rob Johnson who was the only thing close to JP in terms of athleticism. I think if you actually look at the stats for starts and being the starter, as I always advised in the Losman vs Edwards debate, Losman had pretty decent stats. He put points on the board. What your arguments and ranking fail to take into consideration are the teams that each guy played on and the coaching staff at the time. I think that Losman and Edwards by far played on the worst "TEAMS" AND had the worst "COACHING".

I addressed the teams each guy played on in my other post on this thread. Johnson had substandard talent at RB, and played behind a D/D- offensive line. There was an independent service that graded offensive linemen. John Fina--the second best player on that line at his position--was ranked at around 22nd best among starting LTs. I agree the Bills had better defenses back in the late '90s, but I don't believe that good defenses necessarily equate to stellar passing stats for their teams' respective QBs. Trent Dilfer, for example, averaged 6.6 yards per pass attempt with the Ravens of 2000. The next year he moved to the Seattle Seahawks--a team with a significantly worse defense--yet increased his yards per attempt to 8.3 yards.

 

As far as Losman's stats: in 2006, he had a solid 7.1 yards per pass attempt, and a 1.4 TD/INT ratio. Things looked good for a while. But these things were achieved because the offense had been radically simplified to accommodate his mental limitations, and because he was able to burn defenses with a lot of long bombs to Lee Evans. You could point out that a TD scored off a long bomb to Evans counts just as much as any other TD, or that teams aren't awarded bonus points for running complex offenses. However, a quarterback who's a one-trick pony--as Losman was in 2006--will typically have a less promising future than a quarterback who can do a number of different things very well. (Losman's stats were also helped by the solid pass protection he received in the second half of 2006; especially from Jason Peters at LT.)

 

In 2007 Losman's stats declined: his QB rating went from 84.9 to 76.9; his yards per attempt went from 7.1 to 6.9, and his TD/INT ratio declined to 0.7. As a (former?) Losman supporter, you might be inclined to think he just had a bad year. But I see things differently: defenses were learning that when you play Losman, you need to take away the long bomb to Lee Evans, and dare him to beat you with his underneath game.

 

Yes I was a Losman supporter. You can't teach 4.5 speed and a cannon arm. You can teach a guy that is too amped up, god I hated that phrase, to take some zip off his short ball.

You also can't teach intelligence; which is why Losman was doomed to fail almost no matter where he ended up.

 

Edwards has nothing other than height that elite QBs or even very successful QBs have. His accuracy stats were over rated in my opinion because he checks down. You can't teach arm strength or the balls to use it. The guy hasn't beaten a 3 - 4 defense in 2 years and some people are still riding his man parts. Can't figure that one out personally.

 

And yet his career stats are slightly better than Losman's. Losman's career yards per attempt stat is 6.6; as compared to 6.7 for Edwards. Losman's career QB rating is 75.6, compared to Edwards' rating of 77.9. Both QBs have career TD/INT ratios of almost exactly 1. Losman is the more physically gifted of the two QBs; whereas Edwards is the more accurate and the more intelligent. (This is not to suggest that Edwards has the accuracy or intelligence to have a great career as a QB. On the contrary.)

[PDaDdy]

JP could go deep BUT he had a horrible short game!!!

 

He did. Again, you can teach a guy to take something off his short throws but you can't teach a guy to have a cannon arm, an accurate, tight spiral deep ball and athleticism.

[PDaDdy]

And yet his career stats are slightly better than Losman's. Losman's career yards per attempt stat is 6.6; as compared to 6.7 for Edwards. Losman's career QB rating is 75.6, compared to Edwards' rating of 77.9. Both QBs have career TD/INT ratios of almost exactly 1. Losman is the more physically gifted of the two QBs; whereas Edwards is the more accurate and the more intelligent. (This is not to suggest that Edwards has the accuracy or intelligence to have a great career as a QB. On the contrary.)

 

 

Where does this intelligence thing come into play? That is a serious question. Do we have wonderlick scores for these guys? Their SAT scores? Their college transcripts with their GPA? Again accuracy when you throw 5 yards and shorter or even behind the line of scrimmage doesn't mean jack to me. Any QB in the league should be able to do that.

 

Instead of comparing yards per attempt, seeing as how Edwards checked down and took the "play not to lose" way out, lets compare yards per COMPLETION!! I am pretty confident we know who will win that one!

 

Both QBs have flaws and warts. One QB has several things that elite QBs share that can't be taught. The other has a good short game that won't win any games for you but also won't lose too many either. I assume you know which ones I am talking about. Imagine if JP Losman had Mike Holgrem for a mentor like Brett Farve. Farve was every bit as erratic and gun slinger as JP.

[PDaDdy]

As far as Losman's stats: in 2006, he had a solid 7.1 yards per pass attempt, and a 1.4 TD/INT ratio. Things looked good for a while. But these things were achieved because the offense had been radically simplified to accommodate his mental limitations, and because he was able to burn defenses with a lot of long bombs to Lee Evans. You could point out that a TD scored off a long bomb to Evans counts just as much as any other TD, or that teams aren't awarded bonus points for running complex offenses. However, a quarterback who's a one-trick pony--as Losman was in 2006--will typically have a less promising future than a quarterback who can do a number of different things very well. (Losman's stats were also helped by the solid pass protection he received in the second half of 2006; especially from Jason Peters at LT.)

 

Not that I care about assumed bias but I know you're not trying to build up Edwards. I really don't think there has been too much difference in the offensive lines that JP and Trent played behind. Trent had the benefit of playing behind Peters for 2 pro bowl years in 2007 and 2008. In fact everyone complained about how bad JP's line was and the house was cleaned to bring in better talent because of it. Have we forgotten Duke Preston, Melvin Fowler, Seth McKinney, Mike "Biggest Bust EVER!" Williams?

[K-9]

...Instead of comparing yards per attempt, seeing as how Edwards checked down and took the "play not to lose" way out, lets compare yards per COMPLETION!! I am pretty confident we know who will win that one! ...

 

You're right. I didn't realize what a significant difference they had in yards per completion. JP is hands down the winner, coming in at 11.13 YPC for his career while TE posts a career YPC of 10.86. Those stats are from the NFL.com site.

 

That's a game breaking difference of .27 yards per completion. Some might call that a statistical dead heat. But not me.

 

GO BILLS!!!

[Bill from NYC]

You're right. I didn't realize what a significant difference they had in yards per completion. JP is hands down the winner, coming in at 11.13 YPC for his career while TE posts a career YPC of 10.86. Those stats are from the NFL.com site.

 

That's a game breaking difference of .27 yards per completion. Some might call that a statistical dead heat. But not me.

 

GO BILLS!!!

 

[PDaDdy]

You're right. I didn't realize what a significant difference they had in yards per completion. JP is hands down the winner, coming in at 11.13 YPC for his career while TE posts a career YPC of 10.86. Those stats are from the NFL.com site.

 

That's a game breaking difference of .27 yards per completion. Some might call that a statistical dead heat. But not me.

 

GO BILLS!!!

 

 

Yes that is actually more significant than Edwards 6.7 yds/attempt vs Losmans 6.6 yds/attempt difference which might be called statistically irrelevant which my post was in response to Sorry to speak ill of your son Mr Edwards.

[Coach55]

When comparing Losman to Edwards, 2 significant statistics nobody is addressiing.

 

Sacks - Losman was sacked once every 10.14 dropbacks vs Edwards at once every 15.24 dropbacks

Fumbles - Losman fumbled 34 times in 33 starts vs Edwards 14 times in 30 starts.

 

Sacks kill drives and Fumbles cost ballgames. Not saying that Edwards is great, but you can't just look at his "offensive" statistics. Losman had a severe case of Rob Johnson Syndrome. Edwards is a headcase, but has yet to get RJS. TE is handsdown better than JP.

[Coach55]

By the way - before I get chastized for my previous post for people saying sacks are a result of "how the line plays", might I remind you of the Flutie/Johnson Sack per dropback statistics who both played behind the same line:

 

Flutie - once every 23.15 dropbacks

Johnson - once every 7.03 dropbacks

[Bill from NYC]

By the way - before I get chastized for my previous post for people saying sacks are a result of "how the line plays", might I remind you of the Flutie/Johnson Sack per dropback statistics who both played behind the same line:

 

Flutie - once every 23.15 dropbacks

Johnson - once every 7.03 dropbacks

 

I fully agree with both of your posts. Flutie thrived on the broken play, which was almost every play due to garbage like Jerry Ostroski and co. up front. VERY few qbs in the recent history of the NFL played his style. Fran Tarkenton comes to mind.

Flutie was actually better rolling out and running for his life than he was standing in the pocket.

[K-9]

When comparing Losman to Edwards, 2 significant statistics nobody is addressiing.

 

Sacks - Losman was sacked once every 10.14 dropbacks vs Edwards at once every 15.24 dropbacks

Fumbles - Losman fumbled 34 times in 33 starts vs Edwards 14 times in 30 starts.

 

Sacks kill drives and Fumbles cost ballgames. Not saying that Edwards is great, but you can't just look at his "offensive" statistics. Losman had a severe case of Rob Johnson Syndrome. Edwards is a headcase, but has yet to get RJS. TE is handsdown better than JP.

 

Those are excellent points and ones that coaches emphasize A LOT. Yes, it's maddening that Edwards doesn't trust himself enough to make plays to the middle of the field on intermediate routes and he's too quick to go to his last read in the progression but, as you imply, a positive play is better than a sack or turnover any day of the week.

 

Personally, I think TE is too far gone from a confidence standpoint. And while it would be nice for him to turn it around history isn't on his side. At least with the Bills.

 

GO BILLS!!!

[Mark Vader]

Trent Edwards should not be on this list because, A) He is still on the team and B) The title of this thread is "Which Failed QB Would Have Been Most Successful."

 

The phrase "Would Have Been" pertains to QB's no longer on the team.

 

Having said that I think Todd Collins would have been most successful, we made the mistake of trading for Rob Johnson and we gave up on Collins too fast.

 

Remember when people were calling Eric Moulds a bust after two seasons? Not every player is an instant impact.

[K-9]

Yes that is actually more significant than Edwards 6.7 yds/attempt vs Losmans 6.6 yds/attempt difference which might be called statistically irrelevant which my post was in response to Sorry to speak ill of your son Mr Edwards.

 

No problem. Just don't let it happen again. Or Mrs. Edwards will be pissed and you'll risk having to face her wrath.

 

GO BILLS!!!