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You were right and I was wrong on Baker Mayfield. I thought you just hadn't seen much of him and were judging him too harshly. Surely if he were in the right environment he could flourish. Which I suppose could still be true, but is looking doubtful.

If I may indulge a little backstory as to why I thought you were quick to judge, I'd seen him play a lot of his NFL snaps. The Browns became Mrs Turtleman's #2 team (no pun intended) when she saw them celebrate their only win of a season 6-7ish years ago. If I recall correctly, they were 1-31 in those 2 seasons pre-Mayfield. So we watched most Browns games that and the following seasons since they rarely conflicted with Seahawks games. And they were the Hard Knocks team that year, so Baker became her QB crush in the NFL. Week 3 of his rookie season as a backup, Tyrod Taylor got hurt and Mayfield came in the game and lead them from behind against the Jets. That Browns team became energized as soon as he stepped behind center. He grabbed the starting job and made more chicken salad out of chicken sh*t in Cleveland than I would have ever thought possible. He even vanquished the rival Steelers in the playoffs. I thought he was special, in spite of average size and athleticism. I didn't care for his Twitter beefs with Cowherd and such, but I liked him as a QB. And have to admit that his Progressive ads were pretty good.

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Dec 8, 2022Liked by Seaside Joe

That's interesting. Remember back in the day when backups used to stay with teams for a long time? Danny White came in for Roger Staubach after years as a backup (and punter). Frank Reich was a backup in Buffalo forever and always played well when called upon. Jeff Hostetler was a long time backup for the Giants before he went to the Raiders.

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Dec 8, 2022Liked by Seaside Joe

This is brilliant, Kenny. This isn’t a trend but rock solid observation. We get so deep into analyzing what is different about a team that goes over the top that we often miss all that needed to be in place first for it to be possible.

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Great article. Sometimes a team has the right QB but they put him in the wrong system, ( like putting a round peg in a square hole ) or trying to make Kyle Murray into a pocket passer, or they don't have enough talent on the offense to maximize the QBs strengths..

I firmly believe in Bill Walsh's paradigm that " intelligence " is the number trait he looked for in a QB.

Without that all the physical plusses were secondary.

Look out for Goff and the Lions.

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Dec 8, 2022Liked by Seaside Joe

Good insight! I had not thought to look at things that way.

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Dec 8, 2022Liked by Seaside Joe

That is interesting. Thanks for the heads up.

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Dec 8, 2022Liked by Seaside Joe

Clearly, continuity is important in any team sport, but there are so many exceptions that I can't agree that your theory is a valid criteria for winning. Mahomes, Burrow, and Hurts are examples of two years with a HC being long enough. Detroit is scoring a ton of points with 18 month vet Goff. Conversely, Darnold had three bad seasons in New York and Kyler Murray has been the starter for three years in Arizona without success. Las Vegas has failed with an established, upper tier QB and they have a new HC. Wilson has also failed in the first year of a new HC. It would help if one could show the three year trend across several seasons but frankly, I don't have the energy to do that work.

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Dec 8, 2022Liked by Seaside Joe

Heinicke threw me off.

We know Brady and Stafford are outliers, but does this trend have historical precedence otherwise? It would be interesting to see if the trend holds up over the last decade instead of just this season. Though it feels like QB turnover has increased in recent history, so you might just have a lot of meaningless orange blobs on your data if you look back too far.

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Could Tyson Bagent be the next Russell Wilson. He's at division II Shepherd University. It's a longshot but he just became the all time NCAA touchdown leader with 159 TDs. He's an interesting read.

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I think experience is a large and often underrated factor that shows up in quarterback effectiveness. It's clearly not the whole meal given the success of a handful of QBs early on with a team, either as a rookie (Wilson) or later on (Stafford, Brady, etc.). Much of it is also a team's ability to design an offense around the skills of its leader and the leader's willingness to go with the program.

I may be the only one who is seeing a big shift for the Broncos in their last game against the Panthers. Looked to me like they finally gave up trying to make him into a pocket passer. That was the first game where they seemed to begin with the run (despite the fact that their run game is limited right now). Then they introduced some really effective play-action and some run-pass. It obviously wasn't super successful. There were a few great plays but they never even got into the red zone let alone score a touchdown. But the change in focus seemed obvious.

The ultimate failure can't really be pinned on Russ, in my opinion. They're so limited in so many ways right now. The line is manned by backups, they're relying mostly on UDFA receivers and their RB1 was swiped from another team's practice squad. All their RBs were. Murray has power and shiftiness but is slow to accelerate and has horrible top-end speed, yet he's clearly their best guy.

Seemed to me Russ did his job and played well, ironically enough (or not) playing in a system that looked a hell of a lot like how he was used in Seattle. Surprise, surprise.

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A lot of writers have been explaining Geno's success by saying that he just needed the time to study the game and learn how to play the position at the NFL level. That tracks because what he's doing arguably better than anyone else in the league is playing the position of quarterback. That means making the right reads, throwing the ball on time, managing the pocket, hitting all your layups, and striking deep when it's there (and never when it's not).

I like the distinction you make here though, that Geno needed to learn to play the position of quarterback FOR THE SEAHAWKS at a high level specifically. That makes a lot of sense too.

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Getting ahead of myself, I'm already thinking about next season and this seemed as good a place to put my half-baked thoughts as any. I fear a scenario where Geno out-prices what we're willing to pay, because I'm not sure I believe Lock is the guy. I think we'll draft a QB at some point in the 2023 draft. There's a lot to like about Young but I don't see another quarterback who wouldn't need some time and I suspect he will go #1 overall. And the odds of the Texans having that pick seem very high right now.

What do you think Jordan Love would be worth to Green Bay? A 3rd and a role player at most? He's 25, tall and mobile and has some game experience and 3 years in the Packers QB room. Tyler Huntley or Minshew maybe? We'll need a bridge guy for this hypothetical rookie (hopefully McCall) to study under.

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Why is Tom Brady jumping over caverns?

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