Tweet
from yahoo!sports
Trent Edwards, Aaron Rodgers, Matt Cassel and J.T. O'Sullivan finishing the season with QB ratings as high as they are right now. And you're thinking, "No sugar, Sherlock." Stick with me, though. There's a larger point I wanted to make.
The low-man in the group right now is O'Sullivan with a 96.3 rating. Everyone else is over 100. In fact, through two weeks, there are 10 quarterbacks with a rating over 100, while only three finished the year above that mark in 2007, so I'm not going out on a limb here. But that's okay; I'll wear the cape of Captain Obvious. I need to up my percentage here in Don't Count On It.
Anyway, here's what I'm saying: Young non-rookie quarterbacks, when they finally get their first sustained playing time in the league, can do very well. Not all of them do, of course, but a lot of them do.
And then, a few weeks into their stint as a starter, their numbers will take a nosedive. It happens when other teams get a few games of them on film, and they can spot tendencies and start to take away the things that a particular quarterback likes to do. Let's call it the Derek Anderson Principle.
Last year, in four of the first six games The Shaggy DA started, he had a QB rating over 100. After that sixth week, though, he'd never see that mark again. Things took a turn for him, and to this day, he's still struggling to re-elevate his game.
Let's graph Anderson's QB ratings through the 17 starts he's made over this season and last, because graphs are awesome. This one's for you, junior high math teacher Mr. Varner.
The chart might work a little better for my purposes if Anderson hadn't also thrown up a couple of bombs in two of his early starts, but I still think it makes the point. After a few weeks, film accumulates. When film accumulates, teams get the drop on a new QB, and that's when he either starts to grow or starts to rot. The growing rarely starts right away.
(And by the way, I hope we never stop calling it "film," even though I don't think there are a lot of coaches out there who still set up an actual film projector in team meetings. It makes me think of being in school as a young lad, and getting excited for film-strip day, where we'd watch a film about, I don't know, the benefits of milk or something.)
I'm not knocking Rodgers, Edwards, O'Sullivan, or Cassel here; or even Derek Anderson, for that matter. They can all continue to be fantastic quarterbacks for a long time, and please don't see this as an indication that I don't believe in any of them (except for J.T. O'Sullivan ... I'm having a hard time believing in him ... sue me). It's just a fact of life for NFL quarterbacks, and it's something they're all going to have to deal with sooner than later
Trent Edwards, Aaron Rodgers, Matt Cassel and J.T. O'Sullivan finishing the season with QB ratings as high as they are right now. And you're thinking, "No sugar, Sherlock." Stick with me, though. There's a larger point I wanted to make.
The low-man in the group right now is O'Sullivan with a 96.3 rating. Everyone else is over 100. In fact, through two weeks, there are 10 quarterbacks with a rating over 100, while only three finished the year above that mark in 2007, so I'm not going out on a limb here. But that's okay; I'll wear the cape of Captain Obvious. I need to up my percentage here in Don't Count On It.
Anyway, here's what I'm saying: Young non-rookie quarterbacks, when they finally get their first sustained playing time in the league, can do very well. Not all of them do, of course, but a lot of them do.
And then, a few weeks into their stint as a starter, their numbers will take a nosedive. It happens when other teams get a few games of them on film, and they can spot tendencies and start to take away the things that a particular quarterback likes to do. Let's call it the Derek Anderson Principle.
Last year, in four of the first six games The Shaggy DA started, he had a QB rating over 100. After that sixth week, though, he'd never see that mark again. Things took a turn for him, and to this day, he's still struggling to re-elevate his game.
Let's graph Anderson's QB ratings through the 17 starts he's made over this season and last, because graphs are awesome. This one's for you, junior high math teacher Mr. Varner.
The chart might work a little better for my purposes if Anderson hadn't also thrown up a couple of bombs in two of his early starts, but I still think it makes the point. After a few weeks, film accumulates. When film accumulates, teams get the drop on a new QB, and that's when he either starts to grow or starts to rot. The growing rarely starts right away.
(And by the way, I hope we never stop calling it "film," even though I don't think there are a lot of coaches out there who still set up an actual film projector in team meetings. It makes me think of being in school as a young lad, and getting excited for film-strip day, where we'd watch a film about, I don't know, the benefits of milk or something.)
I'm not knocking Rodgers, Edwards, O'Sullivan, or Cassel here; or even Derek Anderson, for that matter. They can all continue to be fantastic quarterbacks for a long time, and please don't see this as an indication that I don't believe in any of them (except for J.T. O'Sullivan ... I'm having a hard time believing in him ... sue me). It's just a fact of life for NFL quarterbacks, and it's something they're all going to have to deal with sooner than later
Comment