If Wilson develops into prime Joe Flacco as a passer, are you satisfied?

[Warfish]

Zach has a very strong arm.

But I haven’t seen any other aspect of his play I’d call strong, and several (decision making, accuracy, consistency, touch, durability) I’d say are material weaknesses so far.

[jgb]

56 minutes ago, slimjasi said:

As I have pointed out to you and others before, I believe this is a flawed way of looking at it, at least statistically. 

What you are basically saying is that QBs who got off to bad starts and then went to be become awesome QBs are outliers. While this is true, this isn’t as helpful as you might think. The reason is that all awesome QBs are outliers. The vast majority of NFL QBs end up busting outright or being varying levels of meh. 

The relevant statistical question isn’t “what percentage of QBs who sucked in their first 13 starts go on to become great QBs?” That number, of course, must be low, since the percentage of all NFL QBs who go on to be great is low. 

Instead, the relevant question is - “Are the first 13 games of a QB’s career a significant predictor of future success or failure?” I am unaware of the answer to this question and would love to see a proper study of this, but I have long-suspected that the answer to this question is “No.”  Why? Because in addition to having guys who started badly and turned it around, you also have guys who started out strongly but ended up being disappointments (either because of injury or just their own regression). If you sit down and write down a list of all these people, the list is longer than you might think. And again, there aren’t that many great QBs overall, to being with. That’s the issue. 
 

three caveats to this:

1) I suspect that the results might be quite different based on whether you included guys who sat their rookie years. I suspect that rookie seasons are particularly unreliable predictors - both good and bad. 

2)  I only picked “13 games” because that is how many games Wilson has played. I’d love to do a similar analysis looking at the “first full season” and also control for whether a guy played as a rookie or not.

3) most guys fall somewhere between “terrible” and “great” and the results would depend greatly on how you chose to delineate those guys. 

All of this is to basically say that I would like to give Wilson something on the order of 25-40 starts, which would jive with what coaches like Chuck Knoll and Bill Parcells have said on the subject. 

 

Even if I accept this premise, still waiting for someone to make a case for a Jets QB based on how he is more alike the success stories than the failures.

Instead all we get is “Josh Allen did it.”

I can only retort to the cases that are made and I shan’t be doing others’ work for them.

[jgb]

[slimjasi]

10 minutes ago, jgb said:

Even if I accept this premise, still waiting for someone to make a case for a Jets QB based on how he is more alike the success stories than the failures.

Instead all we get is “Josh Allen did it.”

I can only retort you the cases that are made and I shan’t be doing others’ work for them.

Unfortunately , I don’t think there is any evidence that he is more alike the successes than the failures. In fact, I’m unsure of what common traits the success stories even have. 
 

I also think the back to back knee injuries is a terrible omen and probably lowers his chances from the rest of the pack substantially - but I have nothing to back that up other than he feels “injury prone”

He’s off to as bad of a start as we could have imagined when he was drafted 

[jgb]

14 hours ago, slimjasi said:

Unfortunately , I don’t think there is any evidence that he is more alike the successes than the failures. In fact, I’m unsure of what common traits the success stories even have. 
 

I also think the back to back knee injuries is a terrible omen and probably lowers his chances from the rest of the pack substantially - but I have nothing to back that up other than he feels “injury prone”

He’s off to as bad of a start as we could have imagined when he was drafted 

I agree with you — if there are similarities, no one has found them yet (hence why teams still pay $19M guaranteed to the Sam Darnolds of the world). Thus the only logical way to evaluate this IMHO is by percentages, and those are very low, especially considering he wasn’t just “bad” or “not good,” he was the worst in the NFL.

[slimjasi]

23 minutes ago, Warfish said:

Zach has a very strong arm.

But I haven’t seen any other aspect of his play I’d call strong, and several (decision making, accuracy, consistency, touch, durability) I’d say are material weaknesses so far.

His two strengths are arm strength and mobility/elusiveness. 
 

if he doesn’t improve his accuracy and decision making, he’ll be a bust. 

[FidelioJet]

37 minutes ago, jgb said:

Even if I accept this premise, still waiting for someone to make a case for a Jets QB based on how he is more alike the success stories than the failures.

Instead all we get is “Josh Allen did it.”

I can only retort to the cases that are made and I shan’t be doing others’ work for them.

Well two of arguably the top five QB's in the NFL, in addition to Allen there's Super Bowl champion Matt Stafford.

Then let's look at the others - 

Rodgers sat for two years

Mahomes sat for a year

Herbert came out playing well

Burrow got injured early and missed the vast majority of his rookie year

The point I'm making is all of these QB's get there a different way. I can make the case - show me a great QB that sat for two years and then became a great one?  Who could you point to? 

Would it be better if Zach had a strong rookie year? of course.  But this insistence that it's almost a disqualifying factor of him becoming good isn't really an accurate depiction.

 

 

[Jet9]

I think recency bias is showing here. Flacco wasn't nearly as bad as people are 'remembering'. 

[oatmeal]

The writing is on the wall Zach no matter how talented will always suffer from injuries (especially playing for this cursed franchise)

 

[neckdemon]

whats prime joe flacco? 4000 yds and 27 tds? thats middle of the pack, which i guess is better than sucks balls. but still not that good

[jgb]

13 hours ago, FidelioJet said:

Well two of arguably the top five QB's in the NFL, in addition to Allen there's Super Bowl champion Matt Stafford.

Then let's look at the others - 

Rodgers sat for two years

Mahomes sat for a year

Herbert came out playing well

Burrow got injured early and missed the vast majority of his rookie year

The point I'm making is all of these QB's get there a different way. I can make the case - show me a great QB that sat for two years and then became a great one?  Who could you point to? 

Would it be better if Zach had a strong rookie year? of course.  But this insistence that it's almost a disqualifying factor of him becoming good isn't really an accurate depiction.

 

 

It is almost a disqualifying factor. Like 97 of 100 QBs who start their careers terribly are just terrible forever.

[Kleckineau]

ZW will never be what Flacco was in his prime. EVER.

JF is a straight up old school pocket passer with a cannon arm that can make every throw in the book.

He would go toe toe to with the goat in New England in some of the best games of the year on multiple occasions.

Part of his demise in Baltimore was when his contracts sucked up the resources leaving him with a less talented supporting cast.

After multiple neck surgeries it unlikely he can be counted on for a full season but hey give him his due. He was baller in his prime.

 

 

 

 

[slimjasi]

4 hours ago, oatmeal said:

The writing is on the wall Zach no matter how talented will always suffer from injuries (especially playing for this cursed franchise)

 

This is my big fear

Significant knee injuries in his first two seasons is just highly concerning for his future prospects. The idea is to get better with time and eventually live up to your physical  potential - hard to do that if you are getting hurt every year. 

[Smashmouth]

16 hours ago, Warfish said:

I want the Jets, our Jets, to win a title.  Period, end stop.  

That is all that matters, no style points.

With that said, the odds of that go up the better our QB is.

And I don't believe, as of today, that Zach Wilson will ever be that kind of QB. 

"Generational" arm talent or not.

I'm starting to feel that way as well

[Flea Flicking Frank]

12 hours ago, jgb said:

It is almost a disqualifying factor. Like 97 of 100 QBs who start their careers terribly are just terrible forever.

Im asking this in all honesty, what percent of all QB's who start their career are terrible forever no matter what? Prior to the last 10-15 years, the concept of a rookie QB starting was almost unheard of outside of very few, most qb's were given years to develop watching and then starting. Given that in any given year only about 15 humans out of 7.75b on earth can play QB at a high level at any point in time, I would say all of those 15 are outliers.  The odds of drafting another QB next year and having them be good is likely no higher than the odds of Wilson developing. Your conquering hero Trubisky was awful his first few years. I still say the Jets biggest problem is they don't have a person in the building who knows anything at all about identifying, selecting, or developing a QB and they have not for a very long time. For once I would love to see a staff comprised of people with a proven track record of doing this even once. Instead we bring in people who have never done it and hope to do it. 

[jgb]

9 minutes ago, Flea Flicking Frank said:

Im asking this in all honesty, what percent of all QB's who start their career are terrible forever no matter what? Prior to the last 10-15 years, the concept of a rookie QB starting was almost unheard of outside of very few, most qb's were given years to develop watching and then starting. Given that in any given year only about 15 humans out of 7.75b on earth can play QB at a high level at any point in time, I would say all of those 15 are outliers.  The odds of drafting another QB next year and having them be good is likely no higher than the odds of Wilson developing. Your conquering hero Trubisky was awful his first few years. I still say the Jets biggest problem is they don't have a person in the building who knows anything at all about identifying, selecting, or developing a QB and they have not for a very long time. For once I would love to see a staff comprised of people with a proven track record of doing this even once. Instead we bring in people who have never done it and hope to do it. 

@Jetsfan80 has compiled a partial list of only QBs taken in first and second rounds, I believe. Of course you can debate where exactly “terrible” starts and ends but based on his list and the known QB turnarounds? Probably 90-95% of 1st/2nd round QBs who are bad in their first year never become even serviceable starters in the league. 

And Trubisky wasn’t awful, he was, however, dramatically overdrafted. Or put another way, if you think he was awful you’re going to have to invent new adjectives for the many, many highly-drafted QBs who were worse than him.

[Flea Flicking Frank]

8 minutes ago, jgb said:

@Jetsfan80 has compiled a partial list of only QBs taken in first and second rounds, I believe. Of course you can debate where exactly “terrible” starts and ends but based on his list and the known QB turnarounds? Probably 90-95% of 1st/2nd round QBs who are bad in their first year never become even serviceable starters in the league. 

And Trubisky wasn’t awful, he was, however, dramatically overdrafted. Or put another way, if you think he was awful you’re going to have to invent new adjectives for the many, many highly-drafted QBs who were worse than him.

ok, so lets go with never become serviceable starters in the league as the definition instead of terrible.

90-95% being bad in their first year is irrelevant in my question. I am asking what percent of QB's taken in 1st/2nd round actually become serviceable starters in this league. The definition of serviceable is not easy to really define, but lets say who at least have taken their team to the playoffs 1 time and was a starter for at least 5 seasons would be my criteria, if they cant do that, I am not sure I see the benefit of having them over terrible

 

[Flea Flicking Frank]

Just now, Flea Flicking Frank said:

ok, so lets go with never become serviceable starters in the league as the definition instead of terrible.

90-95% being bad in their first year is irrelevant in my question. I am asking what percent of QB's taken in 1st/2nd round actually become serviceable starters in this league. The definition of serviceable is not easy to really define, but lets say who at least have taken their team to the playoffs 1 time and was a starter for at least 5 seasons would be my criteria, if they cant do that, I am not sure I see the benefit of having them over terrible

And I would add that I don't think Trubisky has ever shown he can be a serviceable QB in this league

 

[jgb]

2 minutes ago, Flea Flicking Frank said:

ok, so lets go with never become serviceable starters in the league as the definition instead of terrible.

90-95% being bad in their first year is irrelevant in my question. I am asking what percent of QB's taken in 1st/2nd round actually become serviceable starters in this league. The definition of serviceable is not easy to really define, but lets say who at least have taken their team to the playoffs 1 time and was a starter for at least 5 seasons would be my criteria, if they cant do that, I am not sure I see the benefit of having them over terrible

 

You ask an interesting question and I’d be interested to see what conclusion you come up with when you put together the data.

[Flea Flicking Frank]

Just now, jgb said:

You ask an interesting question and I’d be interested to see what conclusion you come up with when you put together the data.

I looked in last 5-6 years, it looks to me like somehwere around 75% of QB's drafted in 1st 2 rounds don't meet the very loose definition of serviceable I defined.  Of the 25% or so who do, I am not convinced they are overall positives to have as your QB as they tend to put you in purgatory, but that is a different end point which some people would prefer, even though I would not. 

[ZachEY]

15 hours ago, slimjasi said:

His two strengths are arm strength and mobility/elusiveness. 
 

if he doesn’t improve his accuracy and decision making, he’ll be a bust. 

This is why I've called him a "flag football QB."  The problem with Wilson is he is way behind on the things that make you an NFL QB.  Accuracy with the football, reading a defense, seeing the field, and making good decisions.

Doing this stuff in real-time is the hard part.  That's why the Penningtons, the Fitzpatricks, the McCowns, etc stick around so long. They lack the physical talent to be elite, but have the mental game pretty well down pat.  Hell, it's what made/makes Brady great - pre-HGH, he was quite physically limited, but he just executed.

We've gotta hope that Zach learns all this, but I have my doubts.

Long story short, based on what I've seen, of course you take a Flacco type career.  Flacco isn't/wasn't ever a top 5, maybe even not top 10 QB, but in his prime he'd be what, the 2nd best QB in Jets history?

[jgb]

14 minutes ago, Flea Flicking Frank said:

I looked in last 5-6 years, it looks to me like somehwere around 75% of QB's drafted in 1st 2 rounds don't meet the very loose definition of serviceable I defined.  Of the 25% or so who do, I am not convinced they are overall positives to have as your QB as they tend to put you in purgatory, but that is a different end point which some people would prefer, even though I would not. 

75% seems a reasonable figure, which means the delta in failure rate a baseline 1st/2nd round QB and one who has already produced one bad season is about 20%, which is significant. 

[Biggs]

I don't see Zach as a guy who can stand in the pocket and take shots, see over the line of scrimage and launch balls where the D isn't impacting his sight lines or ball angle.

Zach can't be Joe Flacco.  He needs to move to create sight lines and angles to make the kind of down field passes that Flacco ruitenly made that made up for a relatively  mediocre pass completion percentage.   Zach simply because of his frame and height is going to be a very different kind of QB from Flacco.   If he has 1 great run with a great D and running game that leads to a SB win that would be great.  If he has the same kind of completion percentage as Flacco on a lot more short routes it would suck.  

[Flea Flicking Frank]

32 minutes ago, jgb said:

75% seems a reasonable figure, which means the delta in failure rate a baseline 1st/2nd round QB and one who has already produced one bad season is about 20%, which is significant. 

It is certainly significant, but if you look at the teams they went to and who selected them and developed them, that appears to be significant as well. Expecting the same Jets GM, staff, OC to select a new one and develop a new one is probably more likely to be in that 95% then the 75%

[jgb]

8 minutes ago, Flea Flicking Frank said:

It is certainly significant, but if you look at the teams they went to and who selected them and developed them, that appears to be significant as well. Expecting the same Jets GM, staff, OC to select a new one and develop a new one is probably more likely to be in that 95% then the 75%

That’s where we have a good faith difference of opinion. I do not believe a bad team can make a FQB look like the worst on the league. I will grant that a QB in a terrible situation can absolutely look better in better situations (Trubisky, for example), but Patrick Mahomes on the Jets would still be obvious that he belongs. There just isn’t any evidence of QB trash becoming FQB treasure with a change of scenery, at least not with any frequency that any faith can be placed in. And even if such evidence existed that it were possible, again, we have agreed that no one has found any commonality (if indeed any exists) from the tiny percentage of QBs that experience a significant turnaround and the vast majority who do not.

[Flea Flicking Frank]

Just now, jgb said:

That’s where we have a good faith difference of opinion. I do not believe a bad team can make a FQB look like the worst on the league. I will grant that a QB in a terrible situation can absolutely look better in better situations (Trubisky, for example), but Patrick Mahomes on the Jets would still be obvious that he belongs. There just isn’t any evidence of QB trash becoming FQB treasure with a change of scenery.

Its way more than about a bad team, its about identification, selection and development as much as it is supporting cast. Do you honestly think a year of sitting and learning by and  being selected by Andy Reid and developed by Andy Reid, who has been around and a part of several fantastic QB's, has an equal probability to someone selected and developed by Douglas, Saleh and LaFleur, of being successful? You can't honestly believe that?

[jgb]

Just now, Flea Flicking Frank said:

Its way more than about a bad team, its about identification, selection and development as much as it is supporting cast. Do you honestly think a year of sitting and learning by and  being selected by Andy Reid and developed by Andy Reid, who has been around and a part of several fantastic QB's, has an equal probability to someone selected and developed by Douglas, Saleh and LaFleur, of being successful? You can't honestly believe that?

I’ve stated my belief in the post you quoted. Allow me to summarize: Situation makes a difference just not as big a difference as many wish to believe. Perhaps more accurately — there is no evidence that it makes as big a difference.

Further, even if such evidence did exist, there is still no way that anyone has identified how to identify the secret-FQBs-in-hiding that are being “held back” and those that just simply suck.

Any philosophy that requires one to wait on all badly-performing QBs because they could be one of the very rare few outliers is a very poor strategy that completely ignores an opportunity cost that consumes the NPV into negative territory.

[maury77]

18 hours ago, jgb said:

Those who wish to base their hope on the few who had such a turnaround, need to at least acknowledge the vast, vast, vast numbers of those who didn’t (paging @Jetsfan80) and make some effort to tell us how our guy is more like the tiny population in the former category. “Some guys did a similar thing once,” is (I’m sorry, I tried to find a more polite way to phrase this) a trash ******* argument.

When did I get kicked out of the club? 

[jgb]

Just now, maury77 said:

When did I get kicked out of the club? 

JF80 gets jealous if my eye wanders

[Flea Flicking Frank]

5 minutes ago, jgb said:

I’ve stated my belief in the post you quoted. Allow me to summarize: Situation makes a difference just not as big a difference as many wish to believe. Perhaps more accurately — there is no evidence that it makes as big a difference.

Further, even if such evidence did exist, there is still no way that anyone has identified how to identify the secret-FQBs-in-hiding that are being “held back” and those that just simply suck.

Any philosophy that requires one to wait on all badly-performing QBs because they could be one of the very rare few outliers is a very poor strategy that completely ignores an opportunity cost that consumes the NPV into negative territory.

Doing the same thing over and over, and expecting a  different result........

[maury77]

16 hours ago, Warfish said:

Zach has a very strong arm.

But I haven’t seen any other aspect of his play I’d call strong, and several (decision making, accuracy, consistency, touch, durability) I’d say are material weaknesses so far.

He's got a great release, but that's about it aside from the arm strength. 

[jgb]

Just now, maury77 said:

He's got a great release

His fan club agrees

[jgb]

2 minutes ago, Flea Flicking Frank said:

Doing the same thing over and over, and expecting a  different result........

I’m sorry but I do tend to respond to similar questions with similar responses.

[maury77]

1 hour ago, ZachEY said:

This is why I've called him a "flag football QB."  The problem with Wilson is he is way behind on the things that make you an NFL QB.  Accuracy with the football, reading a defense, seeing the field, and making good decisions.

Doing this stuff in real-time is the hard part.  That's why the Penningtons, the Fitzpatricks, the McCowns, etc stick around so long. They lack the physical talent to be elite, but have the mental game pretty well down pat.  Hell, it's what made/makes Brady great - pre-HGH, he was quite physically limited, but he just executed.

We've gotta hope that Zach learns all this, but I have my doubts.

Long story short, based on what I've seen, of course you take a Flacco type career.  Flacco isn't/wasn't ever a top 5, maybe even not top 10 QB, but in his prime he'd be what, the 2nd best QB in Jets history?

I think its even simpler than that. If you give him a huge pocket and 10 seconds to throw, he can play. The minute there is pressure or a collapsing pocket, he seems to get frazzled and everything falls apart. Even last Friday, when they were panning to him on the sideline after he threw the interception, he looked llike he was really stressing. I just don't think he has the cojones to play the position at a high level. 

[Flea Flicking Frank]

2 minutes ago, jgb said:

I’m sorry but I do tend to respond to similar questions with similar responses.

your entitled to your opinion, however, having played sports my entire life and coached football at reasonably high levels, I don't think you understand at all how complicated the position is, and what goes into a successful QB in terms of initial skill set, learning, confidence, coheseviness with teammates, playcalling, etc. These guys are not robots, and your argument is basically that you either pick a good robot or a bad robot, your entitled, but I think you are sorely mistaken.