You may remember a few weeks ago when Rick Telander wrote that he thought Jay Cutler should be more like Tim Tebow. Because, you know, Cutler is "an effective quarterback" and all of that. Well, it turns out that Jay Cutler has shown up to Bears training camp with big muscles and smiling in a picture. In a not-so-shocking twist of events, this isn't good enough for Rick Telander. It never is. That's the secret behind columns written with the premise of something like, "Coach X needs to address the media about Controversy Y." What the sports media really means is they want Coach X to have a press conference under the guise of "clearing things up around the controversy" when it's really just an excuse for the sports media to use their bully pulpit to ask the coach questions and continue to pass their judgment on in the form of a column. The guise is that opinions could change if the coach just speaks to the controversy publicly, much like Chip Kelly "should" speak to the accusations of racism, but those opinions aren't going to change. It's just an excuse to bait the coach into creating a media feeding frenzy.
When Rick Telander wrote "Jay Cutler should be like Tim Tebow" what he really meant was "Cutler needs to work harder and be nicer, but that's still not going to change my perception of him. But hey, he could try and that would allow me to churn a column or two out on the topic." It's the game the New York media played with A-Rod. "A-Rod should speak to his suspension and apologize at a press conference!" Why? So you have an exciting press conference to cover? Otherwise, there is no point.
So here is Rick not fooled by the "new" Cutler that he requested Jay become.
So we have a new Bears head coach
A head coach that Rick became increasingly depressed about the Bears hiring.
and a new offensive coordinator and a
new and wonderful wide receiver (Kevin White, whom no one has seen
actually practice).
Oh no! No one has seen Kevin White practice and it seems the whole "Is Odell Beckham a huge bust?" idiocy from last year has been forgotten by Rick Telander. Being injured doesn't necessarily mean anything. That's my point.
So naturally we have a new quarterback.
(Rick Telander) "Jay Cutler needs to change who he is to be more like Tim Tebow."
(Rick Telander) "Jay Cutler has changed himself. I'll mock him for doing this now. Check out all this sarcasm I'm using, it's just like the sarcasm the kids use!"
Hello, Jay Cutler!
Jay had a bad year last year and he's trying to turn himself around. Let's mock him for it.
So how is the 32-year old quarterback, now in his 10th NFL season,
seventh with Bears, with his fifth offensive coordinator in seven years,
abruptly new?
I like how Rick uses the word "abruptly" here. Rick wants Jay Cutler to change, Cutler appears to change and Rick is all like, "Whoa! Hey buddy, slow down with these abrupt changes. At least change at a slower rate so we can all keep up."
Why, he looks rugged and jacked,
Rugged and jacked like Tim Tebow!
and he hasn’t thrown an interception in practice,
I'm not a Cutler defender necessarily, but the fact he hasn't thrown an interception in practice is anecdotal evidence that Bears fans can somewhat be happy that the offense Adam Gase has installed is going to work for Cutler. I know it's fun to be sarcastic, but rather than have sarcasm about the situation, perhaps be cautiously optimistic.
and he has been kissing reporters on both cheeks after cheery and informative interviews that he wishes would never end.
What is Cutler, Italian or something?
OK, the last item isn’t true.
YOU GOT ME, RICK! I TOTALLY JUST FELL FOR THAT!
As usual, because Jay Cutler isn't friendly with the media then the coverage of him will reflect that. As someone who would be horrible at the media game if he were a professional athlete, I don't understand why Cutler is judged on his attitude towards the media while also acknowledging this has an impact on the coverage of Cutler by the Bears media.
But the glowing reviews of his on-field demeanor and “rebirth’’ as a
field general who suddenly “gets it’’ are true. At least they have been
bandied about like a volleyball over a backyard net.
More sarcasm. Telander wants Cutler to change, he seems to change in the short-term and Rick is all sarcastic about it. I know I'm sarcastic about a lot of stuff on this blog, but Rick specifically wrote a column requesting that Cutler change and Cutler seems to have tried to do that. Maybe it won't last. That's entirely possible. The secret is that Rick doesn't want Cutler to change who he is, Rick just wants to be able to bash Cutler for NOT being able to become a field general who "gets it." Rick wants to write about how Cutler needs to change, not actually have it happen.
There’s a new photo of Cutler on Pro Football Reference.com that has him
smiling like a teenaged girl who has just won free pedicures for life.
Happy is the man with knowledge overflowing!
(Rick Telander) "Jay Cutler still doesn't smile nor is he nice to the media."
(Rick Telander) "Here is a picture of Jay Cutler smiling like a teenaged girl. I'm going to make fun of him for smiling like I have requested he do in the past."
Sure, John Fox may have called Cutler “Jake’’
back in January, but that was before he got to know the refreshed and
refreshing QB who likely will never create a turnover again.
Keep moving those goalposts, Rick. Nobody said Jay won't create a turnover again. That's not a realistic expectation.
Also, calling Jay Cutler "Jake" is an easy thing to do, and not just because John Fox would rather his team not even have a quarterback so he could run the Wildcat or single-wing offense all game, but because "Jay" and "Cutler" can be run together to form "Jake" by not pausing between the two words. So the fact Fox called Cutler "Jake" doesn't mean a hell of a lot.
I don't just argue semantics, I murder semantics to death with my own nit-picking.
One is reminded of what former teammate/philosopher Brandon Marshall said of Cutler awhile back: “He’s the real deal.’’
And now, apparently, he’s so real, he’s chromed.
It almost sounds like Rick Telander doesn't believe it. Could that be true?
Me, I don’t believe it.
Whaaaaaaaaaaaat? You don't believe it? I couldn't tell.
I think Cutty is Cutty. A six is a six, not a 10. The spots are permanent, just like on your couch.
So when writing an article that says, "Jay Cutler needs to be more like Tim Tebow" you were essentially writing an article advocating for Jay Cutler to do something you had absolutely no doubt he wasn't capable of doing? So what's the point of writing the column then? You know Cutler can't ever be the "effective quarterback" that Tebow is, so outside of giving yourself a good reason to get pageviews by putting "Tebow" in the title of a column while bashing Jay Cutler, why write the column advocating for Cutler to change who he is?
We’ve heard this all before, haven’t we?
Maybe, but you are the one who seems to genuinely believe Tim Tebow is now an effective quarterback. You are the one who now believes Tebow doesn't have the world's worst throwing motion, a claim from Tebow's quarterback mentors that we had heard all before as well. Maybe one day Jay Cutler will be more like Tim Tebow, though that's clearly not really what Rick Telander wants.
Showing posts with label jay cutler. Show all posts
Showing posts with label jay cutler. Show all posts
Monday, August 31, 2015
Wednesday, August 19, 2015
5 comments MMQB Review: Peter Notices How Lithe and Penetrating a Lions Player Is Edition
Peter King thought a 64.3% completion percentage was less than a 63.1% completion percentage in last week's MMQB. He also described selfie-policeman J.J. Watt as the new star of "Hard Knocks" and has given Marcus Mariota the official "precocious" tag, which has to be a great feat for Mariota to achieve. Any time Peter uses a word in the wrong context to describe an NFL player then it has to be flattering. The world may implode if he ever states as a "factoid" that an NFL player is precocious. This week Peter talks about Tim Tebow because he's only responding to what everyone wants him to write about and obviously everyone wants to hear more about Tebow (Tebow has improved, we've heard this before...Peter only mentions it because "the people" want to hear about Tebow of course), probably pissed off J.J. Watt by taking a selfie, has many thoughts on Geno Smith getting punched in the face and the aftermath, and and now black lives mattering is inconveniencing Peter King on his cab ride home. Okay, Peter doesn't say this but after you hear the story you KNOW Peter was upset by being inconvenienced, but just doesn't mention it in MMQB for obvious reasons.
Prologue to a column, with a point about not taking preseason results seriously:
In the past 11 regular seasons, the Patriots are 136-40.
In the past 11 preseasons, the Patriots are 20-24.
(Iverson voice: “We talkin’ bout practice!”)
This type of thing continuously makes me laugh. Peter does training camp tours, speaks to players, and makes comments based on preseason games...then in MMQB he is basically like, "All of this probably doesn't mean very much." So it's all wasted time then?
I asked Eagles coach Chip Kelly if he felt frustrated with the perception that he can’t get along with players, and isn’t a good communicator, even though those who’ve been around the Eagles for years will tell you the door to his office is mostly open, while Andy Reid’s office door was mostly closed.
What side of this issue does Peter King fall on? I can't tell by the way this sentence was structured. He's so vague in his description of Kelly's open door policy compared to Andy Reid's closed door policy.
“Yeah,” Kelly said with that smile the other day, after a training-camp practice in south Philly. “But there’s nothing you can do about it. I think we do a really good job with communicating with our players.
I'm shocked, SHOCKED, that Peter King falls on the side of the NFL coach who is a quote machine. I did not see this coming.
Then he quoted two people. He said Phil Jackson once said that if you want to be liked, don’t get into coaching. “Then there’s the Mike Schmidt quote,” Kelly said.
Which one?
I wish Chip Kelly had told Peter to do an internet search to find this quote, just like Peter would do to his readers. Alas, he did not.
“He said, ‘Philadelphia is the only town where you can experience the thrill of victory, then the agony of reading about it the next day,’” Kelly said. “It’s part of the territory and rightly so. These people [media people] are awesome. It’s an unbelievably competitive market. New York has two teams so they gotta go to the Giants and the Jets. Here, there’s one team.”
That makes sense. It's why every other city with one NFL team has a competitive market like Philadelphia does. Either that or Chip Kelly doesn't want to tell an entire city's media to "fuck off."
My favorite story here? It’s about badminton—Sam Bradford becoming the first quarterback in NFL to rehab a torn ACL by playing badminton. More about that in a few paragraphs.
I can't even begin to pretend to care enough about this to be sarcastic. "The first quarterback to rehab by playing badminton..."
There’s where I’ll start—in Philadelphia, the last stop on our East/South/Midwest tour. This stuff about Kelly and his relations with players reminds me of a coach who left Cleveland in 1995. Bill Belichick was a bad communicator. Ran Bernie Kosar out of town. Too dictatorial. Players hated him. Had one winning season and won one playoff game in five years. Finished a lousy tenure eight below .500. Left Cleveland and the perception around the league was he’d only be a coordinator the rest of his career. When Robert Kraft hired him in 2000 to coach the Patriots, Kraft got comments like, “Are you nuts? Belichick’s not a head coach.” In 15 seasons with the Patriots, Belichick has averaged 13 wins a year (including postseason wins).
Not saying Kelly will be Belichick.
But Peter is saying that they are somewhat similar and if Chip Kelly ends up being like Bill Belichick then he will mention that he totally called it.
When he traded nickel back Brandon Boykin to Pittsburgh last month (for a fifth-round pick in 2016 that becomes a fourth if Boykin plays 60 percent of the defensive snaps for the Steelers in 2015), Boykin decried the lack of communication with Kelly, later saying he did not mean Kelly was racist.
It’s fairly fruitless to ask a man to defend himself against charges that he is racist.
It's difficult for me to find something that I agree with that Peter King has said, but I believe I can agree with this statement.
I simply think it’s an unfair question if people might think there’s something to it when there’s no supporting evidence to say there is. Think of it: He traded a white quarterback for a white quarterback in the offseason. He jettisoned two white veteran linemen with big pricetags—Todd Herremans and Evan Mathis. He dealt an African-American running back whose running style he didn’t like and who would soon be due a big contract for a white middle linebacker. He signed two African-American running backs in free -agency. His first five draft choices were black. His top six imports from other teams in veteran free agency were African-Americans (Byron Maxwell, Mathews and Murray were the big ones, with E.J. Biggers, Brad Jones and Walter Thurmond the complementary ones). In other words, next story please.
Those who argue Peter is wrong would state that Kelly HAS to sign an African American running back because there aren't white running backs and would also state just because he signs African American free agent only means he cares to win games, not that he isn't a racist. So he gets criticized for getting rid of African American players, who then call him a racist, but when Kelly chooses to sign African American players it's simply seen as him doing it because there aren't better options. I mean, I guess that makes sense, but it feels a bit like trying to have it both ways.
The next story here is Bradford. Four notable things as he tries to rebound from an ACL tear of the same left knee in 2013 and again in 2014:
He threw the ball well and with accuracy in the two hours I watched him, and those in camp say his arm’s looked very good.
It's not been Bradford's arm that is the question of late is it? So if Bradford had both legs amputated then I don't see (okay, I do see, but you get my exaggerated point) what this has to do with how well he throws the football with his arm. He tore his ACL twice, so the knees are the issue. Yes, the knees have to do with throwing the football, but whether Bradford is accurate throwing or not doesn't really answer questions about his knees' health.
And the badminton thing. One of Bradford’s big rehab practices was playing badminton without a net, with a doctor and athletic rehab specialist he’d just met, Bill Knowles, from Wayne, Pa.
“There’s standard rehab, where you have a sheet of what you have to accomplish every day in terms of exercise and rehab. Bill Knowles’ deal is, ‘Let’s play games.’ One day he said, ‘Let’s play badminton.’ We warmed up playing badminton. And then every day we were out here playing badminton. No net. He would hit it high and make me change directions and run. He throws all these PE games at you. You don’t think about it being rehab until you look and see the positions your body’s been in, and you think, That’s pretty close to the positions and movements you’ve got to make as a quarterback. I’m sure people up in the offices are looking out and wondering what in the world are they doing playing badminton? But, you know, you spend a year and a half doing the same exercises, and you get so tired of doing the same thing over and over,
Jeff Fisher is totally kicking himself now for trading Bradford. Bradford played badminton during his rehab sessions! Fisher should have counted on Bradford to stay healthy for one more year and then had no real viable backup option if Bradford got injured again. If Fisher had known Bradford playing badminton during his rehab, then it would have changed everything.
Bradford spoke on the field post-practice. He’s always been a sort of flatline optimist, a que sera, sera type. Asked about having any fear of it happening a third time, he said, “None. If it happens again, it’s just meant to be.
Bradford has pocketed a lot of money already playing in the NFL. If he tears an ACL again, then he can just retire, sit on his huge pile of cash from his rookie year and get some sympathy for being too injured in order to continue his career. It almost beats continuing to play and possibly being seen as a disappointment, doesn't it?
“What I’ve seen in Sam is what I thought we were going to get when I traded for him,” Kelly said. “Extremely accurate—he makes really good decisions with the football. He has as good an arm as there is in this league. He’s everything you want in a quarterback and he was before he was injured. He just has to stay healthy.”
Bradford has been in the NFL for five years now and started 49 games. Staying healthy has been his issue since he got into the NFL and don't forget he missed all of his senior year at Oklahoma with an injury. So that means out of the last six seasons he's played football, he has missed all but 49 games.
We have some really great leaders here—Malcolm Jenkins, DeMeco Ryans and now Byron Maxwell, who came over from Seattle; he’s been outstanding. I think everyone was concerned when you add this many people. But the guys we’ve added have been awesome. I like what I see.”
Clearly, Chip Kelly doesn't know these players are not white or else he wouldn't be saying this about them.
“I’ve got to show you something,” said GM David Caldwell, putting practice tape on the screen in his office. It was from a night practice that would get mostly rained out in Jacksonville. “This is the kind of play that makes us feel pretty good about Blake Bortles.”
So the GM whose tenure with his current team will be judged on whether the quarterback he handpicked will be successful is talking up said quarterback? I can't believe this would occur. Sure, Bortles has improved from his first to his second year, but sometimes I wonder if Peter remembers that GM's have a vested interest in talking up certain players. Picking the wrong quarterback in the first round of the draft is how GM's get fired.
Split right, free-agent wideout Tony Washington lines up head-up on prize free-agent cornerback Davon House. At the snap, Washington burrows into the inside shoulder of House and runs upfield. At about 13 yards, he pivots and cuts to the post. Just as he cuts, and four strides before he turns to look for the ball, Bortles releases the ball. At the split second Washington turns his head to the quarterback, the ball explodes into his hands. He doesn’t have to move his hands. It’s just there.
“The ball just hit my hands,” Washington said. “I didn’t do anything but catch it.”
“That throw reminded me of a throw Aaron would make,” said House, the ex-Packer. “I saw that same throw in Green Bay. No defending it.”
Oh, so the guy who got burnt by the throw states that there was no way to defend this pass? What else is he going to say? "It was a shitty throw, but I'm incompetent and couldn't prevent the completion. By the way, I can't believe how much money I received in free agency from the Jaguars."
I'm just saying that the two people attesting to Bortles' greatness are the GM who drafted him and the cornerback who just got a big free agent contract and got burnt by an undrafted wide receiver. Vested interests in talking Bortles up can be seen everywhere.
I still say Bortles isn't going to be a franchise quarterback. I could be wrong. My opinion is just my opinion, but it's hard to look at the opinion of the Jaguars' GM and the cornerback who got burnt on a good throw in practice and see them as neutral observations of Bortles' ability.
I asked Bortles what he was thinking when he made the throw on the field. Exhilaration, maybe? Satisfaction? Or maybe that he finally was arriving at the place where good quarterbacks were?
“I thought, Good throw. Onto the next one now.”
Good answer.
Remember Blake, Peter is on the lookout for a gritty, white quarterback to fall in love with and endear himself to by using words like "precocious" and other language that indicates you play the quarterback position like a kid would. So this quarterback could be YOU and YOU could find Peter waiting on your porch in the offseason ready to talk about how life is going. Just keeping feeding Peter the answers he wants. That's what you need to do.
Since the two teams met in that memorable 2010 NFC title game at Soldier Field—Packers 21, Bears 14—the Bears have had three coaches (Lovie Smith, Marc Trestman, John Fox) and three general managers (Jerry Angelo, Phil Emery, Ryan Pace). Green Bay has had one coach, Mike McCarthy, and one GM, Ted Thompson.
Since that game, Jay Cutler has been involved in more melodrama than any quarterback in the NFL.
I think that Tim Tebow and Tom Brady would like to have a word with Peter about the accuracy of this statement.
The only drama Aaron Rodger has been involved? I can’t think of it, unless appearing on Page Six of the New York Post because he’s been seen canoodling with Olivia Munn around North America counts as drama.
UNLESS YOU WANT TO COUNT BEING SEEN AROUND THE UNITED STATES WITH A FAMOUS ACTRESS AND HAVING IT POINTED OUT BY TABLOIDS, CAMERAS AND NEWSPAPERS THAT YOU ARE DATING THIS FAMOUS ACTRESS AS "DRAMA" THEN PETER GUESSES THIS WOULD COUNT.
“We’re going to do things to help the quarterback,” GM Ryan Pace said at Bears camp in Bourbonnais. “We have a major commitment to the run, and that will take pressure off Jay. We have extreme confidence in the coaching staff, and we think Adam Gase can do a lot of things to help Jay.
Look, Pace is doing the right thing for his guy in propping up Cutler when the rest of the city wants him gone. I’d do the exact same thing.
Notice that David Caldwell showing Peter a great pass by Blake Bortles in practice isn't seen as Caldwell "propping up" Bortles after he had a fairly crappy rookie season. Notice that Chip Kelly talking about how Sam Bradford is looking good and is everything he thought he would be after Bradford has played in 49 games over his 5 NFL seasons isn't seen by Peter as "propping up" Bradford. When Ryan Pace talks positively about Jay Cutler, a quarterback who is working with the same offensive coordinator that Peyton Manning gave credit to for helping him in Denver, well this is just Ryan Pace "propping up" Cutler. Forget all that positive shit Peter wrote about Gase when he worked with Manning, forget Bortles hasn't even proven he can be a below-average starter, and forget that Bradford can't even get on the field on a consistent basis, it's Cutler who has positive words directed at him by his GM who is getting "propped up." Got it.
Say what you want, but if you were Pace, would you have fired Cutler and gone out and signed, say, Brian Hoyer? Or Ryan Fitzpatrick? No. You’d stick with Cutler and see if a third Chicago coaching staff could right the ship.
John Fox had success with Jake Delhomme and Tim Tebow, plus Adam Gase has worked with Peyton Manning. Sticking with Cutler and his contract is probably the only option the Bears had.
At Packers camp I became convinced that McCarthy decided to give up play-calling as much because he implicitly trusts Rodgers to be a coach on the field and trusts the knowledge of Tom Clements in the offensive system.
Yes Peter, I'm sure that Mike McCarthy trusts the best quarterback in the NFL to know the offensive system and be a coach on the field. Now he can focus on other issues the Packers team has because he doesn't have to call plays. Very intuitive of you to point this out.
Detroit: Better than I thought.
Pizza: More cheese than I imagined.
Meerkats: More self-sufficient than I believed them to be.
I like how Peter's own incorrect perception of the Lions is supposed to change his reader's perception of the Lions.
"Wait, Peter King thinks the Lions are better than he thought they were? This must be something he thought he thought he knew, but it turns out he didn't know it. I must adjust my expectations for the Lions as well!"
The irony of Suh leaving? And taking his incredible run defense and sacking (a team-high 8.5 sacks) with him to Miami? In the off-season, he tutored Reid, working out with the second-year Princeton kid, and all in Detroit camp say Reid came back this summer a different player.
He started stepping on opposing players and generally acting like an asshole on the field?
More stout. Stronger, with a better interior rushing presence. At 6-2 and 306 pounds, Reid looks more lithe and penetrating than he did last year.
Peter thinks Reid looks more lithe with his luscious rippling muscles glistening in the sun as the sweat pores down from his chin to his stomach, leaving little patches of sweat on the Lions workout gear he has on, his precocious smile providing all the sunlight that's needed on this beautiful day.
You have a few options when you make a mistake in life. You can own up to it and totally admit it and take your medicine; or you can do something less; or you can lie your way through it.
How many people have you killed, Peter? Or is it that mental health issues are a character flaw? Either way, losing your daughter for five minutes in a grocery store is like having your child disappear and presumed dead.
OR you can keep saying stupid and insensitive shit and nobody calls you on it because you apologized and ARE SO DEFINITELY SORRY...until you say the same type of insensitive thing again. At that point, the media guy at your company, the same guy who eviscerates at any opportunity media members for other organizations for the slightest misstep, will just state you have apologized and he no longer sees the big deal in an effort to toe the company line and not make a big deal out of your comments as he normally would do otherwise. That's an option too.
Cleveland GM Ray Farmer wishes he’d never texted an assistant coach in the upstairs coaches' booth with suggestions/prompts/ideas/whatever during games last year.
But desperate times call for desperate measures, and he just thought he should throw in his thoughts about what the Browns were doing on offense during the games.
I just want to know what he was texting down that the Browns offense should do. Perhaps the coaching staff should have texted back a suggestion that Farmer find the Browns a good quarterback for the offense.
I expected Farmer to either no-comment this when we spoke at Browns camp last week, or maybe say he stands by whatever vanilla statement he issued when the sanction came down. But he didn’t.
You know, "whatever vanilla statement" that was issued when the sanction came down. Peter doesn't have time to go back and find it, but he's sure the statement was vanilla. That much he doesn't think that he thinks. He thinks he knows what he thinks about Farmer's statement.
“My mom and dad taught me a long time ago to take responsibility for my actions,” Farmer said, a little uneasy talking about it, on the side of the team’s practice field in Berea, Ohio. “That’s what I have done. As the time gets closer, I continue to reflect on what I did, and the cost of it. I made a mistake, and this is my penalty, and I am going to serve it.”
Yeah, but Johnny Manziel is the one who makes mistakes and should know better than to make them. He should be held to a higher standard than the Browns GM.
I’m not sure this is the most noteworthy thing coming out of Browns camp. I’ll be writing some about other things I learned there.
Hopefully Peter is writing about other things he learned at Browns camp. Otherwise, Browns fans could look to Peter for even less information than usual. Usually Browns just look to Peter for information on how their restricted free agents can be signed other NFL teams without the Browns matching the offer.
Last December, Kansas City safety Eric Berry was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma, a dangerous but treatable form of cancer.
Peter knows how Eric Berry feels because one time right before Christmas he had a vicious head cold that made it tough to get any work done.
Some words from Berry that you should hear:
Apparently Peter is under the impression that MMQB is an audio column and not a written column. Perhaps Peter has an audio version of MMQB that I'm not aware of where his readers can actually hear, not just read, the words that Eric Berry has to say. Otherwise, it's hard to hear written words.
The words from Berry are nice to hear and inspirational at times, but I can't be snarky about his situation so I will move on to tearing into Peter King. It's why we are all here anyway.
While I watched practice Thursday at the Eagles’ complex, there was this scene: Sam Bradford, his receiver covered in a seven-on-seven drill, tossed a ball harmlessly out of bounds, into the large bushes on the edge of the practice field. A few snaps later, Tim Tebow, the fourth-string quarterback battling Matt Barkley for the number three job, took a shotgun snap, looked at his options, saw none, and threw the ball into the exact same area of bushes.
TEBOW CAN THROW THE BALL AWAY AS EFFICIENTLY AS ANY OTHER QUARTERBACK!
“There’s Tebow’s intended receiver,” said a fan I was standing next to on the sidelines of practice. “The bushes.” He and his buddies got a good laugh out of that one.
This is a great example of Tebow being bullied by fans. When will the fans stop bullying poor Tim Tebow? When will jokes about his inaccuracy stop being made, despite how funny they are? Hopefully never.
No comment on Bradford’s throwaway, of course. He’s an accurate passer and deserves the benefit of the doubt. But not so Tebow. He has been so inaccurate in his brief career (47.9 percent) that when he makes a throw like that, it’s: same old Tebow.
Let's all not forget that Tim Tebow was a first round pick and should be treated like other first round picks who are quarterbacks. Before feeling sorry for him, remember that this is the fourth team who has given Tebow an opportunity to prove he's worth spending a roster spot on.
In fact, it’s not the same Tebow.
And of course Peter is only bringing up a 3rd/4th string quarterback because that's what the people want to hear about. "The people" need more Tebow, so it's totally not Peter's doing that he keeps talking about him in MMQB.
On Sunday, in his first preseason test, Tebow was marginally good, completing six of 12 passes for 69 yards while being sacked three times. He was hurried on almost every dropback behind a makeshift—and struggling—offensive line.
Peter remembers to bring up that the Eagles' offensive line was struggling, while avoiding the whole part about Tebow being a first round pick going against the 3rd/4th string defenders from the opposing team.
But the bad thing for Tebow was he showed very happy feet at times, probably because of the intense pressure. He won’t make it, though, unless he can set his feet, look over his options and make a good throw. In the off-season, he got Tom House, noted mechanics-fixer, to help him with his footwork and his arm slot, and both looked better Thursday at practice.
Not to come off as anti-Tebow, but this is pressure from 3rd/4th string pass rushers coming at him, which is different when it comes to another NFL team's starting defense rushing him. I think Tebow will work best as a change-of-pace quarterback who can present issues for the defense, but that also entails pulling the regular quarterback in order to have special "Tebow packages" and I don't think any starting quarterback ever really likes this.
“Tim’s sequencing has really improved,” Kelly said. “Not just his throw motion, but how his arm is following his legs in the right order. I’m not too worried about his arm slot; you see a guy like Philip Rivers throw from different angles and be effective. Tim’s better at the overall throw now.”
"Tim's better at the overall throw now." I'm not sure what else needs to be said.
The debut of the new PAT rules—the extra point now is snapped from the 15-yard line, making it a 33-yard attempt; the two-point conversion is attempted from the 2-yard line—has been uneventful. Except for the two-point tries. Last year, 59 two-point conversions were attempted in 256 regular-season games. This preseason, 12 have been attempted in the first 17 games. Too early to sense a trend, but teams have made five of 12 (.417).
Not only is it too early to sense a trend, but teams will more likely go for two in the preseason so they can practice the plays they run in that area during the season. I would look for the percentage of two-point conversions to fall from the 71% of preseason games that have had a two-point conversion attempted.
Checking out the 33-yard PAT after the Hall of Fame game and the full preseason schedule this weekend:
PATs attempted: 57. PATs made: 55. Percentage: .965
So the PAT has been attempted at six times the rate of the two-point conversion, even in the preseason, and almost 97% of them have been made. I wasn't against the extra point being pushed back, but I also didn't think it would make the dramatic difference that Peter seems to believe it will make.
“What is it, a 4 percent less chance you’ll make the extra point?’ Chip Kelly said. “That’s not going to be enough to make a huge change, in my opinion, in what coaches do.”
We’ll see. A couple of coaches I’ve spoken with for a story I’m working on concerning the PAT shift think there’s going to be more of a change than Kelly thinks.
Chip Kelly isn't such a genius when he disagrees with Peter King on one of Peter's pet project rule changes.
“They’ll have to get a tractor to move me outside to tackle. I’d rather get in a fist fight in a phone booth [at guard] any day. Those guys outside, there’s too much space. Too scary out there.”
—Chicago Pro Bowl guard Kyle Long, on off-season talk that the Bears may move him to tackle eventually because of his strength and athleticism.
Way to be a team player there, Kyle. Not that Long should necessarily be moved to tackle, but it sounds like Long wouldn't even be willing to consider a position change to tackle, even if it helped the team.
“I came home to find out that my boys received two trophies for nothing, participation trophies! While I am very proud of my boys for everything they do and will encourage them till the day I die, these trophies will be given back until they EARN a real trophy. I'm sorry I'm not sorry for believing that everything in life should be earned and I'm not about to raise two boys to be men by making them believe that they are entitled to something just because they tried their best.”
—Steelers linebacker James Harrison, in an Instagram post next to the two athletic trophies his sons received—and that he sent back.
Apparently the act of a parent sending a participation trophy back is enough to cause a several day discussion online about whether Harrison's actions are correct or not. Who cares? If he wants to send his son's trophies back, that's his choice. No need to legislate whether he is a good or bad parent.
Now that San Diego has signed Philip Rivers long-term, two of the three franchise quarterbacks from the 2004 draft class are tied up through the 2019 season—when Ben Roethlisberger will be 37 in Pittsburgh and Rivers 38 with the Chargers. Now it’s Eli Manning’s turn.
Manning wants to be the highest-paid quarterback in the NFL. I think every NFL quarterback wants to be the highest-paid quarterback in the NFL, so Eli's wishes are probably not news.
It’s fascinating to look at how similar the three quarterbacks have been, for the most part. Rivers’ numbers are down, slightly, because he didn’t start his first two years in San Diego, sitting behind Drew Brees. Manning has started an eye-popping 178 games in a row. Roethlisberger started early in Pittsburgh. But the fact that all three could have such similar numbers—look at the touchdowns here: all are between 251 and 259 in their regular-season careers—is amazing.
I'll spare you the chart, but the biggest difference is the QB rating and number of interceptions. Roethlisberger's QB rating is 93.9, Rivers 95.7, and Manning 82.4. Eli also has 54 more interceptions than Roethlisberger and 63 more interceptions than Rivers. So, they are similar, except Manning is a bit more of a turnover machine than Rivers and Roesthlisberger.
The guess here: Manning ends up very close to Roethlisberger. Super Bowl wins trump all. I’m sure Jerry Reese and the Giants will try to hold the line on anything north of Roethlisberger, because Aaron Rodgers is the gold standard at $22 million per year. But Tom Condon, Manning’s agent, surely will argue that because the Rodgers deal was signed two-and-a-third years ago, and the cap in 2015 has increased $20.8 million over 2013, the Rodgers deal can’t be held up as unbeatable.
I'm sure the Giants would counter with "Hey, Rodgers is the best quarterback in the NFL and we aren't paying Manning more than him."
Factoid of the Week That May Interest Only Me
Here is a little factoid that has never interested Peter. A "factoid" isn't a tiny fact, but a short statement with dubious accuracy. Fuck the dictionary though, Peter makes up his own definitions.
So … our team at The MMQB had a good and informative trip on the road. We also had some fun. See our selfie-stick photo from the last day on the Eagles’ sideline? Videographer John DePetro (white T-shirt) took it, and you can see, from left, Robert Klemko, Kalyn Kahler, Emily Kaplan (front), me, and Jenny Vrentas.
J.J. Watt does not approve of this selfie. None of the THE MMQB team members were posing while showing off their arms in a sleeveless shirt nor were any of them grinding and working hard trying to make themselves better. That's the only time selfies can be taken according to the "J.J. Watt Book of How Everyone Should Act."
Our crack tour manager, Kalyn Kahler, loaded up the van with Chipotle, and we set off around 8:45 for Philly. One problem: Robert Klemko couldn’t handle the sour cream in his Chipotle something-or-other, and so about a half-hour out of town he started looking for food on his RoadAhead app.
What a country. Dinosaur Bar-B-Que, the famous Syracuse meathouse, was 15 minutes ahead, and Klemko put in an order.
WHAT A COUNTRY! There are restaurants throughout the United States that sell food to people who are willing to use currency, credit card or check to pay for this food. I mean, these restaurants are everywhere and you can even call ahead to get an order ready for pickup. WHAT A FUCKING COUNTRY!
Then Peter talks about "Super Troopers," naturally being over a decade late to the party. I don't really feel like going through his whole story about this right meow.
Blaine Gabbert's passer rating in Preseason Week 1 last year: 1.7. Blaine Gabbert's passer rating tonight: 125.6
This one is a tough pill to swallow. Finally got the opportunity I always wanted since I entered this league. Took me 4 years to get there.
Ten Things I Think I Think
1. I think the upshot of the Philip Rivers contract extension—Chris Mortensen reported it as four years and $83.25 million, beginning in 2016; he will play out his final year of the current deal this year at $15 million—is that the Chargers, wherever they play in 2016 and beyond, will be quarterbacked by Rivers. He and his wife, who is pregnant with their eighth child, love San Diego
I read this initially as "He and his wife, who is pregnant with their eighth love child..." Because of course I read it that way.
2. I think Ray Rice will be in some team’s camp by Sept. 15. Just a hunch. The Browns have some interest, and depending on injuries in the preseason, other teams will too. I heard this in three places along my camp tour so far: Teams are concerned about the fallout for picking up a man who decked his fiancée in an elevator, but are as concerned or more concerned with the fact that the last time he was on the field, in 2013, he was a less-than-mediocre back.
So Peter is reporting that NFL teams don't really have a moral compass, they only will choose to sign a player based on how well he can perform on the field? No way. This probably explains why Greg Hardy has a job right now. I'm in shock that NFL teams judge players by how much they can help on the field and not based on what kind of person this player might be. What a twist that I didn't expect.
With thanks to several coaches/GMs on my camp tour, here's my veteran free-agent running back short list in order:
Chris Johnson. Turns 30 in September. Brings baggage. The 2,006-yard season seems 16 years away, not six. But the Cardinals may sign him this week. No one says he can't be a weapon with a good line in front of him.
Nope, I'm saying that Chris Johnson can't be a weapon with a good line in front of him. I don't believe he can be.
Knowshon Moreno will be a good candidate to be signed. The Dolphins still have some scant interest in bringing him back.
Oh man, calm down with the interest you have there Dolphins. "Scant" interest in Moreno. Good thing it's not "miniscule" interest in him. If Moreno came back and played well it would probably help the precocious Dolphins quarterback Ryan Tannehill live up to the potential that I keep hearing he has.
Then Peter updates us on the situation in Los Angeles about which teams could end up relocating.....Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz....
6. I think much has been made of Jet-turned-Bill linebacker IK Enemkpali breaking Geno Smith’s jaw Tuesday, and the subsequent fallout. Several points to make:
a. I was amazed, from the four coaches/players and one highly respected retired player I spoke with in the past few days that the blame for the incident in the eyes of the NFLers should be shared. I mean, almost equally shared. As one active quarterback told me, “You just do not go around owing teammates money—especially a teammate who doesn’t make much money.”
I think that's a good rule in general. You just don't go around owing anybody money. Just anyone. It can be a teammate, a friend, an acquaintance, the IRS, pretty much any/everyone.
c. From the respected retired player (not a Jet): “I can tell you there’d have been a huge problem in the locker rooms I was in if guys thought the quarterback owed money to a guy and didn’t pay—even if it was in dispute whether he owed him money or not. It wouldn’t matter what the reality was. Guys would be pissed.”
You know, if Geno Smith was a better leader then he wouldn't get punched in the face. Why aren't there more hot takes about this position? What are the odds this "respected retired player" is Brett Favre?
e. Has there ever been a more transparent slap at a player than Enemkpali’s apology about the incident when he got to Buffalo, when he apologized to everyone in the Jets’ building except for the one whose jaw he broke in two places? Enemkpali: “I want to apologize to the Jets organization, the fans, my teammates and the coaches. I apologize for what happened. It should have never happened. I should have walked away from the situation. It was never my intentions to hurt anybody.” Then he thanked the Bills for picking him up.
He owed money. You just can't owe people money.
7. I think you shouldn’t blame me for the football locker-room ethos that shifts the blame from the assaulter to the assaultee. I’m the messenger here. I’m just telling you what five people I respect said about the punching in the wake of it. In my opinion, there’s never a good-enough reason for punching another man in the face.
Of course Peter thinks this. I'm not in favor of punching people in the face, but few people have a clue what happened in the locker room and if Geno Smith was being a dipshit about this then he may deserve to be punched in the face. Maybe.
8. I think if you’re wondering about the sanction awaiting Enemkpali by the NFL, well, I wouldn’t count on him being in a Bills uniform for the first couple of weeks. After the punchout, NFL VP Troy Vincent sent a memo to all coaches and general managers reminding them of the prohibition on fighting on the field and off.
Topics #7 and #8 are part of the same discussion, so they should be with Topic #6. I can't figure out why Peter insists on moving them to a different number of his outline, other than he doesn't really have 10 things he thinks he thinks for the week and needs to stretch it out a bit to cover up for this fact.
10. I think these are my non-football thoughts of the week:
c. Sign of the 2015 times: My wife and I were in a cab on our way home from dinner Friday night, on 56th Street in Manhattan. Traffic between Park and Lexington stopped dead. We waited a minute. We saw a guy get out of a car a few cars ahead of us and start walking. I figured if was a garbage truck or small accident—some New York thing. So we got out and started walking home. Turns out it was five young people, standing in the street, chanting, “Black lives matter!” In between chants, they were screaming at the frustrated drivers screaming at them to get out of the road.
Two things about this comment:
1. I firmly believe that Peter wanted to put this under his "Mr. Starwood Preferred Member Travel Note of the Week," but he often complains about traveling in that space and he doesn't want it to seem like he's complaining about people protesting and chanting "Black lives matter" in the street.
2. I think Peter King did complain and really wants to complain about these people holding up traffic, and more importantly, holding him and his wife up from getting to where they needed to go. I know he complained about it. I just know that was his initial reaction.
g. Coffeenerdness: Twenty-three Starbucks stops in 15 days on the road, as calculated by our videographer, John “Venti Iced Coffee With Skim” DePetro. There might be something wrong with us. (Or just me.)
This is just absolutely ridiculous. Just ridiculous. I can't help but wonder what Peter would do if he had to live on a normal person's budget and couldn't spend $5 each time he goes to Starbucks once or twice a day.
h. Beernerdness: Championship beer of the camp trip—Sweetwater Blue (Sweetwater Brewing Company, Atlanta). Heaven in a bottle.
That's not even one of Sweetwater's top-five beers. Peter and I are not alike at all as it pertains to beer. That's probably not a bad thing for me.
j. Thanks, Runners World, for making me seem much more fit than I really am. But I’m trying—which is more than I can say for the vast majority of my adult life.
This is just a little humblebrag by Peter so that his readers know he was in "Runners World" because he is a runner now. He is embarrassed to point it out, but of course he will anyway.
The Adieu Haiku
Tom Brady in court.
Court. Not a training camp field.
Such a dumb August.
But not as dumb as this Adieu Haiku is of course. Nothing can be.
Prologue to a column, with a point about not taking preseason results seriously:
In the past 11 regular seasons, the Patriots are 136-40.
In the past 11 preseasons, the Patriots are 20-24.
(Iverson voice: “We talkin’ bout practice!”)
This type of thing continuously makes me laugh. Peter does training camp tours, speaks to players, and makes comments based on preseason games...then in MMQB he is basically like, "All of this probably doesn't mean very much." So it's all wasted time then?
I asked Eagles coach Chip Kelly if he felt frustrated with the perception that he can’t get along with players, and isn’t a good communicator, even though those who’ve been around the Eagles for years will tell you the door to his office is mostly open, while Andy Reid’s office door was mostly closed.
What side of this issue does Peter King fall on? I can't tell by the way this sentence was structured. He's so vague in his description of Kelly's open door policy compared to Andy Reid's closed door policy.
“Yeah,” Kelly said with that smile the other day, after a training-camp practice in south Philly. “But there’s nothing you can do about it. I think we do a really good job with communicating with our players.
I'm shocked, SHOCKED, that Peter King falls on the side of the NFL coach who is a quote machine. I did not see this coming.
Then he quoted two people. He said Phil Jackson once said that if you want to be liked, don’t get into coaching. “Then there’s the Mike Schmidt quote,” Kelly said.
Which one?
I wish Chip Kelly had told Peter to do an internet search to find this quote, just like Peter would do to his readers. Alas, he did not.
“He said, ‘Philadelphia is the only town where you can experience the thrill of victory, then the agony of reading about it the next day,’” Kelly said. “It’s part of the territory and rightly so. These people [media people] are awesome. It’s an unbelievably competitive market. New York has two teams so they gotta go to the Giants and the Jets. Here, there’s one team.”
That makes sense. It's why every other city with one NFL team has a competitive market like Philadelphia does. Either that or Chip Kelly doesn't want to tell an entire city's media to "fuck off."
My favorite story here? It’s about badminton—Sam Bradford becoming the first quarterback in NFL to rehab a torn ACL by playing badminton. More about that in a few paragraphs.
I can't even begin to pretend to care enough about this to be sarcastic. "The first quarterback to rehab by playing badminton..."
There’s where I’ll start—in Philadelphia, the last stop on our East/South/Midwest tour. This stuff about Kelly and his relations with players reminds me of a coach who left Cleveland in 1995. Bill Belichick was a bad communicator. Ran Bernie Kosar out of town. Too dictatorial. Players hated him. Had one winning season and won one playoff game in five years. Finished a lousy tenure eight below .500. Left Cleveland and the perception around the league was he’d only be a coordinator the rest of his career. When Robert Kraft hired him in 2000 to coach the Patriots, Kraft got comments like, “Are you nuts? Belichick’s not a head coach.” In 15 seasons with the Patriots, Belichick has averaged 13 wins a year (including postseason wins).
Not saying Kelly will be Belichick.
But Peter is saying that they are somewhat similar and if Chip Kelly ends up being like Bill Belichick then he will mention that he totally called it.
When he traded nickel back Brandon Boykin to Pittsburgh last month (for a fifth-round pick in 2016 that becomes a fourth if Boykin plays 60 percent of the defensive snaps for the Steelers in 2015), Boykin decried the lack of communication with Kelly, later saying he did not mean Kelly was racist.
It’s fairly fruitless to ask a man to defend himself against charges that he is racist.
It's difficult for me to find something that I agree with that Peter King has said, but I believe I can agree with this statement.
I simply think it’s an unfair question if people might think there’s something to it when there’s no supporting evidence to say there is. Think of it: He traded a white quarterback for a white quarterback in the offseason. He jettisoned two white veteran linemen with big pricetags—Todd Herremans and Evan Mathis. He dealt an African-American running back whose running style he didn’t like and who would soon be due a big contract for a white middle linebacker. He signed two African-American running backs in free -agency. His first five draft choices were black. His top six imports from other teams in veteran free agency were African-Americans (Byron Maxwell, Mathews and Murray were the big ones, with E.J. Biggers, Brad Jones and Walter Thurmond the complementary ones). In other words, next story please.
Those who argue Peter is wrong would state that Kelly HAS to sign an African American running back because there aren't white running backs and would also state just because he signs African American free agent only means he cares to win games, not that he isn't a racist. So he gets criticized for getting rid of African American players, who then call him a racist, but when Kelly chooses to sign African American players it's simply seen as him doing it because there aren't better options. I mean, I guess that makes sense, but it feels a bit like trying to have it both ways.
The next story here is Bradford. Four notable things as he tries to rebound from an ACL tear of the same left knee in 2013 and again in 2014:
He threw the ball well and with accuracy in the two hours I watched him, and those in camp say his arm’s looked very good.
It's not been Bradford's arm that is the question of late is it? So if Bradford had both legs amputated then I don't see (okay, I do see, but you get my exaggerated point) what this has to do with how well he throws the football with his arm. He tore his ACL twice, so the knees are the issue. Yes, the knees have to do with throwing the football, but whether Bradford is accurate throwing or not doesn't really answer questions about his knees' health.
And the badminton thing. One of Bradford’s big rehab practices was playing badminton without a net, with a doctor and athletic rehab specialist he’d just met, Bill Knowles, from Wayne, Pa.
“There’s standard rehab, where you have a sheet of what you have to accomplish every day in terms of exercise and rehab. Bill Knowles’ deal is, ‘Let’s play games.’ One day he said, ‘Let’s play badminton.’ We warmed up playing badminton. And then every day we were out here playing badminton. No net. He would hit it high and make me change directions and run. He throws all these PE games at you. You don’t think about it being rehab until you look and see the positions your body’s been in, and you think, That’s pretty close to the positions and movements you’ve got to make as a quarterback. I’m sure people up in the offices are looking out and wondering what in the world are they doing playing badminton? But, you know, you spend a year and a half doing the same exercises, and you get so tired of doing the same thing over and over,
Jeff Fisher is totally kicking himself now for trading Bradford. Bradford played badminton during his rehab sessions! Fisher should have counted on Bradford to stay healthy for one more year and then had no real viable backup option if Bradford got injured again. If Fisher had known Bradford playing badminton during his rehab, then it would have changed everything.
Bradford spoke on the field post-practice. He’s always been a sort of flatline optimist, a que sera, sera type. Asked about having any fear of it happening a third time, he said, “None. If it happens again, it’s just meant to be.
Bradford has pocketed a lot of money already playing in the NFL. If he tears an ACL again, then he can just retire, sit on his huge pile of cash from his rookie year and get some sympathy for being too injured in order to continue his career. It almost beats continuing to play and possibly being seen as a disappointment, doesn't it?
“What I’ve seen in Sam is what I thought we were going to get when I traded for him,” Kelly said. “Extremely accurate—he makes really good decisions with the football. He has as good an arm as there is in this league. He’s everything you want in a quarterback and he was before he was injured. He just has to stay healthy.”
Bradford has been in the NFL for five years now and started 49 games. Staying healthy has been his issue since he got into the NFL and don't forget he missed all of his senior year at Oklahoma with an injury. So that means out of the last six seasons he's played football, he has missed all but 49 games.
We have some really great leaders here—Malcolm Jenkins, DeMeco Ryans and now Byron Maxwell, who came over from Seattle; he’s been outstanding. I think everyone was concerned when you add this many people. But the guys we’ve added have been awesome. I like what I see.”
Clearly, Chip Kelly doesn't know these players are not white or else he wouldn't be saying this about them.
“I’ve got to show you something,” said GM David Caldwell, putting practice tape on the screen in his office. It was from a night practice that would get mostly rained out in Jacksonville. “This is the kind of play that makes us feel pretty good about Blake Bortles.”
So the GM whose tenure with his current team will be judged on whether the quarterback he handpicked will be successful is talking up said quarterback? I can't believe this would occur. Sure, Bortles has improved from his first to his second year, but sometimes I wonder if Peter remembers that GM's have a vested interest in talking up certain players. Picking the wrong quarterback in the first round of the draft is how GM's get fired.
Split right, free-agent wideout Tony Washington lines up head-up on prize free-agent cornerback Davon House. At the snap, Washington burrows into the inside shoulder of House and runs upfield. At about 13 yards, he pivots and cuts to the post. Just as he cuts, and four strides before he turns to look for the ball, Bortles releases the ball. At the split second Washington turns his head to the quarterback, the ball explodes into his hands. He doesn’t have to move his hands. It’s just there.
“The ball just hit my hands,” Washington said. “I didn’t do anything but catch it.”
“That throw reminded me of a throw Aaron would make,” said House, the ex-Packer. “I saw that same throw in Green Bay. No defending it.”
Oh, so the guy who got burnt by the throw states that there was no way to defend this pass? What else is he going to say? "It was a shitty throw, but I'm incompetent and couldn't prevent the completion. By the way, I can't believe how much money I received in free agency from the Jaguars."
I'm just saying that the two people attesting to Bortles' greatness are the GM who drafted him and the cornerback who just got a big free agent contract and got burnt by an undrafted wide receiver. Vested interests in talking Bortles up can be seen everywhere.
I still say Bortles isn't going to be a franchise quarterback. I could be wrong. My opinion is just my opinion, but it's hard to look at the opinion of the Jaguars' GM and the cornerback who got burnt on a good throw in practice and see them as neutral observations of Bortles' ability.
I asked Bortles what he was thinking when he made the throw on the field. Exhilaration, maybe? Satisfaction? Or maybe that he finally was arriving at the place where good quarterbacks were?
“I thought, Good throw. Onto the next one now.”
Good answer.
Remember Blake, Peter is on the lookout for a gritty, white quarterback to fall in love with and endear himself to by using words like "precocious" and other language that indicates you play the quarterback position like a kid would. So this quarterback could be YOU and YOU could find Peter waiting on your porch in the offseason ready to talk about how life is going. Just keeping feeding Peter the answers he wants. That's what you need to do.
Since the two teams met in that memorable 2010 NFC title game at Soldier Field—Packers 21, Bears 14—the Bears have had three coaches (Lovie Smith, Marc Trestman, John Fox) and three general managers (Jerry Angelo, Phil Emery, Ryan Pace). Green Bay has had one coach, Mike McCarthy, and one GM, Ted Thompson.
Since that game, Jay Cutler has been involved in more melodrama than any quarterback in the NFL.
I think that Tim Tebow and Tom Brady would like to have a word with Peter about the accuracy of this statement.
The only drama Aaron Rodger has been involved? I can’t think of it, unless appearing on Page Six of the New York Post because he’s been seen canoodling with Olivia Munn around North America counts as drama.
UNLESS YOU WANT TO COUNT BEING SEEN AROUND THE UNITED STATES WITH A FAMOUS ACTRESS AND HAVING IT POINTED OUT BY TABLOIDS, CAMERAS AND NEWSPAPERS THAT YOU ARE DATING THIS FAMOUS ACTRESS AS "DRAMA" THEN PETER GUESSES THIS WOULD COUNT.
“We’re going to do things to help the quarterback,” GM Ryan Pace said at Bears camp in Bourbonnais. “We have a major commitment to the run, and that will take pressure off Jay. We have extreme confidence in the coaching staff, and we think Adam Gase can do a lot of things to help Jay.
Look, Pace is doing the right thing for his guy in propping up Cutler when the rest of the city wants him gone. I’d do the exact same thing.
Notice that David Caldwell showing Peter a great pass by Blake Bortles in practice isn't seen as Caldwell "propping up" Bortles after he had a fairly crappy rookie season. Notice that Chip Kelly talking about how Sam Bradford is looking good and is everything he thought he would be after Bradford has played in 49 games over his 5 NFL seasons isn't seen by Peter as "propping up" Bradford. When Ryan Pace talks positively about Jay Cutler, a quarterback who is working with the same offensive coordinator that Peyton Manning gave credit to for helping him in Denver, well this is just Ryan Pace "propping up" Cutler. Forget all that positive shit Peter wrote about Gase when he worked with Manning, forget Bortles hasn't even proven he can be a below-average starter, and forget that Bradford can't even get on the field on a consistent basis, it's Cutler who has positive words directed at him by his GM who is getting "propped up." Got it.
Say what you want, but if you were Pace, would you have fired Cutler and gone out and signed, say, Brian Hoyer? Or Ryan Fitzpatrick? No. You’d stick with Cutler and see if a third Chicago coaching staff could right the ship.
John Fox had success with Jake Delhomme and Tim Tebow, plus Adam Gase has worked with Peyton Manning. Sticking with Cutler and his contract is probably the only option the Bears had.
At Packers camp I became convinced that McCarthy decided to give up play-calling as much because he implicitly trusts Rodgers to be a coach on the field and trusts the knowledge of Tom Clements in the offensive system.
Yes Peter, I'm sure that Mike McCarthy trusts the best quarterback in the NFL to know the offensive system and be a coach on the field. Now he can focus on other issues the Packers team has because he doesn't have to call plays. Very intuitive of you to point this out.
Detroit: Better than I thought.
Pizza: More cheese than I imagined.
Meerkats: More self-sufficient than I believed them to be.
I like how Peter's own incorrect perception of the Lions is supposed to change his reader's perception of the Lions.
"Wait, Peter King thinks the Lions are better than he thought they were? This must be something he thought he thought he knew, but it turns out he didn't know it. I must adjust my expectations for the Lions as well!"
The irony of Suh leaving? And taking his incredible run defense and sacking (a team-high 8.5 sacks) with him to Miami? In the off-season, he tutored Reid, working out with the second-year Princeton kid, and all in Detroit camp say Reid came back this summer a different player.
He started stepping on opposing players and generally acting like an asshole on the field?
More stout. Stronger, with a better interior rushing presence. At 6-2 and 306 pounds, Reid looks more lithe and penetrating than he did last year.
Peter thinks Reid looks more lithe with his luscious rippling muscles glistening in the sun as the sweat pores down from his chin to his stomach, leaving little patches of sweat on the Lions workout gear he has on, his precocious smile providing all the sunlight that's needed on this beautiful day.
You have a few options when you make a mistake in life. You can own up to it and totally admit it and take your medicine; or you can do something less; or you can lie your way through it.
How many people have you killed, Peter? Or is it that mental health issues are a character flaw? Either way, losing your daughter for five minutes in a grocery store is like having your child disappear and presumed dead.
OR you can keep saying stupid and insensitive shit and nobody calls you on it because you apologized and ARE SO DEFINITELY SORRY...until you say the same type of insensitive thing again. At that point, the media guy at your company, the same guy who eviscerates at any opportunity media members for other organizations for the slightest misstep, will just state you have apologized and he no longer sees the big deal in an effort to toe the company line and not make a big deal out of your comments as he normally would do otherwise. That's an option too.
Cleveland GM Ray Farmer wishes he’d never texted an assistant coach in the upstairs coaches' booth with suggestions/prompts/ideas/whatever during games last year.
But desperate times call for desperate measures, and he just thought he should throw in his thoughts about what the Browns were doing on offense during the games.
I just want to know what he was texting down that the Browns offense should do. Perhaps the coaching staff should have texted back a suggestion that Farmer find the Browns a good quarterback for the offense.
I expected Farmer to either no-comment this when we spoke at Browns camp last week, or maybe say he stands by whatever vanilla statement he issued when the sanction came down. But he didn’t.
You know, "whatever vanilla statement" that was issued when the sanction came down. Peter doesn't have time to go back and find it, but he's sure the statement was vanilla. That much he doesn't think that he thinks. He thinks he knows what he thinks about Farmer's statement.
“My mom and dad taught me a long time ago to take responsibility for my actions,” Farmer said, a little uneasy talking about it, on the side of the team’s practice field in Berea, Ohio. “That’s what I have done. As the time gets closer, I continue to reflect on what I did, and the cost of it. I made a mistake, and this is my penalty, and I am going to serve it.”
Yeah, but Johnny Manziel is the one who makes mistakes and should know better than to make them. He should be held to a higher standard than the Browns GM.
I’m not sure this is the most noteworthy thing coming out of Browns camp. I’ll be writing some about other things I learned there.
Hopefully Peter is writing about other things he learned at Browns camp. Otherwise, Browns fans could look to Peter for even less information than usual. Usually Browns just look to Peter for information on how their restricted free agents can be signed other NFL teams without the Browns matching the offer.
Last December, Kansas City safety Eric Berry was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma, a dangerous but treatable form of cancer.
Peter knows how Eric Berry feels because one time right before Christmas he had a vicious head cold that made it tough to get any work done.
Some words from Berry that you should hear:
Apparently Peter is under the impression that MMQB is an audio column and not a written column. Perhaps Peter has an audio version of MMQB that I'm not aware of where his readers can actually hear, not just read, the words that Eric Berry has to say. Otherwise, it's hard to hear written words.
The words from Berry are nice to hear and inspirational at times, but I can't be snarky about his situation so I will move on to tearing into Peter King. It's why we are all here anyway.
While I watched practice Thursday at the Eagles’ complex, there was this scene: Sam Bradford, his receiver covered in a seven-on-seven drill, tossed a ball harmlessly out of bounds, into the large bushes on the edge of the practice field. A few snaps later, Tim Tebow, the fourth-string quarterback battling Matt Barkley for the number three job, took a shotgun snap, looked at his options, saw none, and threw the ball into the exact same area of bushes.
TEBOW CAN THROW THE BALL AWAY AS EFFICIENTLY AS ANY OTHER QUARTERBACK!
“There’s Tebow’s intended receiver,” said a fan I was standing next to on the sidelines of practice. “The bushes.” He and his buddies got a good laugh out of that one.
This is a great example of Tebow being bullied by fans. When will the fans stop bullying poor Tim Tebow? When will jokes about his inaccuracy stop being made, despite how funny they are? Hopefully never.
No comment on Bradford’s throwaway, of course. He’s an accurate passer and deserves the benefit of the doubt. But not so Tebow. He has been so inaccurate in his brief career (47.9 percent) that when he makes a throw like that, it’s: same old Tebow.
Let's all not forget that Tim Tebow was a first round pick and should be treated like other first round picks who are quarterbacks. Before feeling sorry for him, remember that this is the fourth team who has given Tebow an opportunity to prove he's worth spending a roster spot on.
In fact, it’s not the same Tebow.
And of course Peter is only bringing up a 3rd/4th string quarterback because that's what the people want to hear about. "The people" need more Tebow, so it's totally not Peter's doing that he keeps talking about him in MMQB.
On Sunday, in his first preseason test, Tebow was marginally good, completing six of 12 passes for 69 yards while being sacked three times. He was hurried on almost every dropback behind a makeshift—and struggling—offensive line.
Peter remembers to bring up that the Eagles' offensive line was struggling, while avoiding the whole part about Tebow being a first round pick going against the 3rd/4th string defenders from the opposing team.
But the bad thing for Tebow was he showed very happy feet at times, probably because of the intense pressure. He won’t make it, though, unless he can set his feet, look over his options and make a good throw. In the off-season, he got Tom House, noted mechanics-fixer, to help him with his footwork and his arm slot, and both looked better Thursday at practice.
Not to come off as anti-Tebow, but this is pressure from 3rd/4th string pass rushers coming at him, which is different when it comes to another NFL team's starting defense rushing him. I think Tebow will work best as a change-of-pace quarterback who can present issues for the defense, but that also entails pulling the regular quarterback in order to have special "Tebow packages" and I don't think any starting quarterback ever really likes this.
“Tim’s sequencing has really improved,” Kelly said. “Not just his throw motion, but how his arm is following his legs in the right order. I’m not too worried about his arm slot; you see a guy like Philip Rivers throw from different angles and be effective. Tim’s better at the overall throw now.”
"Tim's better at the overall throw now." I'm not sure what else needs to be said.
The debut of the new PAT rules—the extra point now is snapped from the 15-yard line, making it a 33-yard attempt; the two-point conversion is attempted from the 2-yard line—has been uneventful. Except for the two-point tries. Last year, 59 two-point conversions were attempted in 256 regular-season games. This preseason, 12 have been attempted in the first 17 games. Too early to sense a trend, but teams have made five of 12 (.417).
Not only is it too early to sense a trend, but teams will more likely go for two in the preseason so they can practice the plays they run in that area during the season. I would look for the percentage of two-point conversions to fall from the 71% of preseason games that have had a two-point conversion attempted.
Checking out the 33-yard PAT after the Hall of Fame game and the full preseason schedule this weekend:
PATs attempted: 57. PATs made: 55. Percentage: .965
So the PAT has been attempted at six times the rate of the two-point conversion, even in the preseason, and almost 97% of them have been made. I wasn't against the extra point being pushed back, but I also didn't think it would make the dramatic difference that Peter seems to believe it will make.
“What is it, a 4 percent less chance you’ll make the extra point?’ Chip Kelly said. “That’s not going to be enough to make a huge change, in my opinion, in what coaches do.”
We’ll see. A couple of coaches I’ve spoken with for a story I’m working on concerning the PAT shift think there’s going to be more of a change than Kelly thinks.
Chip Kelly isn't such a genius when he disagrees with Peter King on one of Peter's pet project rule changes.
“They’ll have to get a tractor to move me outside to tackle. I’d rather get in a fist fight in a phone booth [at guard] any day. Those guys outside, there’s too much space. Too scary out there.”
—Chicago Pro Bowl guard Kyle Long, on off-season talk that the Bears may move him to tackle eventually because of his strength and athleticism.
Way to be a team player there, Kyle. Not that Long should necessarily be moved to tackle, but it sounds like Long wouldn't even be willing to consider a position change to tackle, even if it helped the team.
“I came home to find out that my boys received two trophies for nothing, participation trophies! While I am very proud of my boys for everything they do and will encourage them till the day I die, these trophies will be given back until they EARN a real trophy. I'm sorry I'm not sorry for believing that everything in life should be earned and I'm not about to raise two boys to be men by making them believe that they are entitled to something just because they tried their best.”
—Steelers linebacker James Harrison, in an Instagram post next to the two athletic trophies his sons received—and that he sent back.
Apparently the act of a parent sending a participation trophy back is enough to cause a several day discussion online about whether Harrison's actions are correct or not. Who cares? If he wants to send his son's trophies back, that's his choice. No need to legislate whether he is a good or bad parent.
Now that San Diego has signed Philip Rivers long-term, two of the three franchise quarterbacks from the 2004 draft class are tied up through the 2019 season—when Ben Roethlisberger will be 37 in Pittsburgh and Rivers 38 with the Chargers. Now it’s Eli Manning’s turn.
Manning wants to be the highest-paid quarterback in the NFL. I think every NFL quarterback wants to be the highest-paid quarterback in the NFL, so Eli's wishes are probably not news.
It’s fascinating to look at how similar the three quarterbacks have been, for the most part. Rivers’ numbers are down, slightly, because he didn’t start his first two years in San Diego, sitting behind Drew Brees. Manning has started an eye-popping 178 games in a row. Roethlisberger started early in Pittsburgh. But the fact that all three could have such similar numbers—look at the touchdowns here: all are between 251 and 259 in their regular-season careers—is amazing.
I'll spare you the chart, but the biggest difference is the QB rating and number of interceptions. Roethlisberger's QB rating is 93.9, Rivers 95.7, and Manning 82.4. Eli also has 54 more interceptions than Roethlisberger and 63 more interceptions than Rivers. So, they are similar, except Manning is a bit more of a turnover machine than Rivers and Roesthlisberger.
The guess here: Manning ends up very close to Roethlisberger. Super Bowl wins trump all. I’m sure Jerry Reese and the Giants will try to hold the line on anything north of Roethlisberger, because Aaron Rodgers is the gold standard at $22 million per year. But Tom Condon, Manning’s agent, surely will argue that because the Rodgers deal was signed two-and-a-third years ago, and the cap in 2015 has increased $20.8 million over 2013, the Rodgers deal can’t be held up as unbeatable.
I'm sure the Giants would counter with "Hey, Rodgers is the best quarterback in the NFL and we aren't paying Manning more than him."
Factoid of the Week That May Interest Only Me
Here is a little factoid that has never interested Peter. A "factoid" isn't a tiny fact, but a short statement with dubious accuracy. Fuck the dictionary though, Peter makes up his own definitions.
So … our team at The MMQB had a good and informative trip on the road. We also had some fun. See our selfie-stick photo from the last day on the Eagles’ sideline? Videographer John DePetro (white T-shirt) took it, and you can see, from left, Robert Klemko, Kalyn Kahler, Emily Kaplan (front), me, and Jenny Vrentas.
J.J. Watt does not approve of this selfie. None of the THE MMQB team members were posing while showing off their arms in a sleeveless shirt nor were any of them grinding and working hard trying to make themselves better. That's the only time selfies can be taken according to the "J.J. Watt Book of How Everyone Should Act."
Our crack tour manager, Kalyn Kahler, loaded up the van with Chipotle, and we set off around 8:45 for Philly. One problem: Robert Klemko couldn’t handle the sour cream in his Chipotle something-or-other, and so about a half-hour out of town he started looking for food on his RoadAhead app.
What a country. Dinosaur Bar-B-Que, the famous Syracuse meathouse, was 15 minutes ahead, and Klemko put in an order.
WHAT A COUNTRY! There are restaurants throughout the United States that sell food to people who are willing to use currency, credit card or check to pay for this food. I mean, these restaurants are everywhere and you can even call ahead to get an order ready for pickup. WHAT A FUCKING COUNTRY!
Then Peter talks about "Super Troopers," naturally being over a decade late to the party. I don't really feel like going through his whole story about this right meow.
Blaine Gabbert's passer rating in Preseason Week 1 last year: 1.7. Blaine Gabbert's passer rating tonight: 125.6
— Matt Barrows (@mattbarrows) August 16, 2015
But again, let's not overreact to one preseason game. Here is an implied conclusion on how much Blaine Gabbert has improved though.This one is a tough pill to swallow. Finally got the opportunity I always wanted since I entered this league. Took me 4 years to get there.
— Niles Paul (@Niles_Paul84) August 14, 2015
You swallowed a pill? Did this pill violate the drug agreement agreed to by the union and the NFL? Doesn't matter. You are suspended four games for violating the drug agreement, pending a review of this violation by Roger Goodell. If you would like to appeal Goodell's reviewed decision then you can appeal to Roger Goodell. If you would like to appeal this appeal then you can bring the case to the Supreme Court where Roger Goodell will decide whether to hear your appeal. If you would like to appeal this decision, then talk to God, who will then consult with Roger Goodell and Russell Wilson on what the decision should be. There is no appeal after this.Ten Things I Think I Think
1. I think the upshot of the Philip Rivers contract extension—Chris Mortensen reported it as four years and $83.25 million, beginning in 2016; he will play out his final year of the current deal this year at $15 million—is that the Chargers, wherever they play in 2016 and beyond, will be quarterbacked by Rivers. He and his wife, who is pregnant with their eighth child, love San Diego
I read this initially as "He and his wife, who is pregnant with their eighth love child..." Because of course I read it that way.
2. I think Ray Rice will be in some team’s camp by Sept. 15. Just a hunch. The Browns have some interest, and depending on injuries in the preseason, other teams will too. I heard this in three places along my camp tour so far: Teams are concerned about the fallout for picking up a man who decked his fiancée in an elevator, but are as concerned or more concerned with the fact that the last time he was on the field, in 2013, he was a less-than-mediocre back.
So Peter is reporting that NFL teams don't really have a moral compass, they only will choose to sign a player based on how well he can perform on the field? No way. This probably explains why Greg Hardy has a job right now. I'm in shock that NFL teams judge players by how much they can help on the field and not based on what kind of person this player might be. What a twist that I didn't expect.
With thanks to several coaches/GMs on my camp tour, here's my veteran free-agent running back short list in order:
Chris Johnson. Turns 30 in September. Brings baggage. The 2,006-yard season seems 16 years away, not six. But the Cardinals may sign him this week. No one says he can't be a weapon with a good line in front of him.
Nope, I'm saying that Chris Johnson can't be a weapon with a good line in front of him. I don't believe he can be.
Knowshon Moreno will be a good candidate to be signed. The Dolphins still have some scant interest in bringing him back.
Oh man, calm down with the interest you have there Dolphins. "Scant" interest in Moreno. Good thing it's not "miniscule" interest in him. If Moreno came back and played well it would probably help the precocious Dolphins quarterback Ryan Tannehill live up to the potential that I keep hearing he has.
Then Peter updates us on the situation in Los Angeles about which teams could end up relocating.....Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz....
6. I think much has been made of Jet-turned-Bill linebacker IK Enemkpali breaking Geno Smith’s jaw Tuesday, and the subsequent fallout. Several points to make:
a. I was amazed, from the four coaches/players and one highly respected retired player I spoke with in the past few days that the blame for the incident in the eyes of the NFLers should be shared. I mean, almost equally shared. As one active quarterback told me, “You just do not go around owing teammates money—especially a teammate who doesn’t make much money.”
I think that's a good rule in general. You just don't go around owing anybody money. Just anyone. It can be a teammate, a friend, an acquaintance, the IRS, pretty much any/everyone.
c. From the respected retired player (not a Jet): “I can tell you there’d have been a huge problem in the locker rooms I was in if guys thought the quarterback owed money to a guy and didn’t pay—even if it was in dispute whether he owed him money or not. It wouldn’t matter what the reality was. Guys would be pissed.”
You know, if Geno Smith was a better leader then he wouldn't get punched in the face. Why aren't there more hot takes about this position? What are the odds this "respected retired player" is Brett Favre?
e. Has there ever been a more transparent slap at a player than Enemkpali’s apology about the incident when he got to Buffalo, when he apologized to everyone in the Jets’ building except for the one whose jaw he broke in two places? Enemkpali: “I want to apologize to the Jets organization, the fans, my teammates and the coaches. I apologize for what happened. It should have never happened. I should have walked away from the situation. It was never my intentions to hurt anybody.” Then he thanked the Bills for picking him up.
He owed money. You just can't owe people money.
7. I think you shouldn’t blame me for the football locker-room ethos that shifts the blame from the assaulter to the assaultee. I’m the messenger here. I’m just telling you what five people I respect said about the punching in the wake of it. In my opinion, there’s never a good-enough reason for punching another man in the face.
Of course Peter thinks this. I'm not in favor of punching people in the face, but few people have a clue what happened in the locker room and if Geno Smith was being a dipshit about this then he may deserve to be punched in the face. Maybe.
8. I think if you’re wondering about the sanction awaiting Enemkpali by the NFL, well, I wouldn’t count on him being in a Bills uniform for the first couple of weeks. After the punchout, NFL VP Troy Vincent sent a memo to all coaches and general managers reminding them of the prohibition on fighting on the field and off.
Topics #7 and #8 are part of the same discussion, so they should be with Topic #6. I can't figure out why Peter insists on moving them to a different number of his outline, other than he doesn't really have 10 things he thinks he thinks for the week and needs to stretch it out a bit to cover up for this fact.
10. I think these are my non-football thoughts of the week:
c. Sign of the 2015 times: My wife and I were in a cab on our way home from dinner Friday night, on 56th Street in Manhattan. Traffic between Park and Lexington stopped dead. We waited a minute. We saw a guy get out of a car a few cars ahead of us and start walking. I figured if was a garbage truck or small accident—some New York thing. So we got out and started walking home. Turns out it was five young people, standing in the street, chanting, “Black lives matter!” In between chants, they were screaming at the frustrated drivers screaming at them to get out of the road.
Two things about this comment:
1. I firmly believe that Peter wanted to put this under his "Mr. Starwood Preferred Member Travel Note of the Week," but he often complains about traveling in that space and he doesn't want it to seem like he's complaining about people protesting and chanting "Black lives matter" in the street.
2. I think Peter King did complain and really wants to complain about these people holding up traffic, and more importantly, holding him and his wife up from getting to where they needed to go. I know he complained about it. I just know that was his initial reaction.
g. Coffeenerdness: Twenty-three Starbucks stops in 15 days on the road, as calculated by our videographer, John “Venti Iced Coffee With Skim” DePetro. There might be something wrong with us. (Or just me.)
This is just absolutely ridiculous. Just ridiculous. I can't help but wonder what Peter would do if he had to live on a normal person's budget and couldn't spend $5 each time he goes to Starbucks once or twice a day.
h. Beernerdness: Championship beer of the camp trip—Sweetwater Blue (Sweetwater Brewing Company, Atlanta). Heaven in a bottle.
That's not even one of Sweetwater's top-five beers. Peter and I are not alike at all as it pertains to beer. That's probably not a bad thing for me.
j. Thanks, Runners World, for making me seem much more fit than I really am. But I’m trying—which is more than I can say for the vast majority of my adult life.
This is just a little humblebrag by Peter so that his readers know he was in "Runners World" because he is a runner now. He is embarrassed to point it out, but of course he will anyway.
The Adieu Haiku
Tom Brady in court.
Court. Not a training camp field.
Such a dumb August.
But not as dumb as this Adieu Haiku is of course. Nothing can be.
Thursday, August 6, 2015
4 comments Rick Telander Thinks Jay Cutler Should Be More Like Tim Tebow Because Tebow is "An Effective Quarterback"
Bears fans wondered last year what was wrong with Jay Cutler. NFL analysts either still believe Cutler can be a great NFL quarterback or think the Bears should give up on him. John Fox is either going to make Cutler into a quarterback who makes great decisions with a conservative, run-based game plan (plus third down draws!) or pull him by Week 5 in favor of Jimmy Clausen. Not that Fox wants to re-live the Clausen Experiment of 2010 of course, but he does what he has to in order to win. He did, after all, get Tim Tebow to win games as a starting quarterback in the NFL. That's impressive. Speaking of Tim Tebow, Rick Telander believes Jay Cutler should be more like Tim Tebow. Rick wants Jay Cutler to learn how to be an effective NFL quarterback. Now unless Rick has traveled to the year 2019 during his lifetime, and at that point Tebow has actually become an effective NFL quarterback, I have no idea why he would state Tebow is an effective quarterback. But hey, we should all be more like Tebow.
Here’s a thought: If Tim Tebow can learn to be an effective NFL quarterback, why can’t our buddy Jay Cutler?
Jay Cutler's career numbers: 61-58 record as a starter, 61.7% completion, 183 TD's, 130 INT's, 27749 yards, 233.2 yards per game, 85.2 rating. 324 rushing attempts, 1425 yards, 4.4 yards per carry, 8 touchdowns.
Tim Tebow's career numbers: 8-6 as a starter, 47.9% completion, 17 TD's, 9 INT's, 2422 yards, 69.2 yards per game, 75.3 rating. 197 rushing attempts, 989 yards, 5.0 yards per carry, 12 touchdowns.
Granted, Tebow's sample size is significantly smaller, but if Telander will make the assertion then I will counter the assertion with the statistics I have. Tebow is not an effective quarterback compared to Jay Cutler, even if you include the rushing yards each has. Tebow has running plays called for him more than Cutler does, but I was surprised that Cutler has 324 rushing attempts in his career. So no, Tim Tebow did not learn to be an effective NFL quarterback and he in fact regressed as his career went along. If anything, Tebow forgot how to be an effective NFL quarterback as his career continued with the Jets and Patriots.
You may say, "Ben, we are going to learn that Tebow is working with Tom House to be an effective quarterback, so it's safe to assume this will be true." I think that's dumb, yet it's the assumption Rick Telander works this column around.
Now, I’m not saying Tebow, last seen playing quality minutes in the league back in 2011, will ever be Tom Brady. But he’s trying to be.
When I was younger, I was trying to be an NBA player. I worked hard at practicing. That doesn't mean Josh Smith needs to be more like me.
Ah yes, this is where the testimonials will begin. I'm not saying Tebow doesn't work hard, but he's hired Tom House (and I assume House is getting paid) to work with him, so naturally there will be quotes from House describing what a FANTASTIC JOB he has done with Tebow and how Tebow is working so hard. This could be true, but remember, House is getting paid (essentially) to say this. Based on quotes from someone Tim Tebow has hired, Rick Telander is making the assumption that (a) Cutler isn't working as hard as Tebow, (b) if Cutler worked this hard he would be a better quarterback, and (c) this now makes Tebow an "effective quarterback." All of these assumptions could be very, very incorrect.
Here’s a thought: If Tim Tebow can learn to be an effective NFL quarterback, why can’t our buddy Jay Cutler?
Jay Cutler's career numbers: 61-58 record as a starter, 61.7% completion, 183 TD's, 130 INT's, 27749 yards, 233.2 yards per game, 85.2 rating. 324 rushing attempts, 1425 yards, 4.4 yards per carry, 8 touchdowns.
Tim Tebow's career numbers: 8-6 as a starter, 47.9% completion, 17 TD's, 9 INT's, 2422 yards, 69.2 yards per game, 75.3 rating. 197 rushing attempts, 989 yards, 5.0 yards per carry, 12 touchdowns.
Granted, Tebow's sample size is significantly smaller, but if Telander will make the assertion then I will counter the assertion with the statistics I have. Tebow is not an effective quarterback compared to Jay Cutler, even if you include the rushing yards each has. Tebow has running plays called for him more than Cutler does, but I was surprised that Cutler has 324 rushing attempts in his career. So no, Tim Tebow did not learn to be an effective NFL quarterback and he in fact regressed as his career went along. If anything, Tebow forgot how to be an effective NFL quarterback as his career continued with the Jets and Patriots.
You may say, "Ben, we are going to learn that Tebow is working with Tom House to be an effective quarterback, so it's safe to assume this will be true." I think that's dumb, yet it's the assumption Rick Telander works this column around.
Now, I’m not saying Tebow, last seen playing quality minutes in the league back in 2011, will ever be Tom Brady. But he’s trying to be.
When I was younger, I was trying to be an NBA player. I worked hard at practicing. That doesn't mean Josh Smith needs to be more like me.
And for our little hypothetical equation, that counts for a lot.
I'm not sure what this hypothetical equation is all about, but I'm pretty sure "natural talent to be a quarterback" is a big factor in NFL success, so if that's not part of the hypothetical equation comparing Tebow and Cutler then it should be.
Is Cutler, now in his 10th year in the NFL, with 119 starts
under his belt, trying to remake himself into a winning, Super
Bowl-caliber QB? We don’t know, since Cutler communicates with the same
openness of a trap-door spider, deep in his hole.
Cutler has plenty of other problems, but isn't it funny how many sportswriters' issue with Cutler always ends up being, "He's not nice and friendly to us when we want to talk to him"? It always comes back to that at some point and leads me to believe that if Cutler turned into Jerome Bettis (minus all the drug dealing and gang-banging as a youth which will be forgotten and never brought up again), then he wouldn't get quite so much criticism for just being a decent quarterback sometimes. But the media has to be harder on Cutler because he's not nice and sweet to them. It always feels like that's part of the evaluation of Cutler, either knowingly or unknowingly, from the sports media.
But let’s say he is. Now with a new coach and his fifth
offensive coordinator in seven years, Cutler has a chance for rebirth.
If he wants to be redone. And it’s even possible. It’s not like his
career stats are terrible. He has thrown for almost 28,000 yards and 183
touchdowns. Last season, from an angle, looks like it was a dandy.
Nearly 99% of college quarterbacks who want to play in the NFL would accept these statistics happily and go live life on a pile of money, but that's not the standard Cutler should be held to is it? Lower these numbers, lower the skill level and then think, "Shouldn't Cutler be more like THAT GUY?" If the answer is "absolutely not, are you high?" then congratulations, you aren't a crazy person and Rick Telander's column makes no sense to you.
So Cutler ought to want to improve. He has to improve.
Read this sentence again while remembering that Tebow is supposedly working harder than ever and seems to be regressing in his ability and opportunities to be an NFL quarterback. Tebow peaked a few years ago and Telander is comparing Cutler to Tebow, as if Tebow hasn't regressed through his career. His statistics don't lie.
At any rate, here’s what’s up with Tebow, probably most
remembered for his college exploits at Florida: Heisman Trophy winner,
two-time NCAA national champion (2006 and 2008) and lots of Bible
messages on his eye patches. Oh, and there was the famed ‘‘Tebowing,’’
the kneeling in closed-eyes, prayerful motionlessness as teammates and
fans swirled around him.
The point is, Tebow can’t really throw. Everybody knows this.
Everybody knows this except for Tim Tebow and the people who are paid to say positive things about Tebow because they have spent time and their credibility trying to turn Tebow into a quarterback who can throw the football. These people will state they believe Tebow can throw the football, partly because they have a good reason to say this.
It’s likely the Bears, led by running back Marion Barber’s
inability to do something as simple as not run out of bounds and stop
the clock in a game against the Denver Broncos in December 2011,
extended Tebow’s quarterbacking career by a season or so.
I'm surprised Rick isn't trying to find a way to pin this on Jay Cutler somehow. I'm sure it can be done.
"You know, if Jay Cutler was a hard-working quarterback who cared about his chosen profession and wanted to answer our questions, then maybe he could have thrown the ball in this situation to run the clock out, instead of having to rely on a backup running back to do his dirty work for him."
That sad situation in Denver occurred with the Bears leading
by three. Barber cluelessly stopped the clock, giving the wild-armed
Tebow a rare moment to eke out a come-from-behind overtime win.
And this is the quarterback who Telander says Jay Cutler should emulate and he also called Tebow "an effective quarterback." Now Tebow is "wild-armed."
So Tebow, out of the game entirely for the last two seasons,
has been religiously (oops, wrong word?) training under former
major-league pitcher Tom House, learning how to pass a football. House,
most famous for catching Hank Aaron’s 715th home-run ball in the Atlanta
Braves’ bullpen, runs a complex and difficult program to break down a
quarterback’s improper throwing style and build it back up the right
way.
How does Rick know that Jay Cutler hasn't been working on improving his throwing motion or hasn't worked extra hard this offseason to improve his deficiencies from last season? Tebow has talked up his hard work because (a) he was trying to break back into the NFL, (b) wanted to keep his name out there in the mind of GM's, and (c) wanted GM's to know he was working on the biggest criticism of him, which was his throwing motion. Tebow publicized his hard work because that was one way to get back into the NFL. Jay Cutler at the very least has an NFL roster spot (possibly due to his contract), so he doesn't need to go around and tell everyone how hard he is working. Plus, why would the same guy who Rick Telander accuses of "communicating with the same openness of a trap-door spider" go around telling everyone how hard he is working? He's not good at communicating. It is possible to do hard work and not tell everyone about it.
Tebow was nothing but wrong.
He had a good run for a half season or so.
He threw the ball all with his arm, way to the side, in a
windup that was something from a Walt Disney cartoon. His throws were
slow to launch and not very accurate, made evident by his 49.7 percent
completion rate in two seasons with the Broncos and one with the New
York Jets. He was a tight end/fullback behind center.
Right, so why should Jay Cutler be like him again? The work ethic that Tebow has? Maybe, but there is a difference in not working hard and simply not publicizing how hard you are working. There is always a perception that if Cutler just worked harder he would be a better quarterback. Maybe he does work hard and all of his measurables and talent lead to what he is.
Now? Well, maybe not perfect. Maybe not even average for the
NFL. But at least hopeful. And, yes, he worked his tail off to improve.
By definition, I don't think a third-string quarterback can be considered an average NFL quarterback. Hope has nothing to do with it. Tebow can have hope in one hand and shit in the other and see which one gets filled first. Also, Tebow has worked really hard to improve, that's great, but it doesn't mean Cutler needs to be more like him or doesn't work hard enough. It's entirely possible that Cutler has worked hard on becoming a great quarterback without requiring people talking about it. Maybe not, though I'm sure Rick Telander believes he knows the truth.
By definition, I don't think a third-string quarterback can be considered an average NFL quarterback. Hope has nothing to do with it. Tebow can have hope in one hand and shit in the other and see which one gets filled first. Also, Tebow has worked really hard to improve, that's great, but it doesn't mean Cutler needs to be more like him or doesn't work hard enough. It's entirely possible that Cutler has worked hard on becoming a great quarterback without requiring people talking about it. Maybe not, though I'm sure Rick Telander believes he knows the truth.
‘‘He’s not one-dimensional anymore,’’ House told USA Today, ‘‘so I think he’s done a great job.’’
Ah yes, this is where the testimonials will begin. I'm not saying Tebow doesn't work hard, but he's hired Tom House (and I assume House is getting paid) to work with him, so naturally there will be quotes from House describing what a FANTASTIC JOB he has done with Tebow and how Tebow is working so hard. This could be true, but remember, House is getting paid (essentially) to say this. Based on quotes from someone Tim Tebow has hired, Rick Telander is making the assumption that (a) Cutler isn't working as hard as Tebow, (b) if Cutler worked this hard he would be a better quarterback, and (c) this now makes Tebow an "effective quarterback." All of these assumptions could be very, very incorrect.
House says it takes about 1,000 perfect repetitions to even start to change a bad habit, and 10,000 to master the skill.
Actually, Malcolm Gladwell says that. It's even in a book that Gladwell wrote called "Outliers."
Actually, Malcolm Gladwell says that. It's even in a book that Gladwell wrote called "Outliers."
‘‘He’s got his 10,000 reps,’’ House said. ‘‘Can this guy be an NFL quarterback? Well, our data says yes.’’
The data says "YES" Tebow can be an NFL quarterback. The reality does not reflect the data at this point. And again, Rick Telander is bashing Jay Cutler based on comments made by someone who works for and has skin in the game on whether Tebow ends up being an NFL quarterback. It's like asking Jay Cutler's wife if he works hard enough to be an NFL quarterback. Actually, Kristin Cavilavaillari probably has enough money on her own and wouldn't need to lie in order to give an answer. I would love to know a situation when Tom House or George Whitfield would say, "Oh hell no, this guy isn't ever going to be an NFL quarterback because he hasn't improved any" after that quarterback has worked under their tutelage. It makes no sense, because any negative comment also reflects on them. So consider the source when trying to say Cutler should work to improve like Tebow has so obviously improved.
The data says "YES" Tebow can be an NFL quarterback. The reality does not reflect the data at this point. And again, Rick Telander is bashing Jay Cutler based on comments made by someone who works for and has skin in the game on whether Tebow ends up being an NFL quarterback. It's like asking Jay Cutler's wife if he works hard enough to be an NFL quarterback. Actually, Kristin Cavilavaillari probably has enough money on her own and wouldn't need to lie in order to give an answer. I would love to know a situation when Tom House or George Whitfield would say, "Oh hell no, this guy isn't ever going to be an NFL quarterback because he hasn't improved any" after that quarterback has worked under their tutelage. It makes no sense, because any negative comment also reflects on them. So consider the source when trying to say Cutler should work to improve like Tebow has so obviously improved.
Ten thousand perfect throws is a lot. Like a serious lot.
Tebow was signed by the Philadelphia Eagles in April, so we’ll see
pretty soon if he’s actually reconstructed himself.
Yes, and if Tebow plays well for Chip Kelly then that obviously means Cutler didn't work hard enough and should be more like Tebow.
Yes, and if Tebow plays well for Chip Kelly then that obviously means Cutler didn't work hard enough and should be more like Tebow.
As for Cutler, a guy blessed with a rifle arm but cursed by a
strange social obliviousness, who knows if he would practice anything
10,000 times just to improve, to try to be the best.
EXACTLY. Rick Telander doesn't know if Cutler would practice 10,000 times in order to improve, but because Cutler isn't friendly (and it always goes back to that, never forget that) to the media then Telander assumes Cutler won't practice that much. He then assumes because Tebow does practice a lot, as described by the person paid to say such things, then Cutler should be like Tebow...even though he may already be. In the words of Telander, "who knows?"
EXACTLY. Rick Telander doesn't know if Cutler would practice 10,000 times in order to improve, but because Cutler isn't friendly (and it always goes back to that, never forget that) to the media then Telander assumes Cutler won't practice that much. He then assumes because Tebow does practice a lot, as described by the person paid to say such things, then Cutler should be like Tebow...even though he may already be. In the words of Telander, "who knows?"
Maybe, at 32, it’s too late for him to reconfigure his football body and mind.
Maybe he's already reconfigured and this is where we are at now. Who knows? Just because Cutler doesn't have a coach (who he pays) saying how reconfigured he is, it doesn't mean he hasn't put forth the effort.
Maybe he's already reconfigured and this is where we are at now. Who knows? Just because Cutler doesn't have a coach (who he pays) saying how reconfigured he is, it doesn't mean he hasn't put forth the effort.
But it’s fun to think he could.
Yes, it's fun to think Cutler could reconfigure his football body and mind like Tebow has done, as claimed by the person who has a vested interest in stating publicly that Tebow has reconfigured his body and mind. If only Cutler were more like Tebow. He would just have to be a little less successful as an NFL quarterback. It's fun to think if Cutler were a little less prickly than maybe sportswriters wouldn't (knowingly or unknowingly) factor this into their evaluation of him.
Yes, it's fun to think Cutler could reconfigure his football body and mind like Tebow has done, as claimed by the person who has a vested interest in stating publicly that Tebow has reconfigured his body and mind. If only Cutler were more like Tebow. He would just have to be a little less successful as an NFL quarterback. It's fun to think if Cutler were a little less prickly than maybe sportswriters wouldn't (knowingly or unknowingly) factor this into their evaluation of him.
Saturday, April 25, 2015
8 comments Skip Bayless Evaluates Why NFL QB Draft Choices Fail; HAHA! I'm Just Kidding, Skip Bayless Talks about Himself and His Old Opinions of NFL QB Draft Choices
I imagine the home of Skip Bayless isn't really a home. I imagine it has approximately 500 mirrors and mostly serves as a shrine to Skip's favorite person, himself. Every article he writes at ESPN.com is really just about Skip's opinion and the opinion of others regarding Skip's opinion. There's no substance to any of Skip's writing, instead it is mostly "Here is my opinion and what others thought about my opinion and do you mind if we talk about me a little bit more?" So under the guise of figuring out why quarterbacks taken in the first round of the NFL Draft miss the mark in the NFL, Skip reviews the quarterbacks who he believed would succeed and discusses how sometimes he's right and sometimes he is wrong, but mostly it's just another shrine to Skip Bayless and his opinions. The use of the words "I," "I'm," and "I've" in this article is so prevalent only the most noble and bored of adventurers would take on the expedition of counting how many times Skip uses these words.
I'll admit it's getting a little eerie. Six times before NFL drafts, I've taken a stand for quarterbacks doubted by many. For a while, they've all made me look like a genius.
It's eerie that Skip really doesn't know what the fuck he is talking about. Weird, isn't it?
Then ...
Things have gone wrong.
They have gone wrong for a variety of reasons, but mostly because Skip was never right and NFL defensive coordinators found a way to game plan around stopping the strengths of these quarterbacks. It's much in the same way that Skip would build a bridge and claim "for a while" it was a work of genius until one day the entire bridge fell and killed dozens of people and hundreds of innocent water creatures. Skip will still insist "for a while" that bridge worked really well, while ignoring that isn't the mark of success at all.
In each case I wound up publicly pilloried as a madman, a football fool, a quarterback hack who is daft when it comes to the draft. I still believe I deserve credit for always being so initially right. You decide.
It's all about Skip and the reaction of the public to the idiotic words he speaks because ESPN inexplicably gives him a forum to speak these words. And no, there is no credit being given for being initially right, because being initially right where a quarterback plays well for a season or two isn't correctly predicting that quarterback will succeed in the NFL. Success isn't determined over a short span of time. There's really no debate that can be had on this. Skip isn't right because Tim Tebow fooled defensive coordinators for almost an entire season, at least until they caught on to how to game plan around him.
But as we go case by case, you'll see a common cause of eventual failure -- one I can't account for pre-draft.
Skip tries to blame outside forces for the reason each quarterback didn't succeed in the NFL, in order to cover up for the fact "He isn't a good quarterback" could not have been accounted for prior to the draft. Skip can try and talk around it all he wants, and I will admit it's a guessing game whether some of these quarterbacks will succeed in the NFL, but the bottom line is that Skip went hard all-in on some of these quarterbacks and has ended up being wrong. He can talk around it, but that's the bottom line.
Most of these quarterbacks wound up with franchises whose executives and coaches were dangerously split on them. I was all-in. The team that drafted them was not.
Of course, it is the franchise's fault for not being all-in on these quarterbacks. Naturally. It's not that those executives and coaches who argued against the drafting of these quarterbacks were right, it's just they were only right because they argued against drafting these quarterbacks based on legitimate reasons that ended up being correct. But the reasons wouldn't have been correct if they had just been all-in on the quarterback. It all makes sense if you turn your brain off.
You'll also see a common flaw: Several of "my guys" failed to handle their success and/or failure in unstable and uneasy situations.
And really, who could have seen that coming? Johnny Manziel partied a lot in college and was drafted by an organization that seems somewhat dysfunctional? Who could have seen that he wouldn't succeed?
You can argue I've been much more long-term accurate on which quarterbacks are being dangerously overrated. I said on air JaMarcus Russell and Sam Bradford were very bad ideas for No.1 overall picks, that Alex Smith would never live up to being taken No. 1 and that Matt Leinart, Brady Quinn, Jake Locker, Blaine Gabbert and Christian Ponder were not first-round picks.
You could argue that, but it wouldn't mean Skip wasn't wrong about these other six quarterbacks.
Those weren't popular stances.
Skip is a rebel and takes unpopular stances, based on the fact Stephen A. Smith disagrees with him. As is well known, Stephen A. Smith speaks for the majority opinion of the sports-loving world.
Neither were these ...
2006: I said on air the Houston Texans should take Vince Young No. 1 overall, in part because he grew up in Houston and had just led the University of Texas to the national championship with the greatest individual performance in title-game history.
Does Skip remember how popular Vince Young was coming out of Texas? It was not popular to say he would be successful in the NFL? I do disagree. Also, you can see from the start this isn't a column about WHY NFL quarterbacks taken early in the draft fail, as promised in the column title, but is about Skip Bayless and what he has said on the air. One other thing, to indicate the Texans should have taken Young simply because he grew up in Houston and led the University of Texas to a national championship is very bad reasoning for taking Young #1 overall.
Houston shockingly opted for defensive end Mario Williams, leaving Reggie Bush for the New Orleans Saints and Young for the Tennessee Titans general manager Floyd Reese and Titans owner Bud Adams,
It was shocking in that Mario Williams really worked out well for the Texans and Bush never really was the running back he promised himself to be in college. So it's almost like the Texans knew what they were doing.
One big problem: coach Jeff Fisher was against drafting Young.
Jeff Fisher is never wrong and you take it back right now.
Still, Young often made me look pretty good. He was offensive rookie of the year. He made two Pro Bowls. He went 30-17 as Tennessee's starter.
And that's really what this is all about isn't it? Which quarterbacks made Skip look good and which quarterbacks didn't make Skip look good. Vince Young did have success for a while, but this doesn't mean Skip was right about him. I think Mario Williams was the right pick for the Texans.
But predictably, he often clashed with Fisher. It appeared Fisher helped turn some in the local and national media against Young. His skin grew thin.
IT WASN'T YOUNG'S FAULT HE FAILED IN THE NFL! IF HE HAD JUST GOTTEN ANOTHER SHOT WITH ANOTHER NFL TEAM HE WOULD HAVE SUCCEE---
Incredibly, after a season in Philadelphia and a camp with the Buffalo Bills and another with the Green Bay Packers, the league rejected Young at age 30.
This is shocking that Skip blames Young's failures on the environment in Tennessee and Young goes to another NFL team and continues to not be a good quarterbacks. It's almost like, and I almost dare not say it, Vince Young wasn't really a great quarterback and Skip was wrong about Young. But no, I'm sure the issues Jeff Fisher had with Young followed him to Philadelphia, Buffalo and to Green Bay. That makes more sense than Skip just outright being wrong.
What if Fisher had wanted to draft Young, had publicly invested his pride in him, had supported him through the growing pains? Young was too good for it to go so wrong.
What if Vince Young had success early in his career and this pretty much rejects the idea the biggest issue with Young's progress in the NFL is that he wasn't supported enough, because it doesn't make sense for him to play well at the beginning of his career and suddenly need more nurturing as he played more NFL games? I'm sure the Titans could have done something to help Young more, but three other teams took a look at Young and rejected him.
Another quarterback taken in that 2006 draft made the Pro Bowl in his second full season of starting. When Jay Cutler was a junior at Vanderbilt (my alma mater) I began raving about him on air, predicting he'd be a "franchise quarterback." Of course, that proclamation was met with chuckles. A Vandy quarterback?
As always, it is about Skip Bayless. Sense a trend that permeates Skip's entire writing style?
"Here's a quarterback. Here's what I thought about that quarterback. Here's what others thought about my thoughts about this quarterback. Here's an excuse for why I was wrong, but this doesn't mean I was wrong and others were right."
Cutler was the "lucky" one of the six debatable quarterbacks I loved before their drafts. (He's also the most prototypical pocket passer who least relied on his legs.) Shanahan really wanted him. So did the Bears. I certainly wasn't wrong about Cutler's ability. He's no bust. But he is what he was at Vandy: a little more interested in pulling off the occasional "wow" throw than winning.
Skip wasn't wrong about Cutler's ability? Is Cutler a franchise quarterback? No? Skip said Cutler was a franchise quarterback and he isn't, so that leads me to the conclusion Skip was wrong.
2009: I said on air that Mark Sanchez was being overrated. He went fifth to the Jets. I also raved about Josh Freeman and said the Tampa Bay Bucs stole him at No. 17.
Ah yes, the inconsistencies of Skip come to the forefront. He uses "games won" to make a case for why Vince Young could have been a great quarterback if it weren't for that meddling Jeff Fisher. All of a sudden he skips over that Mark Sanchez went to two AFC Championship Games as the starter for the Jets. Sure, I wouldn't give Sanchez credit for that, but in his eagerness to show how right he was about Sanchez, Skip changes the metric he uses for quarterback success. All of a sudden "games won" doesn't hold as much meaning to Skip when he's talking about a quarterback he thought wouldn't succeed in the NFL. Weird how that works.
I'd watched Kansas State's 6-6, 240-pound Freeman play big in his biggest games against Texas and Oklahoma.
No one else saw this. Only Skip saw Freeman play big in his biggest games against Texas and Oklahoma. (By the way, notice how Skip's love for the University of Texas seems to play a part in his evaluations?)
In his first full season as Tampa Bay's starter, he made me look pretty great by throwing 25 touchdown passes to only six interceptions and leading the Bucs to a 10-6 record. He was a Pro Bowl alternate.
Then ... it all fell apart in 2011. Rumors swirled. Maybe Freeman let success go to his head (or stomach). Maybe Raheem Morris lost control of the team as it went from 3-1 to 4-12. Morris was fired.
Freeman played pretty well in coach Greg Schiano's first season -- 27 touchdown passes, 17 interceptions -- but the team went 7-9.
Welp, it seems using team performance to evaluate a quarterback means something important again.
After three starts in 2013, the Bucs tried to trade Freeman, couldn't and released him. After one horrendous Monday night start for the Minnesota Vikings, a 23-7 loss at the New York Giants, Freeman was out of football at age 25.
You still hear speculation Freeman will get another shot. But how could he go from 2010 to this? Again: so right, so wrong.
Probably the same reason a rookie baseball player can have a fantastic rookie year and then fail to improve on or reach those heights for the rest of his career. Opponents adjust to the rookie's tendencies, and when the player's true talent comes to light after opponents have adjusted, it turns out he isn't the star people thought he could end up being.
2010: I said on air I would take Tim Tebow late in the first round. "If you let him run the read option he ran at Florida," I said, "he'll win games in the NFL. He'll never make a Pro Bowl, but he can win games as a starting quarterback."
He'll "win games," which is exactly the type of thing you want your first round pick quarterback to do. Just don't suck and win a few games.
Under John Fox, the Broncos began the next season 1-4, and a new Broncos regime (led by John Elway) that clearly didn't believe in Tebow threw him into the fire, at Miami, out of desperation. I was asked on air what I thought Tebow's record would be the rest of the season. I said 7-4. Chuckles.
Tebow went 7-4, led Denver to the AFC West title, led the NFL in QBR in the last five minutes of games and turned the Broncos into the NFL's No. 1 rushing attack.
And let's be clear that the Broncos HAD to become the NFL's No. 1 rushing attack with Tebow as the quarterback, because he wasn't going to win games by throwing the football. Regardless of whether the Elway regime believed in Tebow or not, it doesn't mean they stunted his growth. Tebow failed in New York, where Rex Ryan took Mark Sanchez (the same Sanchez that Skip didn't like as an NFL QB) to two AFC Championship Games and he flamed out in New England. I would think if Belichick could have used Tebow in any productive way then he would have.
That offseason the Broncos replaced Tebow with ... Peyton Manning! No shame there. Tebow was traded to the Jets, with whom he was never even given a shot at starting.
That's funny. Tebow was in New York the season that Mark Sanchez was horrible and the Jets needed someone, anyone, to come in and play well at the quarterback position. Even going up against the quarterback that Skip thinks sucks, Mark Sanchez, Tebow couldn't win the starting job on a team desperate for a starting quarterback. So yeah, he was never given a shot. That's the lie that Skip will go with.
Tebow began to doubt himself and drifted from one throwing guru to another.
Maybe he started doubting himself because he's really not that good at throwing the football?
It's still possible the Philadelphia Eagles' Chip Kelly will sign Tebow, but again, I was so sensationally right ... and ultimately condemned as so dead wrong.
No, not at all. You were so sensationally wrong. Tim Tebow is now a co-worker of Skip's at ESPN. Tebow is not in the NFL anymore, so Skip was right for a brief period of time, but in the longer span of time he was absolutely wrong about Tebow. Again, simply because a bridge holds up for a brief span of time before it collapses does not mean it was a safe bridge to cross for that brief span of time.
I do really like how Skip talks about how he was right about Tebow winning games as an NFL quarterback, while also ignoring that Tebow couldn't beat out the quarterback Skip proudly beats his chest in this article for correctly stating wouldn't be successful (Mark Sanchez). Ignore that which makes Skip look dumb. That's A LOT of ignoring.
2012: On air long before the draft, I said Robert Griffin III would prove to be an even better pro than Andrew Luck. The Washington Redskins traded three first-rounders and a second to move up from No. 6 to No. 2 to take RG III. Way too much? Not to me.
It's hard for Skip to talk his way out of this one. He'll try to do so by ignoring the issue he himself brought up when arguing for Griffin. The issue Skip presented was that Griffin will be a better quarterback than Andrew Luck. He's not and he won't ever be. Skip was wrong.
Still, In RG III's rookie season, at age 22, he went superstar on the NFL. Offensive rookie of the year, 20 touchdown passes to just five interceptions, led the league in yards per pass attempt and per rush, led his team to the NFC East crown, had a better QBR than Luck -- 71.4 to 65.2.
FOR ONE YEAR! ONE SOLITARY SEASON!
RG III sprained his knee late in the season, then tweaked it just before his team jumped out 14-0 on the Seattle Seahawks in a home playoff game, then wrecked it late in that eventual loss. And he has spent the past two seasons looking like a sad shell of a guy who no longer trusts his legs or eyes or arm.
I like how Skip always blames outside forces for the failure of these quarterbacks. It's never, "Griffin got injured and his lack of mobility revealed him as a one-read quarterback who just couldn't grasp the passing concepts required to be an NFL quarterback." Skip reasons that Griffin no longer trusted his leg or arm after his injury. Of course, because Skip could never be wrong with his evaluation of Griffin's abilities.
He clashed with Shanahan and failed to click with new coach Jay Gruden. Now ESPN's John Clayton is reporting new GM Scot McCloughan will take Mariota if he's there at No. 5.
Now it feels like RG III's best bet is to start over with another team in another town.
Where when/if Griffin fails there, then Skip will conveniently ignore that Griffin was away from the Redskins' toxic environment and he still couldn't succeed.
2014: I said on air the Texans would forever regret not taking Texas native Johnny Manziel, the Heisman winner from Texas A&M, with the No. 1 overall pick.
And so far, the Texans have been correct twice when Skip has claimed they would regret not taking a quarterback that Skip suggests they draft.
I was told the Texans were considering Manziel until they asked him to lay low and behave himself in the month leading up to the draft. Manziel attended the Masters, had too much to drink and -- the Texans were told -- made a spectacle of himself. They were out.
Again and again I said before the draft: If alcohol proves to be an ongoing issue for Manziel, I'm out.
Skip is blaming alcohol for Manziel's poor rookie season, while acknowledging that he thought alcohol could be an issue for Manziel prior to his being drafted. This sort of contradicts what Skip said earlier in this column:
But as we go case by case, you'll see a common cause of eventual failure -- one I can't account for pre-draft.
Oh, except Skip did account for Manziel's alcohol use pre-draft. I wouldn't expect Skip to stay consistent.
Loggains showed the text to owner Jimmy Haslam, who encouraged GM Ray Farmer, coach Mike Pettine and coordinator Kyle Shanahan to trade up to take Manziel. The Browns did, from 26 to 22.
But the GM, coach and coordinator were not sold on Manziel. I said on air the next morning this was the wrong place for a quarterback whose coaches and execs must be united in their belief in him and his crazy-competitive playmaking genius. This, I said, will not work.
Me, me, me, me. Skip said this or that "on air." I wonder if Skip could write a column without once referencing his own opinion or in any way trying to bring the subject of the column back around to himself? Most definitely not. Remember, Kyle Shanahan was the offensive coordinator for Robert Griffin when he had his great rookie season. I'm not entirely sure what this means, so forget I brought it up.
The Browns lost last year's starter, Brian Hoyer, a Pettine favorite, to free agency but have signed Josh McCown and Thad Lewis and recently (according to an ESPN report) tried to trade for Bradford. Manziel no longer appears to be in the Browns' plans -- and shouldn't have been in the first place.
Manziel needs a second chance with a GM and coach who completely buy in. Maybe he'll prove to be nothing but a bust. The other five did not.
The other five quarterbacks that Skip caped up for weren't busts, but neither were quarterbacks that Skip proudly tells his readers he never liked and look at how right he was about that. Mark Sanchez wasn't a bust if Tim Tebow wasn't a bust, Sam Bradford hasn't been a bust, and Alex Smith is a lot of things, but he's also been a better quarterback than the six Skip has listed here as QB's he was temporarily right about.
I can't predict injury or addiction or sorry situations. But I must admit, if I were a hotly debated draftee, I wouldn't want me pushing for me.
It's not like Skip is a well-known personnel genius or anything like that. He's just a guy with a hot take who likes to take guesses and then make excuses if he is wrong. But yes, I wouldn't want you speaking about me at all if I were a draftee. I would prefer you just disappear or try to write a column that isn't simply about you.
I'll admit it's getting a little eerie. Six times before NFL drafts, I've taken a stand for quarterbacks doubted by many. For a while, they've all made me look like a genius.
It's eerie that Skip really doesn't know what the fuck he is talking about. Weird, isn't it?
Then ...
Things have gone wrong.
They have gone wrong for a variety of reasons, but mostly because Skip was never right and NFL defensive coordinators found a way to game plan around stopping the strengths of these quarterbacks. It's much in the same way that Skip would build a bridge and claim "for a while" it was a work of genius until one day the entire bridge fell and killed dozens of people and hundreds of innocent water creatures. Skip will still insist "for a while" that bridge worked really well, while ignoring that isn't the mark of success at all.
In each case I wound up publicly pilloried as a madman, a football fool, a quarterback hack who is daft when it comes to the draft. I still believe I deserve credit for always being so initially right. You decide.
It's all about Skip and the reaction of the public to the idiotic words he speaks because ESPN inexplicably gives him a forum to speak these words. And no, there is no credit being given for being initially right, because being initially right where a quarterback plays well for a season or two isn't correctly predicting that quarterback will succeed in the NFL. Success isn't determined over a short span of time. There's really no debate that can be had on this. Skip isn't right because Tim Tebow fooled defensive coordinators for almost an entire season, at least until they caught on to how to game plan around him.
But as we go case by case, you'll see a common cause of eventual failure -- one I can't account for pre-draft.
Skip tries to blame outside forces for the reason each quarterback didn't succeed in the NFL, in order to cover up for the fact "He isn't a good quarterback" could not have been accounted for prior to the draft. Skip can try and talk around it all he wants, and I will admit it's a guessing game whether some of these quarterbacks will succeed in the NFL, but the bottom line is that Skip went hard all-in on some of these quarterbacks and has ended up being wrong. He can talk around it, but that's the bottom line.
Most of these quarterbacks wound up with franchises whose executives and coaches were dangerously split on them. I was all-in. The team that drafted them was not.
Of course, it is the franchise's fault for not being all-in on these quarterbacks. Naturally. It's not that those executives and coaches who argued against the drafting of these quarterbacks were right, it's just they were only right because they argued against drafting these quarterbacks based on legitimate reasons that ended up being correct. But the reasons wouldn't have been correct if they had just been all-in on the quarterback. It all makes sense if you turn your brain off.
You'll also see a common flaw: Several of "my guys" failed to handle their success and/or failure in unstable and uneasy situations.
And really, who could have seen that coming? Johnny Manziel partied a lot in college and was drafted by an organization that seems somewhat dysfunctional? Who could have seen that he wouldn't succeed?
You can argue I've been much more long-term accurate on which quarterbacks are being dangerously overrated. I said on air JaMarcus Russell and Sam Bradford were very bad ideas for No.1 overall picks, that Alex Smith would never live up to being taken No. 1 and that Matt Leinart, Brady Quinn, Jake Locker, Blaine Gabbert and Christian Ponder were not first-round picks.
You could argue that, but it wouldn't mean Skip wasn't wrong about these other six quarterbacks.
Those weren't popular stances.
Skip is a rebel and takes unpopular stances, based on the fact Stephen A. Smith disagrees with him. As is well known, Stephen A. Smith speaks for the majority opinion of the sports-loving world.
Neither were these ...
2006: I said on air the Houston Texans should take Vince Young No. 1 overall, in part because he grew up in Houston and had just led the University of Texas to the national championship with the greatest individual performance in title-game history.
Does Skip remember how popular Vince Young was coming out of Texas? It was not popular to say he would be successful in the NFL? I do disagree. Also, you can see from the start this isn't a column about WHY NFL quarterbacks taken early in the draft fail, as promised in the column title, but is about Skip Bayless and what he has said on the air. One other thing, to indicate the Texans should have taken Young simply because he grew up in Houston and led the University of Texas to a national championship is very bad reasoning for taking Young #1 overall.
Houston shockingly opted for defensive end Mario Williams, leaving Reggie Bush for the New Orleans Saints and Young for the Tennessee Titans general manager Floyd Reese and Titans owner Bud Adams,
It was shocking in that Mario Williams really worked out well for the Texans and Bush never really was the running back he promised himself to be in college. So it's almost like the Texans knew what they were doing.
One big problem: coach Jeff Fisher was against drafting Young.
Jeff Fisher is never wrong and you take it back right now.
Still, Young often made me look pretty good. He was offensive rookie of the year. He made two Pro Bowls. He went 30-17 as Tennessee's starter.
And that's really what this is all about isn't it? Which quarterbacks made Skip look good and which quarterbacks didn't make Skip look good. Vince Young did have success for a while, but this doesn't mean Skip was right about him. I think Mario Williams was the right pick for the Texans.
But predictably, he often clashed with Fisher. It appeared Fisher helped turn some in the local and national media against Young. His skin grew thin.
IT WASN'T YOUNG'S FAULT HE FAILED IN THE NFL! IF HE HAD JUST GOTTEN ANOTHER SHOT WITH ANOTHER NFL TEAM HE WOULD HAVE SUCCEE---
Incredibly, after a season in Philadelphia and a camp with the Buffalo Bills and another with the Green Bay Packers, the league rejected Young at age 30.
This is shocking that Skip blames Young's failures on the environment in Tennessee and Young goes to another NFL team and continues to not be a good quarterbacks. It's almost like, and I almost dare not say it, Vince Young wasn't really a great quarterback and Skip was wrong about Young. But no, I'm sure the issues Jeff Fisher had with Young followed him to Philadelphia, Buffalo and to Green Bay. That makes more sense than Skip just outright being wrong.
What if Fisher had wanted to draft Young, had publicly invested his pride in him, had supported him through the growing pains? Young was too good for it to go so wrong.
What if Vince Young had success early in his career and this pretty much rejects the idea the biggest issue with Young's progress in the NFL is that he wasn't supported enough, because it doesn't make sense for him to play well at the beginning of his career and suddenly need more nurturing as he played more NFL games? I'm sure the Titans could have done something to help Young more, but three other teams took a look at Young and rejected him.
Another quarterback taken in that 2006 draft made the Pro Bowl in his second full season of starting. When Jay Cutler was a junior at Vanderbilt (my alma mater) I began raving about him on air, predicting he'd be a "franchise quarterback." Of course, that proclamation was met with chuckles. A Vandy quarterback?
As always, it is about Skip Bayless. Sense a trend that permeates Skip's entire writing style?
"Here's a quarterback. Here's what I thought about that quarterback. Here's what others thought about my thoughts about this quarterback. Here's an excuse for why I was wrong, but this doesn't mean I was wrong and others were right."
Cutler was the "lucky" one of the six debatable quarterbacks I loved before their drafts. (He's also the most prototypical pocket passer who least relied on his legs.) Shanahan really wanted him. So did the Bears. I certainly wasn't wrong about Cutler's ability. He's no bust. But he is what he was at Vandy: a little more interested in pulling off the occasional "wow" throw than winning.
Skip wasn't wrong about Cutler's ability? Is Cutler a franchise quarterback? No? Skip said Cutler was a franchise quarterback and he isn't, so that leads me to the conclusion Skip was wrong.
2009: I said on air that Mark Sanchez was being overrated. He went fifth to the Jets. I also raved about Josh Freeman and said the Tampa Bay Bucs stole him at No. 17.
Ah yes, the inconsistencies of Skip come to the forefront. He uses "games won" to make a case for why Vince Young could have been a great quarterback if it weren't for that meddling Jeff Fisher. All of a sudden he skips over that Mark Sanchez went to two AFC Championship Games as the starter for the Jets. Sure, I wouldn't give Sanchez credit for that, but in his eagerness to show how right he was about Sanchez, Skip changes the metric he uses for quarterback success. All of a sudden "games won" doesn't hold as much meaning to Skip when he's talking about a quarterback he thought wouldn't succeed in the NFL. Weird how that works.
I'd watched Kansas State's 6-6, 240-pound Freeman play big in his biggest games against Texas and Oklahoma.
No one else saw this. Only Skip saw Freeman play big in his biggest games against Texas and Oklahoma. (By the way, notice how Skip's love for the University of Texas seems to play a part in his evaluations?)
In his first full season as Tampa Bay's starter, he made me look pretty great by throwing 25 touchdown passes to only six interceptions and leading the Bucs to a 10-6 record. He was a Pro Bowl alternate.
Then ... it all fell apart in 2011. Rumors swirled. Maybe Freeman let success go to his head (or stomach). Maybe Raheem Morris lost control of the team as it went from 3-1 to 4-12. Morris was fired.
Freeman played pretty well in coach Greg Schiano's first season -- 27 touchdown passes, 17 interceptions -- but the team went 7-9.
Welp, it seems using team performance to evaluate a quarterback means something important again.
After three starts in 2013, the Bucs tried to trade Freeman, couldn't and released him. After one horrendous Monday night start for the Minnesota Vikings, a 23-7 loss at the New York Giants, Freeman was out of football at age 25.
You still hear speculation Freeman will get another shot. But how could he go from 2010 to this? Again: so right, so wrong.
Probably the same reason a rookie baseball player can have a fantastic rookie year and then fail to improve on or reach those heights for the rest of his career. Opponents adjust to the rookie's tendencies, and when the player's true talent comes to light after opponents have adjusted, it turns out he isn't the star people thought he could end up being.
2010: I said on air I would take Tim Tebow late in the first round. "If you let him run the read option he ran at Florida," I said, "he'll win games in the NFL. He'll never make a Pro Bowl, but he can win games as a starting quarterback."
He'll "win games," which is exactly the type of thing you want your first round pick quarterback to do. Just don't suck and win a few games.
Under John Fox, the Broncos began the next season 1-4, and a new Broncos regime (led by John Elway) that clearly didn't believe in Tebow threw him into the fire, at Miami, out of desperation. I was asked on air what I thought Tebow's record would be the rest of the season. I said 7-4. Chuckles.
Tebow went 7-4, led Denver to the AFC West title, led the NFL in QBR in the last five minutes of games and turned the Broncos into the NFL's No. 1 rushing attack.
And let's be clear that the Broncos HAD to become the NFL's No. 1 rushing attack with Tebow as the quarterback, because he wasn't going to win games by throwing the football. Regardless of whether the Elway regime believed in Tebow or not, it doesn't mean they stunted his growth. Tebow failed in New York, where Rex Ryan took Mark Sanchez (the same Sanchez that Skip didn't like as an NFL QB) to two AFC Championship Games and he flamed out in New England. I would think if Belichick could have used Tebow in any productive way then he would have.
That offseason the Broncos replaced Tebow with ... Peyton Manning! No shame there. Tebow was traded to the Jets, with whom he was never even given a shot at starting.
That's funny. Tebow was in New York the season that Mark Sanchez was horrible and the Jets needed someone, anyone, to come in and play well at the quarterback position. Even going up against the quarterback that Skip thinks sucks, Mark Sanchez, Tebow couldn't win the starting job on a team desperate for a starting quarterback. So yeah, he was never given a shot. That's the lie that Skip will go with.
Tebow began to doubt himself and drifted from one throwing guru to another.
Maybe he started doubting himself because he's really not that good at throwing the football?
It's still possible the Philadelphia Eagles' Chip Kelly will sign Tebow, but again, I was so sensationally right ... and ultimately condemned as so dead wrong.
No, not at all. You were so sensationally wrong. Tim Tebow is now a co-worker of Skip's at ESPN. Tebow is not in the NFL anymore, so Skip was right for a brief period of time, but in the longer span of time he was absolutely wrong about Tebow. Again, simply because a bridge holds up for a brief span of time before it collapses does not mean it was a safe bridge to cross for that brief span of time.
I do really like how Skip talks about how he was right about Tebow winning games as an NFL quarterback, while also ignoring that Tebow couldn't beat out the quarterback Skip proudly beats his chest in this article for correctly stating wouldn't be successful (Mark Sanchez). Ignore that which makes Skip look dumb. That's A LOT of ignoring.
2012: On air long before the draft, I said Robert Griffin III would prove to be an even better pro than Andrew Luck. The Washington Redskins traded three first-rounders and a second to move up from No. 6 to No. 2 to take RG III. Way too much? Not to me.
It's hard for Skip to talk his way out of this one. He'll try to do so by ignoring the issue he himself brought up when arguing for Griffin. The issue Skip presented was that Griffin will be a better quarterback than Andrew Luck. He's not and he won't ever be. Skip was wrong.
Still, In RG III's rookie season, at age 22, he went superstar on the NFL. Offensive rookie of the year, 20 touchdown passes to just five interceptions, led the league in yards per pass attempt and per rush, led his team to the NFC East crown, had a better QBR than Luck -- 71.4 to 65.2.
FOR ONE YEAR! ONE SOLITARY SEASON!
RG III sprained his knee late in the season, then tweaked it just before his team jumped out 14-0 on the Seattle Seahawks in a home playoff game, then wrecked it late in that eventual loss. And he has spent the past two seasons looking like a sad shell of a guy who no longer trusts his legs or eyes or arm.
I like how Skip always blames outside forces for the failure of these quarterbacks. It's never, "Griffin got injured and his lack of mobility revealed him as a one-read quarterback who just couldn't grasp the passing concepts required to be an NFL quarterback." Skip reasons that Griffin no longer trusted his leg or arm after his injury. Of course, because Skip could never be wrong with his evaluation of Griffin's abilities.
He clashed with Shanahan and failed to click with new coach Jay Gruden. Now ESPN's John Clayton is reporting new GM Scot McCloughan will take Mariota if he's there at No. 5.
Now it feels like RG III's best bet is to start over with another team in another town.
Where when/if Griffin fails there, then Skip will conveniently ignore that Griffin was away from the Redskins' toxic environment and he still couldn't succeed.
2014: I said on air the Texans would forever regret not taking Texas native Johnny Manziel, the Heisman winner from Texas A&M, with the No. 1 overall pick.
And so far, the Texans have been correct twice when Skip has claimed they would regret not taking a quarterback that Skip suggests they draft.
I was told the Texans were considering Manziel until they asked him to lay low and behave himself in the month leading up to the draft. Manziel attended the Masters, had too much to drink and -- the Texans were told -- made a spectacle of himself. They were out.
Again and again I said before the draft: If alcohol proves to be an ongoing issue for Manziel, I'm out.
Skip is blaming alcohol for Manziel's poor rookie season, while acknowledging that he thought alcohol could be an issue for Manziel prior to his being drafted. This sort of contradicts what Skip said earlier in this column:
But as we go case by case, you'll see a common cause of eventual failure -- one I can't account for pre-draft.
Oh, except Skip did account for Manziel's alcohol use pre-draft. I wouldn't expect Skip to stay consistent.
Loggains showed the text to owner Jimmy Haslam, who encouraged GM Ray Farmer, coach Mike Pettine and coordinator Kyle Shanahan to trade up to take Manziel. The Browns did, from 26 to 22.
But the GM, coach and coordinator were not sold on Manziel. I said on air the next morning this was the wrong place for a quarterback whose coaches and execs must be united in their belief in him and his crazy-competitive playmaking genius. This, I said, will not work.
Me, me, me, me. Skip said this or that "on air." I wonder if Skip could write a column without once referencing his own opinion or in any way trying to bring the subject of the column back around to himself? Most definitely not. Remember, Kyle Shanahan was the offensive coordinator for Robert Griffin when he had his great rookie season. I'm not entirely sure what this means, so forget I brought it up.
The Browns lost last year's starter, Brian Hoyer, a Pettine favorite, to free agency but have signed Josh McCown and Thad Lewis and recently (according to an ESPN report) tried to trade for Bradford. Manziel no longer appears to be in the Browns' plans -- and shouldn't have been in the first place.
Manziel needs a second chance with a GM and coach who completely buy in. Maybe he'll prove to be nothing but a bust. The other five did not.
The other five quarterbacks that Skip caped up for weren't busts, but neither were quarterbacks that Skip proudly tells his readers he never liked and look at how right he was about that. Mark Sanchez wasn't a bust if Tim Tebow wasn't a bust, Sam Bradford hasn't been a bust, and Alex Smith is a lot of things, but he's also been a better quarterback than the six Skip has listed here as QB's he was temporarily right about.
I can't predict injury or addiction or sorry situations. But I must admit, if I were a hotly debated draftee, I wouldn't want me pushing for me.
It's not like Skip is a well-known personnel genius or anything like that. He's just a guy with a hot take who likes to take guesses and then make excuses if he is wrong. But yes, I wouldn't want you speaking about me at all if I were a draftee. I would prefer you just disappear or try to write a column that isn't simply about you.
Monday, October 6, 2014
5 comments Desperate for Attention, Skip Bayless Wants Us To Know He's Changed His Mind about Jay Cutler For No Explicable Reason
Skip Bayless is a well-known attention hog. He is under the impression that his opinion on a story should be widely known, and in fact, he thinks his opinion should be the story. So Skip goes well out of his way to talk in the first person and insert himself into the story or narrative. He did it with Tim Tebow and LeBron James. It's less about his opinion of either player and more about everyone else's reaction to his opinion of each player. Feeling insecure and sad that he hasn't received as much attention as Stephen A. Smith lately, Skip writes a column saying he's changed his mind about Jay Cutler. As usual, Skip's opinion of a player needs to be the story. It's all about Skip Bayless. He is incapable of talking about Jay Cutler's performance in the past, present or future without mentioning his own opinion of Cutler during that time. When Cutler struggled at times, it isn't about Cutler struggling, but about how Skip stood by him. It's nauseating.
I'm sorry, Jay Cutler, I'm done defending you.
Right from the start, the reader knows this column isn't about Jay Cutler, it's about Skip Bayless.
No more being true to my school -- our school -- Vanderbilt. Time for some tough love.
It's good to hear that Skip Bayless allows his personal feelings to impact what he thinks about a player or school. Not that it should shock anyone of course. His job is to be a troll, so no person can troll by not having an obvious bias of some sort.
I'm calling you out, pal, just before you take the national stage again on "Monday Night Football."
Skip is calling you out, Jay Cutler! He's calling you out just in time for you to play in a nationally televised game on ESPN where Skip can get the most attention possible for calling you out. No really, pay attention to Skip. Look what he can do! Over here!
Cutler was 23-38 for 225 yards and 2 touchdowns for a 94.7 QB rating and 72.4 QBR in the "MNF" game. His ESPN Grade ranking for mixing athletics and academics was probably off the chart though. So I am sure Skip would argue that Cutler was motivated by getting called out. It's all about Skip.
I'm not buying what I saw from you a week ago Sunday, when you wrecked San Francisco's housewarming with the best stretch of quarterback I've ever seen you play. Four touchdown passes, zero "no, Jay, no" turnovers. You took a helmet to the chest that would have brought the trainer and doctor running for a lot of QBs.
This is the mind of Skip Bayless. Jay Cutler plays well and Skip decides that is the point at which he will jump off the Cutler bandwagon. Not that he would do this just for attention of course. Skip only obeys logic and the facts as they are presented. He would never have a crazy opinion just for the sake of gaining attention and trolling.
I've always praised and defended your physical toughness. But your mental toughness ... I suspect you played so beautifully -- dare I say so patiently -- against the 49ers because you felt little to no pressure. Nobody expected you to win that game. Brandon Marshall (ankle) and Alshon Jeffery (hamstring) weren't healthy enough to run an errand, let alone a route. So for once you didn't try to live up to your "rocket arm" reputation.
Skip Bayless has always had your back, Jay, which I am sure was a huge comfort to you. But now that you are becoming the quarterback other NFL analysts wanted to see you become, Skip realizes he's not the contrarian anymore and must immediately hop off the bandwagon and become a Cutler hater. How can Skip get attention if his opinion isn't insane to the point of being indefensible?
Meanwhile, Colin Kaepernick went Jay Cutler. He launched misguided missiles into three bad-idea interceptions and lost one careless fumble. You, Jay, from Santa Claus, Indiana, are usually the one handing presents to opponents. You probably were as surprised as anybody by the final score: Bears 28-20.
Yes, I am sure Jay Cutler was shocked that he played well and didn't commit any turnovers. Being a professional athlete, he probably lacks confidence in his ability.
Just after the past season ended with your Bears going 8-8 and your missing the playoffs for the seventh time in your eight NFL seasons, you were given three more seasons with guaranteed base salaries totaling $54 million (plus four more years with club options). That's in the ballpark of guaranteed money awarded to Drew Brees ($60 million), Matt Ryan ($59 million), Tony Romo ($55 million) and Aaron Rodgers ($54 million) in the past year and a half.
And yet, the other option was to dump Cutler, letting Josh McCown start, or wait until the offseason to allow Cutler to become a restricted free agent. Neither option seems terribly fun to think about for a Bears team that has struggled to find a quarterback in the past 20 years.
Santa Claus has always been very good to you, Jay, even when you've been bad.
You are the worst and make me question the existence of a higher power with sentences like this.
In your career, you've played in all of two playoff games. You won one at home and played little more than a half of that 2010 season's NFC Championship Game at home against archrival Green Bay. That was the turning point moment in which you asked out of the game because you said you could no longer plant and throw on an injured knee (later reported to be a sprained ligament), even though you pedaled an exercise bike on the sideline.
Pedaling a bike and throwing a football require two different motions of the leg.
On "First Take," I angrily defended you for days, months, even years after that game and said no QB is tougher than you.
Skip angrily defended Jay Cutler. With passion. With vigor. That sprained ligament isn't about Jay Cutler or about how Cutler asked out of a playoff game, it's about Skip Bayless and what people thought about his hot sports take regarding Jay Cutler's sprained ligament.
But maybe I missed the point.
Skip, there are so many points you have missed that there isn't enough time to go back and discuss them.
Maybe you didn't trust yourself enough to lead your team back against Aaron Rodgers and a 14-0 halftime deficit you helped create with an interception. Maybe you hid behind a knee that no doubt was hurt ... but so much so it kept you from the greatest opportunity of your career and a moment you might never again know?
This isn't the point you missed, Skip. This is what those who were critical of Cutler after the 2010 NFC Championship Game were stating while you defended Cutler. It's not the point you missed, it's that you took the opposite of point of view and are now trying to entirely change your position on Cutler to the position others took regarding him previously.
I thought you could soon own a city whose heart beats strongest for its Bears; I know because I was once a columnist for the Chicago Tribune.
Well, then YOU KNOW, don't you Skip. You once worked for the Chicago Tribune for three years.
I thought you would soon change that. Heck, win a couple of Super Bowls, and your football legend might even start to threaten Michael Jordan's basketball legacy in Chicago.
You may want to calm down a little bit. I know you worked for the Chicago Tribune for three whole years, but I'm pretty sure Michael Jordan's legacy is secure. Both players could have great legacies in Chicago. There doesn't have to be a winner.
Somewhere, Michael Jordan is rolling his eyes.
Everyone is rolling their eyes. You are a joke, Skip.
The more I watched you in Chicago, Jay, the more I thought of Phil Mickelson.
Up next on First Take: Forced analogies comparing athletes who play different sports.
Yep, remember the many years Mickelson failed over and over to break through and win a major championship? That didn't happen until Mickelson was 33 at the 2004 Masters. Until then, Mickelson (like you) was known for always going for broke, damn the consequences.
He hid behind his gambling "nature,"
Interesting turn of phrase considering Mickelson's supposed affinity for gambling and the accusations of insider trading from earlier in this year.
I'm now convinced you sometimes gunsling passes just to enhance your big-arm, big-guts mystique. Your excuse: You have such a competitive cannon that you just can't keep yourself from trying to pull off the near-impossible throw.
Skip Bayless thinks that Jay Cutler has too much confidence in his throwing arm to not try and pull off the near-impossible throw. Except, he just stated he thought Cutler didn't have enough confidence in his ability just a few paragraphs ago:
Maybe this had nothing to do with pain threshold and everything to do with self-belief. Maybe you didn't trust yourself enough to lead your team back against Aaron Rodgers and a 14-0 halftime deficit you helped create with an interception. Maybe you hid behind a knee that no doubt was hurt ...
It sounds like ol' Skip is having some difficulty keeping his story straight.
Many times you have completed "Wow Factor" throws that have made you a ton of money. Too many times, you have thrown it to the wrong team or waited too long for a deep route to develop and gotten the ball swatted from your careless grip.
This is literally what everyone said about Jay Cutler while Skip Bayless was defending Cutler. It seems nothing has changed, Skip Bayless has just decided it's in his best trolling interest to change his mind about Jay Cutler to represent the point of view he once derided.
I still haven't quite recovered from this season's opener at home against Buffalo. Your two interceptions canceled your 349 yards passing and two touchdown passes and helped cost your team a 23-20 loss to Buffalo.
It's not about Jay Cutler's performance, it's about how Jay Cutler's performance made Skip Bayless feel.
After a decade of bleeding Vanderbilt black and gold for you on "Cold Pizza"/"First Take," I'm now mostly bleeding guilt, Jay.
I can't imagine a society where anything Skip Bayless has written so far would be considered to be top-notch sportswriting. So far it's been the ramblings of a fickle Jay Cutler fan who is overly-emotional about his hero's failings.
It started your junior year at Vandy, when I boasted on air about how you could be the next Brett Favre, and I pretty much got laughed off the debate desk.
This is usually how I laugh at Skip Bayless when I would watch him on "Cold Pizza." There is nothing really funny about his trolling opinions. It's sad to see a grown man work so hard in order to get attention.
What amazed me most was you played SEC football with the arrogance of the pre-med National Merit Scholars with whom I had to compete in freshman biology. You did my heart proud, Jay.
But now you are becoming the kind of quarterback that Skip Bayless can't support, due to your success, so he's going to have to take the contrarian opinion. See, you aren't a gunslinger anymore who commits too many turnovers, except when you were a gunslinger in the first game of the season and committed too many turnovers, so how is Skip supposed to get attention by advocating for you?
But when Denver coach Mike Shanahan traded up four spots to take you with the 11th overall pick in the draft, right behind Heisman winner Matt Leinart, I looked pretty good.
And that's really what it is about, isn't it?
But once you got to Chicago, where I have lots of media friends,
No you don't. Don't lie. No one likes you.
the arrogance that mesmerized me at Vandy began to alienate reporters and teammates alike. You often refused to accept any blame after multi-interception losses. You sometimes showed up teammates by chewing them out in plain sight during games.
Yes, and we all know no real leader ever shows up his teammates or coaches.
It's always interesting how some quarterbacks are uber-competitive and yell at their teammates, while other quarterbacks chew out teammates because they aren't accepting any blame. Players yell, it happens. Narratives don't have to be written.
Have you been using your arrogance as a shield to cover your insecurity?
You are not a psychologist. Don't try to be. Don't use Cutler's insecurity as a shield to cover up for the fact you are switching your position on Jay Cutler in order to gain attention.
In your ninth NFL season, the Bears have invested once again in your prototypical potential, your perennial on-the-verge-ness, your 57 career wins (!) and 49 career losses (?), your 161 career touchdown passes (!) and 114 career interceptions (?).
But all of this arrogance and gunslinging is just a way to cover up for your massive insecurity. Skip Bayless has you all figured out, Jay Cutler! And as a result, Skip Bayless does not like competing with other insecure people, so he will now not like you anymore.
So Monday night against Rex Ryan's Jets defense, will we see the Buffalo you or the San Francisco you, Jay? Did you finally "get it" against the 49ers? Or was it just another misleading tease, compliments of "Jay" Kaepernick?
Go play in traffic, Skip. Really, please. Do it. Your arguments make no sense. When Cutler is careless with the football you like him, but once Cutler isn't as careless with the football you accuse him of being insecure because you need to manufacture a few more debates for "First Take." Cutler is overly-confident, unless he isn't, which means he's insecure and Skip Bayless can't ride that train.
I minored in history at Vandy, Jay. Yours tells me you will be what you've always been.
That is interesting, because I feel the same way about Skip Bayless. It's sad to see a 62 year old man want attention as badly as Skip Bayless does. Skip talks about Cutler being a "misleading tease," but this is the person he has defended over the past eight seasons. Why is it now a bad thing? Because Skip feels the tide turning and has to take a contrarian view on Cutler? It's that important for him to stay relevant that he will completely change his mind under the guise of Cutler being too insecure to succeed.
I'm sorry, Jay Cutler, I'm done defending you.
Right from the start, the reader knows this column isn't about Jay Cutler, it's about Skip Bayless.
No more being true to my school -- our school -- Vanderbilt. Time for some tough love.
It's good to hear that Skip Bayless allows his personal feelings to impact what he thinks about a player or school. Not that it should shock anyone of course. His job is to be a troll, so no person can troll by not having an obvious bias of some sort.
I'm calling you out, pal, just before you take the national stage again on "Monday Night Football."
Skip is calling you out, Jay Cutler! He's calling you out just in time for you to play in a nationally televised game on ESPN where Skip can get the most attention possible for calling you out. No really, pay attention to Skip. Look what he can do! Over here!
Cutler was 23-38 for 225 yards and 2 touchdowns for a 94.7 QB rating and 72.4 QBR in the "MNF" game. His ESPN Grade ranking for mixing athletics and academics was probably off the chart though. So I am sure Skip would argue that Cutler was motivated by getting called out. It's all about Skip.
I'm not buying what I saw from you a week ago Sunday, when you wrecked San Francisco's housewarming with the best stretch of quarterback I've ever seen you play. Four touchdown passes, zero "no, Jay, no" turnovers. You took a helmet to the chest that would have brought the trainer and doctor running for a lot of QBs.
This is the mind of Skip Bayless. Jay Cutler plays well and Skip decides that is the point at which he will jump off the Cutler bandwagon. Not that he would do this just for attention of course. Skip only obeys logic and the facts as they are presented. He would never have a crazy opinion just for the sake of gaining attention and trolling.
I've always praised and defended your physical toughness. But your mental toughness ... I suspect you played so beautifully -- dare I say so patiently -- against the 49ers because you felt little to no pressure. Nobody expected you to win that game. Brandon Marshall (ankle) and Alshon Jeffery (hamstring) weren't healthy enough to run an errand, let alone a route. So for once you didn't try to live up to your "rocket arm" reputation.
Skip Bayless has always had your back, Jay, which I am sure was a huge comfort to you. But now that you are becoming the quarterback other NFL analysts wanted to see you become, Skip realizes he's not the contrarian anymore and must immediately hop off the bandwagon and become a Cutler hater. How can Skip get attention if his opinion isn't insane to the point of being indefensible?
Meanwhile, Colin Kaepernick went Jay Cutler. He launched misguided missiles into three bad-idea interceptions and lost one careless fumble. You, Jay, from Santa Claus, Indiana, are usually the one handing presents to opponents. You probably were as surprised as anybody by the final score: Bears 28-20.
Yes, I am sure Jay Cutler was shocked that he played well and didn't commit any turnovers. Being a professional athlete, he probably lacks confidence in his ability.
Just after the past season ended with your Bears going 8-8 and your missing the playoffs for the seventh time in your eight NFL seasons, you were given three more seasons with guaranteed base salaries totaling $54 million (plus four more years with club options). That's in the ballpark of guaranteed money awarded to Drew Brees ($60 million), Matt Ryan ($59 million), Tony Romo ($55 million) and Aaron Rodgers ($54 million) in the past year and a half.
And yet, the other option was to dump Cutler, letting Josh McCown start, or wait until the offseason to allow Cutler to become a restricted free agent. Neither option seems terribly fun to think about for a Bears team that has struggled to find a quarterback in the past 20 years.
Santa Claus has always been very good to you, Jay, even when you've been bad.
You are the worst and make me question the existence of a higher power with sentences like this.
In your career, you've played in all of two playoff games. You won one at home and played little more than a half of that 2010 season's NFC Championship Game at home against archrival Green Bay. That was the turning point moment in which you asked out of the game because you said you could no longer plant and throw on an injured knee (later reported to be a sprained ligament), even though you pedaled an exercise bike on the sideline.
Pedaling a bike and throwing a football require two different motions of the leg.
On "First Take," I angrily defended you for days, months, even years after that game and said no QB is tougher than you.
Skip angrily defended Jay Cutler. With passion. With vigor. That sprained ligament isn't about Jay Cutler or about how Cutler asked out of a playoff game, it's about Skip Bayless and what people thought about his hot sports take regarding Jay Cutler's sprained ligament.
But maybe I missed the point.
Skip, there are so many points you have missed that there isn't enough time to go back and discuss them.
Maybe you didn't trust yourself enough to lead your team back against Aaron Rodgers and a 14-0 halftime deficit you helped create with an interception. Maybe you hid behind a knee that no doubt was hurt ... but so much so it kept you from the greatest opportunity of your career and a moment you might never again know?
This isn't the point you missed, Skip. This is what those who were critical of Cutler after the 2010 NFC Championship Game were stating while you defended Cutler. It's not the point you missed, it's that you took the opposite of point of view and are now trying to entirely change your position on Cutler to the position others took regarding him previously.
I thought you could soon own a city whose heart beats strongest for its Bears; I know because I was once a columnist for the Chicago Tribune.
Well, then YOU KNOW, don't you Skip. You once worked for the Chicago Tribune for three years.
I thought you would soon change that. Heck, win a couple of Super Bowls, and your football legend might even start to threaten Michael Jordan's basketball legacy in Chicago.
You may want to calm down a little bit. I know you worked for the Chicago Tribune for three whole years, but I'm pretty sure Michael Jordan's legacy is secure. Both players could have great legacies in Chicago. There doesn't have to be a winner.
Somewhere, Michael Jordan is rolling his eyes.
Everyone is rolling their eyes. You are a joke, Skip.
The more I watched you in Chicago, Jay, the more I thought of Phil Mickelson.
Up next on First Take: Forced analogies comparing athletes who play different sports.
Yep, remember the many years Mickelson failed over and over to break through and win a major championship? That didn't happen until Mickelson was 33 at the 2004 Masters. Until then, Mickelson (like you) was known for always going for broke, damn the consequences.
He hid behind his gambling "nature,"
Interesting turn of phrase considering Mickelson's supposed affinity for gambling and the accusations of insider trading from earlier in this year.
I'm now convinced you sometimes gunsling passes just to enhance your big-arm, big-guts mystique. Your excuse: You have such a competitive cannon that you just can't keep yourself from trying to pull off the near-impossible throw.
Skip Bayless thinks that Jay Cutler has too much confidence in his throwing arm to not try and pull off the near-impossible throw. Except, he just stated he thought Cutler didn't have enough confidence in his ability just a few paragraphs ago:
Maybe this had nothing to do with pain threshold and everything to do with self-belief. Maybe you didn't trust yourself enough to lead your team back against Aaron Rodgers and a 14-0 halftime deficit you helped create with an interception. Maybe you hid behind a knee that no doubt was hurt ...
It sounds like ol' Skip is having some difficulty keeping his story straight.
Many times you have completed "Wow Factor" throws that have made you a ton of money. Too many times, you have thrown it to the wrong team or waited too long for a deep route to develop and gotten the ball swatted from your careless grip.
This is literally what everyone said about Jay Cutler while Skip Bayless was defending Cutler. It seems nothing has changed, Skip Bayless has just decided it's in his best trolling interest to change his mind about Jay Cutler to represent the point of view he once derided.
I still haven't quite recovered from this season's opener at home against Buffalo. Your two interceptions canceled your 349 yards passing and two touchdown passes and helped cost your team a 23-20 loss to Buffalo.
It's not about Jay Cutler's performance, it's about how Jay Cutler's performance made Skip Bayless feel.
After a decade of bleeding Vanderbilt black and gold for you on "Cold Pizza"/"First Take," I'm now mostly bleeding guilt, Jay.
I can't imagine a society where anything Skip Bayless has written so far would be considered to be top-notch sportswriting. So far it's been the ramblings of a fickle Jay Cutler fan who is overly-emotional about his hero's failings.
It started your junior year at Vandy, when I boasted on air about how you could be the next Brett Favre, and I pretty much got laughed off the debate desk.
This is usually how I laugh at Skip Bayless when I would watch him on "Cold Pizza." There is nothing really funny about his trolling opinions. It's sad to see a grown man work so hard in order to get attention.
What amazed me most was you played SEC football with the arrogance of the pre-med National Merit Scholars with whom I had to compete in freshman biology. You did my heart proud, Jay.
But now you are becoming the kind of quarterback that Skip Bayless can't support, due to your success, so he's going to have to take the contrarian opinion. See, you aren't a gunslinger anymore who commits too many turnovers, except when you were a gunslinger in the first game of the season and committed too many turnovers, so how is Skip supposed to get attention by advocating for you?
But when Denver coach Mike Shanahan traded up four spots to take you with the 11th overall pick in the draft, right behind Heisman winner Matt Leinart, I looked pretty good.
And that's really what it is about, isn't it?
But once you got to Chicago, where I have lots of media friends,
No you don't. Don't lie. No one likes you.
the arrogance that mesmerized me at Vandy began to alienate reporters and teammates alike. You often refused to accept any blame after multi-interception losses. You sometimes showed up teammates by chewing them out in plain sight during games.
Yes, and we all know no real leader ever shows up his teammates or coaches.
It's always interesting how some quarterbacks are uber-competitive and yell at their teammates, while other quarterbacks chew out teammates because they aren't accepting any blame. Players yell, it happens. Narratives don't have to be written.
Have you been using your arrogance as a shield to cover your insecurity?
You are not a psychologist. Don't try to be. Don't use Cutler's insecurity as a shield to cover up for the fact you are switching your position on Jay Cutler in order to gain attention.
In your ninth NFL season, the Bears have invested once again in your prototypical potential, your perennial on-the-verge-ness, your 57 career wins (!) and 49 career losses (?), your 161 career touchdown passes (!) and 114 career interceptions (?).
But all of this arrogance and gunslinging is just a way to cover up for your massive insecurity. Skip Bayless has you all figured out, Jay Cutler! And as a result, Skip Bayless does not like competing with other insecure people, so he will now not like you anymore.
So Monday night against Rex Ryan's Jets defense, will we see the Buffalo you or the San Francisco you, Jay? Did you finally "get it" against the 49ers? Or was it just another misleading tease, compliments of "Jay" Kaepernick?
Go play in traffic, Skip. Really, please. Do it. Your arguments make no sense. When Cutler is careless with the football you like him, but once Cutler isn't as careless with the football you accuse him of being insecure because you need to manufacture a few more debates for "First Take." Cutler is overly-confident, unless he isn't, which means he's insecure and Skip Bayless can't ride that train.
I minored in history at Vandy, Jay. Yours tells me you will be what you've always been.
That is interesting, because I feel the same way about Skip Bayless. It's sad to see a 62 year old man want attention as badly as Skip Bayless does. Skip talks about Cutler being a "misleading tease," but this is the person he has defended over the past eight seasons. Why is it now a bad thing? Because Skip feels the tide turning and has to take a contrarian view on Cutler? It's that important for him to stay relevant that he will completely change his mind under the guise of Cutler being too insecure to succeed.
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