Tag Archives: Baker Mayfield

The Other Quarterbacks

26 Thursday Sep 2019

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It would appear that a quicker process was what was needed to improve my picks in week three, but sadly there was no respite for Dan or I in terms of our teams doing anything other than losing. Still, here we go with my trip through the NFL this week.

What I Saw

Week three started with a one-sided Thursday night game that never quite took off as the Jacksonville Jaguars made a mockery of my pick by grinding out a 20-7 win over the Tennessee Titans. This was a game dominated by penalties and the Jaguars pass rush that sacked Marcus Mariota a massive nine times. The Titans have a real problem as they are good enough to compete across the roster bar quarterback with Mariota holding onto the ball and reluctant to throw the ball deep. This competitiveness will make it difficult for the team to replace Mariota if the team do decide to move on and I wonder at what point we might see Ryan Tannehill get a start if things don’t improve for the Titans offence. Meanwhile, the confident Gardiner Minshew II (I do enjoy that his father’s name is not Gardiner Minshew – he was just creative when registering his son’s name) did enough in his first start to get the Jaguars their first win of the season. The strange thing was the Jaguars defence finally looked really good this week yet it seems as if they are still likely to lose arguably their best player in Jalen Ramsey. In a division that is wide open it would be a curious move indeed to trade him, as was playing him in this game if you intend to trade him and having reported sick on Monday he is on the injury list for his lower back. I still do not trust this team but if their defence can play like this a little more often and Minshew can keep the offence ticking over when the opponent’s defence has time and film to game plan for him fully then the Jaguars could climb back into contention in the division.

The next game I watched was the Baltimore Ravens traveling to Arrowhead stadium to take on the Kansas City Chiefs, but whilst the Ravens were able to generate over four hundred and fifty yards of offence they were not able to move the ball consistently enough to beat the Chiefs in their home opener falling to a 28-33 loss. The score is actually closer than it was for a lot of game even if the Ravens did get the first touchdown of the contest but Patrick Mahomes had another spectacular second quarter as the Chiefs scored twenty-three points that included two spectacular catches from the young Cheifs’ receivers. First Demarcus Robinson pulled in a lovely one-handed catch and then Mecole Hardman took advantage of a broken coverage to score on an eighty-three yard play that put the Chiefs 20-6 up. There was plenty of production from the Ravens offence, which managed over two hundred rushing yards as part of their day and several splash plays of their own including a several moments of rushing brilliance from Lamar Jackson. However, too many drives stalled and they cost themselves three points from failed two-point conversions, which is an interesting tactical choice when you have one of the most reliable kickers in the league. It was clearly a deliberate tactic and I don’t know the relative percentage of two-point tries versus extra points to do the maths, but if the Ravens had made all of them that would turn a five point deficit into a one point win so I can see what they were trying to do.

I’m not sure I want to write about the Cincinnati Bengals, but I’ll try as they travelled to Buffalo and suffered their third loss of the season falling 21-17 having taken a three point lead with under five minutes to go. However, whilst the record is lousy, the Bengals aren’t all that bad but maddeningly inconsistent. If they could put more consistent good play across four quarters I can see how they could be good – particularly as the pass rush is really good but the run game has been inconsistent ad I wonder where the team will be when they visit London at the end of October. Meanwhile, the Bills continue to be a tough team to face thanks to a stingy defence and an offence that seems to be doing enough. In his second year quarterback Josh Allen is finding a way to compete and the combination of him, TJ Yeldon and the ever reliable Frank Gore dominated a running game that generated one hundred and seventy-five yard. I don’t know if they can beat the visiting Patriots next week, but I suspect it will be a competitive game.

The final game of the week that I watched was the LA Rams travelling to Cleveland to beat the now 1-2 Browns: 20–13. For all the talk of offensive prowess about both teams in the off-season, this was a grind it out defensive contest that seemed to pit the Rams pass rush against the Browns generating three interceptions. The Browns got pressure of their own but it seemed that Jared Goff was the quarterback more prepared to take risks and paid the price in interceptions. However, he did enough to put twenty points on the board even with a missed field-goal, whilst the Browns offensive line seemed to scupper the Brown’s ability to move the ball consistently. The Browns looked good both running the ball with Nick Chubb and passing the ball when Baker Mayfield had time, but were not able to sustain drives regularly enough thanks to multiple Rams’ defenders getting into the backfield and harassing Mayfield. It’s no surprise that Aaron Donald played really well in this game, but the combination of him with Dante Fowler and Clay Mathews really worked for the Rams when rushing the passer with Mathews in particularly looking as good as he has done for several seasons. The saving grace for the Browns is that they have yet to play a divisional opponent but next week they travel to face the Ravens who are the early favourites to win the division. Even starting 1-3 wouldn’t necessarily scupper the Browns chances of making the playoffs given the state of the AFC North so far this season but this first AFC North game against the Raven is now massively important and the Browns have not convinced so far.

What I Heard & What I Think

I’m combining two section this week thanks to the scope of quarterback stories this week, but I’ll try to get back to my normal subjects next week.

There has been a lot of discussion about quarterback this week, which is understandable given that even discounting the Colts’ enforced change in quarterback we now have seven teams starting a different player than was planned at the start of the season. What’s more several teams got wins off the back of their new starter at quarterback. I have already mentioned Gardiner Minshew II who has been getting lots of headlines thanks to the various urban legends that are doing the rounds but one of the other performances that leapt out was by Kyle Allen who led the Panthers to their first win of the season. I don’t think this will necessarily create a quarterback controversy unless Cam Newton cannot get back to the level of performance he has in previous years, but what it does do if Allen can maintain this level of performance then the Panthers can afford to wait unit Newton is fully healthy before returning to the game. This is why whilst no team can afford to have two quality starters on the roster, a good veteran or a promising young player can turn around or rescue a season if they only need to do it for a short stretch.

For instance, the investment the Saints put into making Teddy Bridgewater one of the highest paid backups paid off when he stepped up and won on the road in Seattle. He didn’t look great, but he kept the Saints moving and got them a good win.

However, the other type of quarterback we saw step up was the high pick rookie. A lot of the headlines have gone to Daniel Jones because he plays for the New York Giants but Jones also got a win in his first start against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in a game I’ll be looking at for this week’s Amateur Adventures in Film. It seems the days of a high round rookie quarterback sitting for an entire year are pretty much gone as even Patrick Mahomes got to start week seventeen of his rookie year. Sooner or later a highly drafted player is going to start. I suspect the next one will be in Washington but at what point I don’t know.

What I Know

That someone at the bottom of the AFC North should get their first win of the season next Monday, although it would be just my luck if the teams managed a second tie of the season.

What I Hope

That the Bengals don’t forget themselves against the Steelers and give a good account of themselves in front of the nation on Monday night.

It’s going to be a long wait…

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The NFL’s Problem is Still a Reflection of Society

28 Thursday Mar 2019

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Welcome to what I plan will be a series deliberately scattershot and partial take on the NFL offseason. The sheer quantity of news during the offseason is too overwhelming for one person to cover comprehensively so I’m going to go through the bits that grabbed me for positive or negative reasons and hopefully a couple of other posts on things I want to look at through the season.

However, I feel like I have to start with a couple of negative stories given the importance of them and how one of them ties into a major strand of the offseason news and a continued problem the NFL faces.

It was hard to miss the news that Robert Kraft had been charged with two misdemeanour counts of soliciting prostitution last month. He was the headline news of a wider investigation into sex trafficking in Florida but his charges only relate to two separate visits to a day spa, including one on the day of the AFC championship game. There were plenty of jokes flying around but there is a serious point behind the headlines in that although there has been no evidence that the people he saw had been trafficked, that doesn’t mean that others at the spa had not been. Kraft has pled not guilty and also has been offered a plea deal, but he has not accepted it and is fighting to stop the video evidence from going public.

There is likely going to be some kind of investigation and punishment from the NFL as part of its conduct policy that covers owners and staff as well as players, but we don’t know what punishment the league is going to hand down.

One case where we do know the punishment is for ex Kansas City Chief and now Cleveland Brown Kareem Hunt, who has been handed an eight game suspension for an incident where he kicked a woman as part of an altercation that took place before last season. This means that half way through the season the Browns will get Hunt back who was a focal point of the Chiefs last season before video of the incident (that had already been investigated by the league) was released by TMZ and the Chiefs promptly cut him.

Sadly, at twenty-three Hunt was both too young and talented a football player for someone not to pick him up and the Browns were that team. If you look at the roster it might have been a surprise given how good Nick Chubb looked once he was heavily featured by the Browns, but the other factor that needs to be considered is who is making the decisions for the Browns.

There is no denying that Browns’ GM John Dorsey has done a good job with the resources his predecessor Sashi Brown accumulated before he was fired. Dorsey looks to have found a franchise quarterback in Baker Mayfield and this offseason swung a trade for Odell Beckham to further augment the roster amongst sever other moves. However, for all that many pundits are saying the Browns are favourites for the AFC North and could be a contender in the AFC, things might not actually be so straight forward.

There’s a reason hat Odell Beckham was available to be traded and it is only speculation that his friend and college team-mate Jarvis Landry (he of the ‘Bless Em’ Hard Knocks clips in pre-season) will help Beckham stay focussed and productive. Certainly there have never been any incidents of the likes that triggered Hunt’s suspension but the Browns have a first year head coach in Freddie Kitchens who has a whole new world of responsibilities to take care of as well as a potentially combustible set of players. The thing Dorsey is relying on will be how effective Mayfield was when Kitchens took over the offence last season and that Kitchens will utilise Beckham in a way that will keep the talented receiver happy as his complaints were mainly about productivity with the ageing Eli Manning, but Kitchens will have to deal with the Hunt situation.

The reason I am really focussing in on this is that although lots of teams have players with troubling pasts and the Browns are certainly not the only ones to have given chances to players because they think their ability will outweigh the negative press, but John Dorsey has a history of taking chances on such players. Not only did John Dorsey draft Kareem Hunt for the Chiefs and give him a chance in Cleveland but he also drafted Tyreek Hill in the fifth round for the Chiefs despite him already having a domestic violence conviction. In his three seasons in the league Tyreek Hill has gone from being the player with the past and a special team’s ace returner that was discussed in context of his past to one of the most dynamic players in the game and one of the faces of the NFL. As his skill blossomed so the coverage of him transformed, which to an extent is understandable as your NFL broadcast team are not exactly in a position to breakdown the complex nature of society’s struggles with male violence. However, whilst I do believe in the importance of rehabilitation, we have seen that professional sports is not exactly the place to rigorously hold people to standards of behaviour when people are getting a second chance handed to them with an extra degree of latitude because of their on-field talents.

In the case of Tyreek Hill, he has been involved with two domestic incidents in recent months and whilst he was not charged after the first, we are waiting to see if he will be charged with a crime related to a possible battery of a child at his home.

I don’t want to speculate too much more on this as we don’t know the details, but if charges are brought then there could be a swift reaction by the Chiefs again. Still, given the quick resigning of Hunt or a player like Rueben Foster I would not be surprised if Hill doesn’t gets picked up again. NFL teams don’t seem to be able to help themselves if the players is young and talented, even Greg Hardy got another chance in the league.

I don’t know if John Dorsey would want to take the risk again, but if I were a fan of the Browns I might be getting nervous. I love the fact that the long suffering Browns fans have something to hope for but I also know how downright horrible it is having players with such histories on your team. I would love for Hunt to realise the wrongs he’s done and seek amends. I want the Browns to have success (if not against the Bengals) but I can see a path for it to go wrong, and that path starts in John Dorsey’s office.

More importantly than any of this, we should be trying to tackle the culture where such acts of violence happen, or are tolerated because of a player’s skill. However, such change is painfully slow and in the meantime the very least we can do is remember who these players are and try to hold them to account where we can.

Fell at the First Hurdle

10 Thursday Jan 2019

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Here we are in the second week of January with four playoff games complete, eight teams left, and six games to the Super Bowl. Today I’ll be taking a look at the playoff teams who fell at the first hurdle and will run through the coaching news as I have it, although it will be worth you checking the usual places as events are picking up pace as teams start to hire.

Houston Texans

The Texans made it to the playoffs but fell to their surging division rivals in the Indianapolis Colts. The Texans had a slow start to the season, and there was talk of Bill O’Brien’s job being in danger if they lost again and fell to 0-4. Instead they got an overtime win against the Colts, and then ripped off a further eight wins. The problem they have though, is whilst the front seven of their defence is strong, and they have one of the best receivers in the game as well as a dynamic young quarterback, there are holes in the rest of the team. This might not be surprising given they had to trade away picks to get their quarterback in Deshaun Watson, but they need to balance up the skill players surrounding DeAndre Hopkins or get them healthier and they need to improve the secondary of their defence. They have the sixth most cap space looking forward to 2019 so they have some room to manoeuvre, particularly with a young quarterback on a rookie deal, but they also have several picks in this year’s draft that have been traded away. More worrying is that whilst O’Brien keeps making the Texans competitive in the division, they have not quite convinced and the Colts look like they are shaping up to be a fearsome team in 2019. Experience teaches us that the Texans will likely compete for the division title again next season, and it was definitely great to see JJ Watt playing a high level again and who know what he might be able to achieve with a full off-season without a major injury to rehab. The Texans have gone to the playoffs four times in the last eight years, and twice under O’Brien, but in his five years as head coach they have only won one playoff game and that just makes me wonder if the owner will start to think about a change if the Texans can’t get a step further next season.

Seattle Seahawks

This is going to be curious one to write up as in a lot of ways the Seahawks defied the expectations coming into the season by finishing 10-6 and making the playoffs despite their young roster. The defence was overhauled and they committed to running the ball as their identity and that was good enough to make the playoffs, but my worry is that they will be too stubborn surrounding the offensive game plan. The repeated run on first and second down in their Wildcard loss to the Cowboys was not effective thanks to the Cowboys fifth rated rush defence. We have moved well pst establishing the run as a offensive philosophy and I very much believe that what you need is a credible threat to do either so that play action is effective. In Russell Wilson the Seahawks have one of the most effective quarterbacks in the game, and if they say ran play action on fifty percent of their first downs and threw in some mid-range passing they could be really effective without abandoning the run. I just don’t know if it is going to happen or not and it makes no sense to extend Russell Wilson as they will need to do shortly, and pay him the premium he is going to deservedly ask for if they don’t make the most of him. That doesn’t mean they should start running an Andy Reid style offence, but to my mind the offence needs tweaking. They have plenty of cap space and frequently draft well, but I just don’t if they are going to change spots now and I wonder if that will hobble them from getting back to the Super Bowl.

Baltimore Ravens

The Ravens got back to the playoffs after three years of missing out, and discovered the future of their offence in rookie quarterback Lamar Jackson. They can’t keep giving him carries at a record setting pace despite him only playing half a season, but he can throw the ball and the fact that he was able to get a couple of touchdowns in the fourth quarter of their Wildcard loss to the Chargers should reassure that he won’t be solved by a clever defence. The front office won’t be the same with Ozzie Newsome stepping down, but it feels like with the infrastructure in Baltimore they will be back and competitive next season. It certainly seems like John Harbaugh will stay as long as he gets the contract extension with the terms he wants. Unlike many defences, the Ravens always seem to be around the top five in the league and so you would imagine that the Ravens can focus on getting Jackson tools for the passing game, although you can never have too many pass rushers or corners. The Ravens are a little below league average for cap space in 2019 as currently constructed, but you would expect them to be there or there about next season and with a good draft they could be really scary.

Chicago Bears

The Bears loss in the Double Doink game was heart breaking, although the field goal miss has been amended to a block as a defender did get a touch. Either way, the worry for the Bears is that they had the number one defence in the league and couldn’t get the game won against the Eagles. They are twenty-third in the league in salary cap and there are players whose contract has expired. As defence is generally considered to be less consistent year to year (unless you’re the Ravens it seems), any step back from the defence would have to be countered by an improvement in the offence. Although Matt Nagy has improved the team, and there has been lots of focus on the way he called the offence, it only finished twentieth in the league by DVOA. I definitely thought that Mitchell Trubisky looked better this season, but he really needs to improve next year and there’s no way of knowing if it will happen. They also look like they will be without defensive coordinator Vic Fangio who is being looked at as a head coach candidate for the Broncos, who was the mastermind behind the Bears defence, and whilst they have a lot of talent, a new coordinator is not guaranteed to get the same result with the new roster next season. I do think the Bears can remain competitive, but there are enough factors to make Bears’ fans wary that it was a one season wonder. Hopefully a good pre-season and start to the 2019 season will put those fears to rest.

Coaching Hires

And so we move to the coaching carousel, where we have started to get some hires.

First up were the Green Bay Packers, who had a head start thank to their firing of Mike McCarthy mid-season. They are hoping to capitalise on the rise of Sean McVay by hiring his former assistant Matt LeFleur after one year of running the offence in Tennessee. It’s hard to assess how good a job LeFleur did with the Titans given the nerve injury Marcus Mariota battled through for large parts of the season, but at age thirty-nine with limited experience it is a risk. He’ll have been hired with a mandate to innovate and to get the best out of Aaron Rodgers, but as ever with young coaches it will all depend on how he builds his staff. I don’t think it is a coincidence that both McVay and Matt Nagy had first year success as a head coach and had very experienced defensive coordinators to lean on.

There will be no such concerns about the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ new head coach, as they have hired Bruce Arians, who is one of my favourite coaches. I hope the year rest has helped his health as that is honestly my biggest worry, but he was attracted to the Bucs by his relationship with GM Jason Light and if anyone can turn around that franchise given some time it is Arians. I’m not totally abandoning my previous comments on the Bucs from last week as there is a lot to do, but I have about as much faith in Arians turning it around as anyone.

The Cleveland Browns have hired their temporary offensive coordinator Freddie Kitchens as their new head coach, following the recent trend of teaming up an offensive mind with a young quarterback and we shall have to see how this works. Certainly the rapor with Baker Mayfield seems positive, but these hires haven’t always worke so we shall have to see.

The Arizona Cardinals have hired Kliff Kingsbury from college, and the honest answer is I don’t know enough about college football to judge this hire. It is deliberately an offensive coach to develop Josh Rosen and I’ve sean a video clipe of Sean McVaty praising him but only time will tell on that one.

Finally, at least of the ones I’ve seen confirmed, the New York Jets have hired Adam Gase to be another offensive minded head coach paired to a young quarterback, and Sam Darnold will have to hope to replicate the success of Peyton Manning than Ryan Tannehill.

There are other hires in the works as well as coordinators hired or staying so keep your eyes out and we’ll do a deeper dive when things calm down and we don’t have more important things like games to watch.

What Happens Next?

28 Wednesday Nov 2018

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Things managed to get worse for the Bengals this weekend and I will be writing about that, but I thought I would zip round the league first before letting rip to give those who don’t wish to indulge my reaction to the problems besetting the orange and black something to read.

There weren’t as many as in the previous week, but the NFL still managed to have four games separated by a field goal and a couple of upsets.

I’m going to start with a game I didn’t see, but on Monday night the Houston Texans won their eighth straight game to remain two games clear at the top of the AFC South. I suspect they are possibly the division leader I have written about the least this season and I will need to watch them again soon to get a better idea of what the transformation looks like. The obvious thing might be to take a look at their top five defence by DVOA that has JJ Watt and Jadeveon Clowney fit and combining for eighteen and a half sacks, but they are also getting enough out of an offence ranked twenty-first by DVOA to win and with them finding a way to run the ball and win with Deshaun Watson back at quarterback that side of the ball might be the more interesting study. Still, they have definitely established themselves as team worthy of more attention and I hope this paragraph doesn’t jinx them!

The Pittsburgh Steelers had a somewhat less successful weekend, losing on the road to the Denver Broncos. It feels like at least once a season the Steelers lose a game on the road they shouldn’t and as much as I admire what Mike Tomlin achieves in Pittsburgh this could once again lose them a shot of a playoff bye and home advantage later in the playoffs. They have a big game next week against the LA Chargers who got themselves back on track with a big win over the Arizona Cardinals and this meeting of AFC teams looks like it will be one of the highlights of the week thirteen.

With the Rams and Chiefs on their bye week, the New Orleans Saints were the only one of the top tier teams (according to me) in action in week twelve and ran out convincing winners in the evening Thanksgiving game against the Atlanta Falcon who will have to regroup in the offseason having been broken by injury. The New England Patriots got a healthy enough to win over the New York Jets but even though Rob Gronkowski returned to the field, he does not seem to be the same dominant tight end of previous years. Of their five remaining opponents the Patriots only have to face two with winning records and I will be very interested to see how they do hosting the Vikings next week and when they travel to Pittsburgh in week fifteen. I should also mention that the Patriots are yet to play the Dolphins in Miami where the Pats have lost in four out of the last five visits.

The Chicago Bears beat the Detroit Lions comfortably despite not being able to start Mitchell Trubisky and that leaves us with the NFC East as the only division that I haven’t discussed the division leaders. With Washington falling to the Cowboys on Thanksgiving and the Eagles scraping a win over the New York Giants on Sunday things remain tight in the east. The Cowboys have managed to get themselves equal to Washington but have the daunting task of hosting the Saints this Thursday night, whilst Washington and Philadelphia have the first of their two games against each other this weekend. Given the injuries to both Washington and Philadelphia most people seem to think the momentum is with the Cowboys right now and it certainly seems like the contest is going to go down to the wire in terms of winning the division. It is also worth noting that whilst the arguments about value are still valid, the Cowboys trade for Amari Cooper does appear to be making a difference and his breakaway touchdowns was pretty much the difference between them and Washington on Thursday.

This is your two game warning before I dig into the mess that is the Bengals right now.

The two games on Sunday I enjoyed watching were the Seattle Seahawks winning out over the Carolina Panthers despite the Panthers gaining well over double the amount of yards on the ground and seemingly moving the ball with more ease. However, costly failures in the red zone and some interesting decisions to go for it on fourth down led the Panthers to their third straight loss. I don’t know if a division game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers is the right situation to try to turn things round, but they really need to get a win thus week if they want to stay in the race for a wildcard place.

Finally, whilst looking good for stretches of the Packers’ game against the Minnesota Vikings, it appears that Aaron Rodgers might be mortal after all. I would suggest the problem is more that the offence he has been given doesn’t seem to have evolved under Mike McCarthy in recent years despite the developments round the league, but after a good start that saw the Packers go 14-7 up at the start of the second quarter, they failed to score again until near the end of the fourth quarter and ultimately fell 17-24. At 4-6-1 the playoffs are not completely out of reach but they would have to run the table and hope to get lucky. The big sticking point in the final five games that jumps out on the schedule is their visit to Chicago in week fifteen, especially as the Packers have gone 0-6 on the road.

Okay, so here we go. Final warning.

So the Bengals season is hanging by a thread and only the most optimistic of super fans can even contemplate things turning around. Not only did the Bengals lose the battle of Ohio to the Cleveland Browns on Sunday, but they lost Andy Dalton to thumb injury for the rest of the season. Now as it happens Jeff Driskell is pretty good as backup quarterbacks go and it’s not as if the Bengals were competing for the Super Bowl, but there are real problems with this team which stretch further than the injury list. The offence still ranks sixteenth despite the injuries that have hampered this side of the ball but the defence have been woeful all season. The Bengals have already fired one defensive co-ordinator and there are now questions yet again about whether it is time for Marvin Lewis to step aside. Now I do think it is time for this to happen, in fact it might have been time a couple of seasons ago but I understand the reluctance to do so and it does make me nervous. Marvin Lewis took a perennially underachieving team and made them respectable, frequently one of the most talented rosters in the league who went to the playoffs five seasons in a row between 2011-15 but this looks to be the third season that the Bengals miss out and something has to change. However, as much I would like to see an inventive offensive minded coach take over the franchise as that seems to be what is required to win with the current set of rules, replacing Lewis worries me because of the tendency for Mike Brown to hire people he knows and the rumours that Hue Jackson is a potential candidate that surfaced over the weekend.

Yes Hue Jackson, who has a 11-44-1 overall record and who just went 3-36-1 with the Cleveland Browns. Now I’m not necessarily saying he’s a bad coach, he did great things with the Bengals’ offence as a coordinator before he left for Cleveland, but I’ve seen nothing that makes me think that as a head coach he could turn things round. Look at how the Browns have been doing in recent weeks. Not to mention the shots that Baker Mayfield has been taking both on the field and after the game in the press. There is still a lot of talent on this roster, and it might just need a new voice to turn things round or it could need more of a re-build but who knows if the Bengals infrastructure above the head coach can facilitate such efforts. I have no idea what happens next and that’s what makes me nervous. So much of an NFL franchise’s success lies in getting the behind the scenes right to get the right coach with the roster at the right moment, and yes with the right quarterback. It appears that as Bengals fans, we live in interesting times….

Anyway, I shall leave you with a comment from Dan as we were discussing quarterbacks after his misguided shot at the red rifle yesterday.

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AFC Preview

04 Tuesday Sep 2018

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18-09-04 AFC

With the new season only days away I thought I would take you through a whistle-stop tour of the league starting with an AFC preview and I’ll give the NFC teams their own post before the Philadelphia Eagle and Atlanta Falcons get things under way on Thursday.

I don’t particularly like making predictions as there are too many variables and injury luck is can be such a huge part of team success so I’ll be breaking the divisions up into favourites, competitive, and likely to struggle as I work my way round the division compass so without further ado let’s make a start on the .

AFC North

Much as it is painful for a Bengals fan to say it, the favourite to take the AFC North division is still the Pittsburgh Steelers. They may have questions at linebacker thanks to Ryan Shazier’s injury, but the defence still finished top ten last year by DVOA in and the options in their offence are still terrifying. Time is ticking for Ben Roethlisberger but as long as he doesn’t suffer a dramatic fall off then this is going to be one of the teams of the conference who should have their eyes on the Super Bowl.

The AFC North is always a tough division, and even when the Browns are struggling they are often a tough out, but not so much under Hue Jackson. However, with a defence that has looked good in pre-season and the additions of Jarvis Landy and Tyrod Taylor as well as new offensive co-ordinator Toddy Haley it at least feels like the infrastructure for success is more solid. In a position to let rookie quarterback Baker Mayfield develop and not rush him I think the Browns will be more competitive than last season, but whether their ill-discipline (they got penalised a lot in pre-season) will allow them to win games I don’t know. I think we’ll know a lot more about this team by the end of the first four games.

The Baltimore Ravens are another team who are perennially competitive but had to do it with defence and special teams last year. With a kicker like Justin Tucker you can mask a lot of deficiencies in offence but the thing the Ravens coaches might be most happy about having drafted Lamar Jackson this year is the fire it seems to have lit under long time quarterback Joe Flacco. He may also have been helped by better receiving options and being healthy in the offseason for the first time in two years but if the Ravens’ Super Bowl winning play caller can lead the offensive to a better ranking than twenty-first by DVOA the Ravens will be right in contention for the playoffs again.

I’ve written a fair amount about the Cincinnati Bengals this pre-season and it is telling that neither of the offensive tackles two years that they drafted to prepare for a transition of talent have worked out whilst Andrew Whitworth looked great for the LA Rams last year. With new playbooks on both sides of the ball there have been a lot of changes to coaching and the roster. Whilst the Bengals have another young team there seemed to be a lot to like and if the O-line gels, then Andy Dalton should have a much easier time finding his myriad of skill players. I’m not pencilling them into the playoffs, but I’m not ruling it out and I wasn’t sure that would be the case when it was announced the Marvin Lewis was coming back.

AFC East

Is this the year that the New England Patriots falter? For the first time Tom Brady was not ever present through the off-season, their first round offensive lineman Isaiah Wynn ruptured his Achillies after they let starting left tackle Nate Solder leave in free-agency, and this was a team that went to the Super Bowl with a defence ranked thirty-first in the league by DVOA so they can ill afford an offensive wobble. I think we’re all at the point where we’ll believe Tom Brady is done when he has signed his retirement papers, but what will help them is that none of the rest of the division are exactly standing up as challengers at the moment and so the Patriots look to be favourites still. This could finally change though.

The Buffalo Bills made the playoffs for the first time in eighteen attempts last seasons, but they responded to this by cutting the quarterback that got them there, not signing the linebacker that led the league in tackles and trading their left tackle to the Bengals in the draft manoeuvres required to get their quarterback of the future. Have traded away AJ McCarron they have opted to go with rookie Josh Allen and Nathan Peterman as their QBs, but whilst Peterman has looked good in pre-season and Allen has flashed, the Bengals defensive line had a field day against Buffalo’s o-line and it could be a very long season for whoever starts. I was impressed with everything Sean McDermott did last season bar benching Tyrod Taylor but I don’t think this season’s roster is better than last years and I have a nasty feeling they will struggle for a lot of the season.

If you trade away your best offensive and defensive players for chemistry reasons, you had better have an awful lot of talent coming in and I’m not sure that Miami Dolphins do. I thought they had a good draft and I would say Adam Gase is a good coach but I’m not at all sure of the roster construction and this feels like the latest in a long series of make or break seasons for Ryan Tannehill. I believe that Gase can keep the locker room together and make them competitive but it would not surprise me if they fall into a difficult season. Nothing would make me happier than to be proved wrong, if only to cheer Dan through the season.

Finally we have the New York Jets, and I though Todd Bowles did an excellent job of coaching with a lack of talent on the roster last season and not sure many other coaches would have got as many wins. The most ready of the rookie quarterbacks fell into their laps in the draft and Sam Darnold looked good enough in pre-season that the Jets traded Teddy Bridgewater to the New Orleans Saints. I think it will take another or season or two to turn things round and I don’t know if Bowles will get the chance to complete the job, but I can see the Jets equalling their record of last season. There will be ups and downs with a rookie quarterback but the real question for this season is have the Jets finally got a franchise QB. Everything else after that can wait.

AFC South

The Jacksonville Jaguars continued to build their defence, stuck with Blake Bortles and their big free agent signing was a offensive guard. I thought that Bortles might have learnt a thing or two in last season’s playoff run but with the exodus at receiver and the injury to Marqise Lee this team will be as reliant as ever on their defence and the run game. The good news is that the defence will be no less scary and they should rightly be considered the favourites for this division.

The Houston Texans may have only won four games last season, but they revealed they could have a bright future as long as the young quarterback Deshaun Watson can recover his blistering form from last season before his knee injury. With the defence hoping a number of players stay healthy, including JJ Watt this could be really good team even if the offensive line looks to be a big problem. There are a lot of ifs there so whilst the Texans will start out competitively, how long they will remain so is the big question.

The Tennessee Titans ground their way into the playoffs with a run first offence and a defence that ranked twenty-first in the league by DVOA. This was not enough to save Mike Mularkey his job and there rookie head coach Mike Vraebel is hoping that Matt LaFleur can revitalise the offence and fourth year quarterback Marcus Mariota. The coaches with links to Bill Belichick have not necessary flourished as head coaches and Vraebel has limited experience as the man with ultimate responsibility so I am very curious to see how he goes. The honest answer is I’m not sure so this is one of the teams we’ll need to follow closely through the start of the season.

The Indianapolis Colts have struggled mightily with Andrew Luck being out injured but this also laid bare the problems with the rest of the roster and whilst there are signs that things are improving in the second year of Chris Ballard’s rebuild, a lot will depend on Andrew Lucks surgically repaired and extensively rehabbed shoulder. The good news is that he’s back to starting but new head coach Frank Reich will be hoping that he can get enough from his franchise quarterback that the season can be a success, but I have a feeling that being competitive would qualify as just that and would be a good place to start.

AFC South

The Kansas City Chiefs won the division last year and I have too much faith in Andy Reid to see this team as anything other than competitive and I would place them as favourites to win the division. That is despite trading Alex Smith to Washington to promote Patrick Mahomes as the starter after a season where the young quarterback sat on the bench. Mahomes has the arms to make use of the myriad of skills players the Chiefs can use in their offence that has borrowed liberally from college, whilst their defence was only ranked thirtieth by DVOA last year when they won the division. It wouldn’t take much to improve that ranking and with the potential of their offence the Chiefs could be one of the most fun teams to watch this season.

The other potential favourite in this division could be the LA Chargers but it would require them to get out of their own way and they couldn’t quite manage that last season. The abiding image of Philip Rivers for me these days is a player somehow functioning as an effective quarterback despite minimal protection from his line. The defence was just outside of the top ten with a fearsome pass rush led by Melvin Ingram and Joey Bosa and they should be competitive again this season. The problem is that they have a nasty habit of losing close games and their ‘home’ games in LA were frequently more like home games for the opposition thanks to fan turnout. I’d like to think they can improve but I’m not willing to just outright declare it, although I’d be very willing to be proved wrong again.

I’m not entirely sure where to begin with the currently Oakland soon to be Las Vegas Raiders. The big move of the off-season would have been luring Jon Gruden out of the commentary booth nine years after he last coached except they have just traded Khalil Mack, one of the best young defensive players in the league, to the Chicago Bears. The reasoning is that the Mack’s contract demands were just too big, and the Bears wasted no time in signing Mack to a six year deal with $90 million guaranteed days after Aaron Donald signed a contract with $87 million guaranteed. The difference between the three franchises is that the Rams still have a young quarterback on their rookie contract as does the Bears, whilst the Raiders have already signed Derek Carr to a five year extension. The issue is that Gruden has been out of the league for a while, even if he was staying plugged into the NFL through his media gig, and the defence his brother Jay Gruden [I appear to have gone made, too many ex-Bengal coordinators involved as it is in fact Paul Guenther who is the new defensive coordinator – Ed.] takes over was ranked twenty-ninth by DVOA with Khalil Mack. I’m really not sure what to expect out of the Raiders this year, and whilst I can see the salary cap argument to an extent (I don’t study it hard, maybe that’s a task for next off-season) the Mack trade amongst others does nothing to help the Raiders now and I think this club will be in for a very interesting time this year.

Last year’s AFC West strugglers the Denver Broncos will be hoping that the addition of Case Keenum at quarterback will be enough of an upgrade to the offence to give the still competitive if retooled defence a chance of winning games. In the one game I saw them this preseason the offensive line still looked to be a problem but after a good pre-season from Chad Kelly, the Paxton Lynch development plan has finally been shelved. It is way too soon to question a GM who has won a Super Bowl and given his history as franchise quarterback you would think that the job is John Elway’s as long as he wants it. However, whilst he’s made a number of sharp moves in free-agency, his record in the draft is a bit patchier and his choice of Vance Joseph as head coach didn’t exactly yield the early returns that Elway would have hoped for. Still, if either Keenum or Kelly can make the offence competitive then the Broncos will be a team no one will want to face, especially at home and that could be enough for them to be in the playoff race come December.

Learning From Your Mistakes

19 Sunday Aug 2018

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18-08-19 Baker Mayfield

Image Credit: usatoday.com

You learn by your mistakes and pre-season is one of those odd times for me as I’m trying to focus in on games to follow a team through the pre-season process but without coaching tape you miss a lot for certain positions. Still the benefit of following the Hard Knocks team is that you get another’s perspective on the game to what you saw in the following week’s episode and so on to the Cleveland Browns.

I’m still not sure about the Antonio Calloway saga as you never quite how much is created by the editing as yes he looked like a player carrying a secret in practice and then he gets pulled into a meeting with Hue Jackson and John Dorsey when the news of his police citation breaks. However, it didn’t look like he covered everything the police found in his car, and he was driving with a suspended licence. The coaches approach appears to be make him earn his place back on the team, so after an apology to the team he is made to play every down on offence. There was a clip of Todd Haley challenging Jarvis Landry to take Calloway under his wing as they needed him and it was what Larry Fitzgerald would do. I can’t help feeling that if Calloway was that important, and he did make a huge play for a touchdown, that the front office and coaches would be making a plan themselves to help the young rookie draft pick as a second troubled receiver is not what this franchise really needs.

In other bits from Hard Knocks that I made notes of whilst watching the game but failed to write up in covering last week’s Browns game was the two touchdowns for tight David Njoku who made a nice couple of catches. Also making a couple of good catches was Rashard Higgins. However, I couldn’t know that they were going to focus in on journeyman tight end Devon Cajuste and it was one of those end of game parts that wouldn’t grab you unless you knew the back story and you can’t help but pull for the guy and his family. It is always nice to see the human side of players and following on from our drumming linebacker from week one this week we had Njoku’s meditation and Myles Garrett professing that before he was a man who loved to hit people he was a boy who loved to write.

So onto this week’s game and the Browns hosted the Buffalo Bills in a game they lost but can take things from. The Browns started out the game well with the defence stopping the Bills from moving the ball and establishing the run, which they had struggled with last week. In fact both Carlos Hyde and Nick Chubb had multiple good runs and frankly they offence as a whole should have scored more than seven points in the first quarter. The balance of the Browns quarterback room looks really good with Tyrod Taylor being an excellent role model for Baker Mayfield to learn from in terms of how to be a pro but Mayfield continues to impress. For me it is his active feet as much as anything that impresses me as he has good pocket movement and whilst he can scramble it’s the shifting in the pocket and making the throw that makes it look like the Browns might finally have a franchise quarterback if Mayfield develops and the fact that they don’t have to throw him in will help with this development. This is particularly true as the Bills seemed to get a lot of pressure in this game and as the game went on the Browns found it harder to move the ball. In fact once Drew Stanton came into the game in the fourth quarter they basically failed to move the ball despite only being two points behind thanks to a missed extra point.

One of the things that is still troubling for the Browns is the penalties and mistakes the team is making. They had three offensive pass interference penalties in this game with the third by Cajuste wiping out a touchdown, which offsets the nice catch and run he had earlier in the drive that went for twenty-six yards. The defence was not immune either with mistakes in coverage costing them a touchdown when Nick O’Leary was wide open for the second time in the same drive. There were good moments on defence such as when linebacker Mychal Kendricks caught the eye penetrating through the offence line and making a tackle for a loss on a run play or safety Derrick Kindred blitzing from the edge for a sack and they were generally stout, but they will have to watch the line between aggressive and over aggressive if they want to win tight games.

I’m wary of the Hard Knocks effect that makes you think a team is better than it is through familiarisation and rooting for people you know better, but there was a real mixture of good and bad in this game. Still, next week’s third game is the dress rehearsal of pre-season and so is the game that we can take the most from. You can’t really know until the regular season gets going how a team will fare but whilst there are still plenty of questions surrounding the Browns and how the coaching staff is working, I can’t help feel they will be a tougher game this season but all the long suffering Browns want are wins.

2018 Pre-Season – Week 1

15 Wednesday Aug 2018

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IMG_20180815_175351.jpgThis year I am watching three teams through the playoffs, which nicely replicates what I think will be my regular season viewing without the additional game tape as it is not available in pre-season.

However, for the first full week of pre-season this actually only garnered me two full games to watch as the Chicago Bears played the Bengals in Cincinnati. I will start with my usual caveat that it is always dangerous to read too much into pre-season as coaches are not game planning for their opponents and are working on what they think their team needs sharpening rather than going all out to win the game. This resulted in a close game where I hope that the Bears level is on the up rather than the Bengals are slipping back from last season.

From the Bengals side, Andy Dalton looked sharp enough until he threw an interception when John Ross slipped and fell but it’s too early to know if the changes to the offensive line will work and that they won’t miss Brandon LaFell’s solid veteran presence in the receivers room. What I did notice was there was a lot of run plays called on first and second down in this game , which I hope is just the team trying to turn round a disappointing running game that finished 20th in the league last season by DVOA, although the passing game was actually ranked one place worse. They were hampered by the offensive line last year and there’s still a lot of chopping and changing going on there so frankly I won’t believe any improvements until they last through the first quarter of the season.

As usual Geno Atkins looked like a monster in the middle of the defence and I’m hoping the defence improves with the new coordinator Teryl Austin but the Bengals do look a little thin at corner past their top three. There were also some big run plays given up, but hopefully new middle linebacker Preston Brown combined with an improved defensive tackle rotation will shore things up in Vontaze Burfict’s absence (he’s suspended the first four games for a violation of the PED [performance enhancing drugs] policy) when the regular season hits. Certainly Jordan Evans caught my eye a couple of times in Burfict’s absence in this game.

I never claim to be an expert on special teams but the Bengals have been focussing a lot on speed in the last two off-seasons so hopefully that helps as I’m not sure if fans really know what to expect out of the tweaks to the kick off rules.

As for the Chicago Bears, it took a last ditch drive from third string Bengals’ quarterback Jeff Driskel to deny them their first win of the preseason 30-27. The offence certainly looked more like a current day scheme but opening up with a missed long pass by Mitchell Trubisky had to be an unwelcome reminder of last season. I’m looking forward to seeing more of Trubisky to see how he’s taking to the new scheme but he didn’t really catch my eye in this game. To be fair, as a Bengals fan my eye was drawn more to their side of the ball but the Bears did seem to repeatedly break long runs even if they didn’t do it consistently. I was a little confused by several players on the Bears roster who had the same number but were playing on offence and defence. I was impressed by Ryan Nall who apart from being one of two 35s apparently on the roster, managed to maintain an average run of 10 yards over nine carries, greatly helped by getting through the entire Bengals defence and only being stopped by a desperate last ditch tackle from behind. I actually thought that the Bears’ third string quarterback Tyler Bray (who came over from the Kansas City Chiefs this offseason) looked a little better than Chase Daniels but neither of them were wholly convincing, but they are backups.

The Bears defence did enough to cause the Bengals problems moving the ball, but apart from Kyle Fuller making the interception on the John Ross slip play I mentioned earlier no one particularly caught my eye. I definitely think this will change next week when I can focus in more on the one side of the ball as the Bears play so I hope to come back with more names next week.

So the other game I watched was the Cleveland Browns travelling to the New York Giants. I do wonder how much of defensive coordinator Gregg Williams’s reaction to Saquon Barkely’s thirty-nine yard carry that opened up the game for the New York Giants Hard Knocks will be able to show, but things were mostly positive for the Browns who ran out 20-10 winners. There was a really good catch made bu Jarvis Landry but possibly most hopeful for the Browns is that whilst Tyrod Taylor looked very solid in his limited outing, rookie Baker Mayfield looked to have active feet in a good way and played well. He only completed eleven of twenty passes but he threw for two hundred yards, two touchdowns and no interceptions. How sustainable this is and what Hue Jackson made of the running game I don’t know (but hope to find out) but this was a solid outing on offence.

As for defence, there was that long run and a couple of taunting penalties but it very much looks like the Battle for Ohio games with the Bengals could be competitive this season. If I have an excuse for the first game regarding spotting defensive players, this one proves that the team seemed to be doing the job rather than anyone jumping off the screen, but you miss so much on the TV copy that I definitely might have to pay an early coaching tape trip to the Browns

This post will be going up the day before Hard Knocks airs in the UK so the Americans are ahead of us and there is already a story out there that Hue Jackson punished rookie receiver Antonio Callaway by making him play over fifty snaps in this game after the fact that he was stopped by the police on the 5th of August became known. I’ll leave the details to actual new outlets but it’s a curious way to deal with a player and I’ll know more about how I feel about it once I’ve seen the show, but it definitely feels odd to me.

So on to next week, where we might get to see Bears first round pick Roquan Smith play linebacker now that his holdout has ended, more of the first team starters, and I’m sure more insight on the Cleveland Browns.

What a Coach wants, What a Team Needs?

12 Sunday Aug 2018

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18-08-12 Hue Jackson

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We have our first week of pre-season football. I’ve watched the first episode of Hard Knocks and more importantly I have seen Andrew Luck throw passes in game for the first time since January 1st 2017.

My offseason was dominated by getting a book published so it was only a couple of weeks ago that I finally watched the Dallas Cowboys’ All or Nothing series and when you combine that with Hard Knocks then I have naturally started to think about coaching.

“You get what you demand,
you encourage what you tolerate.”

Tom Landry

This is a quote that I was already familiar with but caught my eye as a reminder in one of the meeting rooms at the Cowboys facility and is one of those things that I think is just as apt for management in a business as it is in sports.

One of the surest things in management is that a player or employee will spot an inauthentic approach from a manager or coach, but there is more than one way to demand what you want or excellence.

There was a really interesting discussion about this week’s Hard Knock on The Ringer’s GM Street podcast as Michael Lombardi explained his problems with Hue Jackson’s approach to getting his team ready. This largely focussed around a coach’s table discussion that had started with the training staff informing Jackson who would and wouldn’t be practising that day. There are several members of that coaching staff with Super Bowl experience who questioning whether players who had not achieved anything in the NFL should be getting days off when there was so much to do, and one coach who was asking for them to be dressed and make it look like the reps decision came from the coach. Jackson listened and was firm about not wanting to get players injured and tried to establish that he understood their position but the view was different from his chair and they moved on.

I can’t give the insight on how it affects the coaching staff having never been in an NFL building yet alone on a football coaching staff so go listen to the pod but it did set me thinking. What Lombardi’s concern was about not only keeping the coaching staff together, but how to breed toughness in a team.

I think there are multiple ways to do this. It doesn’t have to be about shouting and rah-rah speeches. Toughness can be quietly getting on with your job under difficult circumstances. Certainly Hue Jackson was trying to demonstrate that when he told some of his coaches in a film session that his mother had just died and then went straight back to discussing the tape. It was hard to watch him trying to pull himself together after the front office staff had gathered round to support him having lost both his brother and his mother in the space of two weeks. An hour later he is back on the training field and working with his team.

This is where we circle back to how he is coaching. It is undeniable that Bill Belichick is a great football coach and he has a particular way of doing things that is built around a culture of fear and negative reinforcement but that’s not the only way to do it. What Pete Carrol has done in Seattle is still built around competition but there is a completely different approach and presentation with his positivity and encouragement for players to be vocal and themselves. In Hard Knocks you got to see the very different way that Gregg Williams runs his room to Jackson and I’m sure there are players that will thrive with that approach and those on who that approach will grate.

In a lot of ways American football is still a very conservative game but how long coaches can maintain some of the old school approaches in the face of modern training methods and as players change I don’t know.

“He needs to be challenged intellectually so he doesn’t get bored,” Jim Mora told Peter King. “He’s a millennial. He wants to know why. Millennials, once they know why, they’re good. Josh has a lot of interests in life. If you can hold his concentration level and focus only on football for a few years, he will set the world on fire. He has so much ability, and he’s a really good kid.”

This was Jim Mora talking about the Arizona Cardinals’ rookie quarterback Josh Rosen ahead of the draft and whilst I don’t think the culture of football will change overnight, it has to and will continue to adapt as the game changes and players evolve.

The interesting interaction between Hue Jackson and rookie quarterback Baker Mayfield is a case in point. Jackson was asking about what time he got in and was comparing it to Tyrod Taylor. It was something that Michael Lombardi commented on that Jackson didn’t demand Mayfield came in at 05:30 and whilst no, he didn’t demand he did set a seed. I don’t know which way would be more effective, it depends on the player and how they feel about their coach. Only time will tell.

Hue Jackson has a 1-31 record in the last two seasons so it is not like he is starting from a position of strength but he has been in the league a long time. He has to be true to his beliefs but in the world of sport, those beliefs get tested against one thing, the results of the football team. It won’t matter that he’s dealing with multiple bereavements, or that he turned a comment about jumping into a lake if his team failed to win a game last season into a cleansing ritual in aid of his foundation that is trying to support efforts to combat human trafficking in Cleveland. What matters as far as the team is concerned is results. He has a new GM that didn’t pick him so if Jackson doesn’t win more games this season it is hard to see him staying on as head coach.

There’s a lot of nuance to coaching and you can only do so much without the right level of talent, but in sports your record is your record despite all the things that go into it. The pre-season is about preparing your team for the regular season, although a lot of coaches are as concerned about getting their team to the start of the season healthy. The ultimate decider on how well you balanced those needs is your record, but that ignores if you quarterback missteps and tears his knees up. There is plenty of luck involved for a team and whilst we build some coaches up and tear others down, they are only human and even in a game as built around coaching as the American football, you can only control so much. However, you have to have a lot of trust or faith in the bank to get you through a rough patch and for Hue Jackson, time is running out for him to get results.

As the Season of Hope Turns

08 Friday Jun 2018

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kigoa football on green grass during daytime

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It will not be very long before the players start practising in pads and before you know it we’ll be though the summer and into the weekly grind of the full NFL season.

Quiet as I may have been during these off-season milestones, I was following along as ever and so whilst we wait for training camp and the start of something we can actually dig our teeth into, I thought I would write a series of deliberately partial articles about what has been going on. The NFL media and coverage continues to expand and my aim has never been to bring you breaking news, but there’s been some interesting developments over the last few months along with the usual flurry of coaching and player changes so I’ll be digging into these and maybe straying into such things as the new rule changes as well, although I might side step the anthem protest developments until we are closer to some games actually being played, but let’s say I’m not exactly impressed with the NFL’s new policy or Trump’s reaction.

Rest assured that deliberately partial is not code for a long series of articles on the Bengals, although I’m sure they will feature, but I’ll pick out some key points I want to write about and I’d welcome input from any of you if there is a topic you’d like me to take a look at. However, as much as I like to say they get overly praised when a team wins, and overly blamed for each loss, not only are quarterbacks a very important part of any team but they are the focus of an awful lot of fans’ hopes in the off-season.

It has been an interesting off-season for quarterbacks. The Minnesota Vikings started the off-season with three quarterbacks going out of contract and kicked off a larger than usual move round of signal callers when they opted not to renew the contracts of any of them but instead signed Washington player Kirk Cousins to a three year guaranteed contract after Washington allowed his to expire. It is rare for a starting quality quarterback to hit the market, yet alone one who has accrued three straight four thousand yard seasons and is still in his twenties. It is an interesting contract that Cousins signed as all three years are guaranteed, but whilst I could very much see this becoming a thing for quarterbacks given their importance to the team (which does grant them additional leverage) it is hard to see the rest of the NFL players getting such deals.

With this first free agency domino falling the Vikings’ old quarterbacks were soon signed to new teams. It appears that the Denver Broncos were unable to get seriously into the competition to sign Cousins and quickly switched to signing Case Keenum after his impressive run to the Conference Finals. He had an excellent season last year but the Minnesota offensive line was unable to protect him against the Eagles pass rush in the NFC Championship game and so the Broncos will be hoping he is able to recapture the form of the regular season for them. The Broncos have named Keenum their start and are looking to continue the development of Paxton Lynch behind him despite Lynch not being able to make use of his impressive arm talent since he was drafted back in 2016. Still, this signing did allow the Broncos to draft Bradley Chubb in round one who is reckoned to be the most rounded pass rusher in this draft class and with the players already available to the Broncos, he will likely be an excellent addition to the front seven of their defence.

While Keenum headed to the Broncos, the Vikings’ opening day starter, the oft injured Sam Bradford, signed yet another big contract, this time with the Arizona Cardinals. With the retirement of Carson Palmer the Cardinals went into the off-season with no real option for a starting quarterback yet as well as the signing of Bradford, the Cardinals traded up to the tenth pick to select Josh Rosen. We won’t know how this turns out until a few years down the road but the criticism of Rosen’s off field interests seemed overblown and given the position in which the Cardinals started the off-season, they have given themselves a shot this year with their two new quarterbacks and could be set for the future if their young QB can back up his claim that the teams who passed on him made a mistake.

The final Vikings quarterback Teddy Bridgewater signed with the New York Jets, but given that the Jets resigned last year’s starter in Josh McCown and moved up to take a quarterback it still looks like a long road back to starting for Bridgewater having suffered a horrendous injury in preseason two years ago. The Philadelphia Eagles have demonstrated the benefit of having two quarterbacks on the roster with their Super Bowl win and with the dearth at the position if Bridgewater can demonstrate he’s on the way back to something like his previous form he should get a legit shot as a starter somewhere. The early buzz coming out of the Jets OTAs (organised team activities) were that Bridgewater looked like the best quarterback of the team, but I’m always wary of the buzz surrounding players until we start seeing them in pre-season games and for quarterbacks, even good play in pre-season doesn’t necessarily translate into the regular season. The Jets could be taking a leaf out of the Eagles recent roster moves and be driving interest for a trade, but I think a lot of the league and most neutrals will be hoping Bridgewater makes a full comeback.

Before I dig properly into the first round quarterbacks who were drafted I just want to cover the saga of Washington and Kirk Cousins briefly, As I said earlier, it is not often that a quarterback still in his twenties with three consecutive four thousand yard seasons hits the free agent market. Washington seemed to be unwilling to make the kind of deal that Cousins and most quarterbacks of his ability would expect and whilst there was some defending the first franchise tag given to him two seasons ago as he was a fourth round draft pick and had really broken through late, there is no real defence for Washington not committing to Cousins long term when he threw for four thousand yards a second time. It is pretty remarkable that he completed the feat for a third straight season given that Washington let both of their top two receivers leave before last season. What they did do this year as Cousins second one year franchise tag was nearly expired was trade for thirty-four year old veteran Alex Smith from the Kansas City Chiefs, sending them a corner back as part of the trade, and signing Smith to a four year deal with fifty-five million dollars guaranteed at signing. If he makes it to the end of his contract he is guaranteed seventy-one million dollars, but whether he can make it to thirty-eight is a big question even with modern sports medicine and particularly as Smith is an underrated runner who doesn’t sit in the pocket and distribute the ball without getting hit like a Tom Brady or Drew Brees. I can’t pretend to know what lay behind these decisions, but I don’t like the process and it does not instill faith in the franchise.

So with the major quarterback moves wrapped up the NFL headed into the draft and I have already mentioned two teams that double dipped signing Vikings’ free agents and drafted quarterbacks in the first round but the first pick of the draft belonged to the Cleveland Browns and this time they did take a quarterback, but not the one everybody was expecting when they drafted Baker Mayfield. Now I’m interested in the draft and I do enjoy the analysis of players and even look up draft grades but I don’t take them seriously. We won’t know what players are going to work out or not, and so much is to do with scheme fit, changes in coaching staff, injury luck that whilst there are players you would feel more confident than others, no one can know. Hell, we’re still waiting for Andrew Luck to play again for the Indianapolis Colts having played through a shoulder injury and missed all of last season. You have to wonder at the medical advice the Colts young franchise quarterback received and why he was allowed to play for so long with what is clearly a serious issue during the 2016 season.

Getting back to the Browns, if this pick works out then great and what I do like is that they picked their player rather than the outside experts but we can’t know whether this was the right decision for a number of season. In fact we might never know as bad luck could scupper the pick or something else unforeseen. What I can question is what the New York Giants did with the second pick as whilst no one would question the talent or ability of running back Saquon Barkley, it is hard to argue that even as good as he can be that the Giants will get equivalent value out of a position that you are lucky to get through two contracts compared to having an entire career of a franchise quarterback. The Giants may well have not liked the quarterbacks in this year’s draft, but they refused to move down and even if Eli Manning regains some of the form that he has failed to display over the last two seasons, at thirty-seven he can’t have that long left in the league and when will the Giants be picking this high again?. Even if they have complete faith in the quarterback Davis Webb who didn’t see the field during a turbulent 2017 season that saw Geno Smith get a start, they could have likely traded the pick to one of the quarterback needy teams, got a big haul and still got a very good player.

What this did mean was the New York Jets who moved early to get up to the third pick took Sam Darnold who most people thought was the most ready quarterback of the draft. The Jets invested in three quarterbacks this off-season, but if Darnold can finally be the franchise quarterback the Jets have been missing for years if not decades then the cost would have been worth it. You can see the importance of the quarterback to teams who don’t have them in the moves of the Buffalo Bills, who having already traded up to the twelfth pick with the Bengals (only my second mention of them in this post) traded again with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to get to seven so they could take Josh Allen. I have already mentioned the Cardinals trading up to take Josh Rosen at ten, but at the end of the first round with the Ravens having already picked and the Eagles coming off a Super Bowl win but short on draft picks haven given up a lot to draft Carson Wentz in 2016, the Eagles traded out the first round as the Raven’s Ozzie Newsome in his final draft as GM picked the fifth quarterback to go on day one in Lamar Jackson.

I still find it somewhat strange that the 2016 Heisman trophy winner had four quarterbacks selected ahead of him and that he slipped past the Saints and Patriots who both have ageing quarterbacks that could have taught Jackson a lot. As could the Steelers’ Ben Roethlisberger although he was not exactly enthusiastic about the selection of Mason Rudolph in the third round and claims to be planning to play for a number of years yet despite several years of off-season where Roethlisberger talked of retirement.

This leads me to where I’m going to finish off, with this thought:

With the hope given to franchises in recent years by quarterbacks like Carson Wentz, the LA Rams’ Jared Gough, or the flashes from Deshaun Watson in Houston, it has reinforced the theory that there is no price too high to pay for getting a franchise quarterback. However, you had better be certain about that player as if you get that call wrong, even if it isn’t entirely your fault, as the person who put your faith in the player you are going to get fired if things don’t work out.

It’s not exactly fair, but that is life in the NFL.