The Young QB Class

[Spor_tees]

I got to thinking (dangerous I know), and I was thinking about how many rookie starting QBs there are in the league right now. From year to year, you might see maybe one rookie QB to get the starting job out of training camp, and maybe see a few more make spot starts because of injuries. This year seems to be a little different. You have Dalton in Cincinnati, Newton in Carolina, and Gabbert in Jacksonville. You also have to take Jake Locker into account in Tennessee.

So I started thinking about another QB draft class that had a lot of starters...yeah you know, the 1983 draft class. Marino, Elway, Kelly, Blackledge, O'Brien, Eason...the cream of the crop. Curt Warner was even in that draft class! Well the runningback Curt Warner was.

So who would you compare each guy to? To me Dalton would be Jim Kelly. Not great at anything but good at a lot of things. He doesn't have a shotgun arm, but has accuracy and can sling those intermediate routes.

Newton I am torn on. I don't want to put him anywhere near the class of Marino, but he does have that gunslinger attitude Marino had when he first came into the league. Also Newton has more maneuverability than Marino, and that would put him along side Elway who used to run a lot more in his younger years.

Gabbert would probably fall to a Ken O'Brien type. A solid player who will contribute each week and not lose you games, and can in fact put up big numbers from time to time, but you can't lean on him to take over.

Locker hasn't played yet but by going off his college career he would most resemble Elway. He has that combination of speed and a rocket arm. Can he pull it all together and be a great QB like Elway...well that is a stretch.

[HoosierCat]

Dalton isn't like anybody.

Andy Dalton is one of only 32 quarterbacks in history to start the first six games of his rookie season, and his passer rating of 84.3 is the best in that group (Matt Ryan second, 82.9).

Red Rifle? More like KNEEL BEFORE ZOD.

[Spor_tees]

Dalton isn't like anybody.

Andy Dalton is one of only 32 quarterbacks in history to start the first six games of his rookie season, and his passer rating of 84.3 is the best in that group (Matt Ryan second, 82.9).

Red Rifle? More like KNEEL BEFORE ZOD.

I bet you used to use that line on all the girls at the frat parties in Athens.

[cincyhokie]

Dalton isn't like anybody.

Andy Dalton is one of only 32 quarterbacks in history to start the first six games of his rookie season, and his passer rating of 84.3 is the best in that group (Matt Ryan second, 82.9).

Red Rifle? More like KNEEL BEFORE ZOD.

I bet you used to use that line on all the girls at the frat parties in Athens.

Did I mention that Athens is my favorite all time place on the planet? Yeah, it is.

[volcom69]

Dalton isn't like anybody.

Andy Dalton is one of only 32 quarterbacks in history to start the first six games of his rookie season, and his passer rating of 84.3 is the best in that group (Matt Ryan second, 82.9).

Red Rifle? More like KNEEL BEFORE ZOD.

Interesting, i just wonder if he will be able to keep it up the rest of the season. Time to get this running game going to help him out some. So far i have been very happy with Dalton.

[HoosierCat]

Dalton isn't like anybody.

Andy Dalton is one of only 32 quarterbacks in history to start the first six games of his rookie season, and his passer rating of 84.3 is the best in that group (Matt Ryan second, 82.9).

Red Rifle? More like KNEEL BEFORE ZOD.

I bet you used to use that line on all the girls at the frat parties in Athens.

Nah, the line I used involved inviting her out for a hot fudge sundae.

We'll be celebrating our 22nd wedding anniversary in about 3 weeks...

Moral of the story: ice cream is evil.

[kingwilly]

Great story. Really refreshing view of the Bengals.

Funny, that it's ML's observation that Carson quit during the season, not in the late part of the year. He'd decided he was done. Does explain the indifferent physical attitude he carried during those games when he was just going through the motions, with little interest in being the QB of the team.

To me, Dalton could be like Steve Young and/or Drew Brees. Not big, not an extremely strong arm, but a steady level engine of a QB who wins by making the fewest possible mistakes and using equal parts patience, smarts and instinct to command the team.

Now, its only 6 games and there is sure to be a lull or two. How he has grown is impressive, and we've seen it in front of us not hidden away at mini-camp, OTAs and training camp. We saw the progression right there from day 1 of camp to the first game of the season, and through each game played. Steady progress. Better each time, in several ways.

I'm not claiming he will be as successful as Steve Young or Drew Brees, just that his approach and playing style is similar in my view.

Put me in the camp that truly thought we'd made a big mistake. Now put me in the camp that is pleased as punch to have been shown to be wrong.

oh, and A-town is a great little berg to spend 5 or six years drinking coffee at the Front Room, eating at the burrito buggy, ordering Late Nite pizza and riding mountain bikes out at Strouds Run, Wayne National Forest and Lake Hope. Those were the days...

[Spor_tees]

Good lord I think I am surrounded by cow tipping, Amish loving, neo-journalist wannabes around here! I thought only one or two people a year tops, graduated from OU. The rest just went there a year or two to party on Halloween and then transferred to Miami of Ohio to get a real degree.

[princeton]

there's that old football maxim: cold weather teams need QBs with big arms. It'll be interesting to see how Dalton fares in late November/December (and January of course )

[COB]

Man, a lot of Bobcats in here. I love OU for one thing - Frank Solich trying to beat a passed-out in his car DUI charge by claiming someone in an Athens bar slipped him a date rape drug.

[Walrus]

This thread made me think of something Lewis said many years ago ('04 or '05, I think). When asked who was the best QB that had played for him, he responded (in somewhat typical Marvin fashion) that it was Dilfer -- because he had won a ring with him. At the time, I took it as him refusing to be baited into heaping praise upon Carson "Superman" Palmer and thus inflating expectations on his young qb.

Now, with the emergence of another Lewis game-manager, I'm starting to wonder if he wasn't being more straightforward than I realized.

Anyways, while I was searching for that quote, I found this writeup from this past spring that probably should be included in this thread.

Type bias makes quarterbacks tough to evaluate

The NFL draft is a crapshoot at the best of times. and when ranking and evaluating the "easiest" of positions (whatever they may be). More than any other position, quarterback is the most difficult to assess. About once every five years, you get a scheme-transcendent quarterback, who could drop into any of 32 teams and succeed. Oklahoma's Sam Bradford(notes) is probably the last one to project that way, and it's safe to say that there is no quarterback in the 2011 draft class who will give what Bradford will give the Rams from a pure skill set perspective.

And that means one very simple thing — as much as it's about base attributes (both tangible and intangible), you have to point your scheme in the direction of your next franchise quarterback. This is especially true of those quarterbacks who come to the NFL with skills that pretty much maxed out in college — the ones who didn't have the rocket arm and ridiculous mobility to blow away college defenders. In cases like these, such players will have to prepare more, be more intelligent, and luck out enough to get in the right system. It's the toughest way to go, and for the guys who do make it in the NFL with relatively limited skills, it's a constant fight.

You would think that one fighter would recognize it in another, which leads us to the curious case of Trent Dilfer's quarterback evaluations.

Now, before we get into specifics, I want to make it very clear that I have a great deal of respect for Dilfer as a player and a person. He is a tough guy on and off the field who was drafted sixth overall by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 1994, but really didn't live up to that grade. More than anything, Dilfer had to be a student of the game, a total grinder, and a mentor to younger quarterbacks to make it through 13 years in the league.

He was the "winning quarterback" on the Baltimore Ravens' only Super Bowl run, but that had about 10 million times more to do with the fact that in the year 2000, Ray Lewis(notes) probably had the greatest single season a linebacker ever had. In a nutshell, Dilfer is a good guy who loves football and used his toughness and intelligence to go beyond his innate physical abilities. It's only natural that he would see that in others and lead that way when picking his favorite draft-eligible quarterbacks, but there's such a thing as taking that bias too far.

Exhibit A: Before the 2010 draft, Dilfer suggested that not only was Bradford not the best player in the draft class, he wasn't the best or most ready to make an impact right away (he gave that honor to Notre Dame's Jimmy Clausen(notes), who was taken in the second round by the Carolina Panthers and just lost his job to Cam Newton(notes) after just one season). Nor was Bradford going to be the best quarterback in four years, according to Dilfer — that honor would go to Texas' Colt McCoy(notes), who was selected in the third round by the Cleveland Browns and actually showed a lot more than Clausen did in his rookie year. But Bradford, who was taken first overall by the St. Louis Rams, was the slam-dunk unanimous Offensive Rookie of the Year despite injuries to just about every receiver on his roster.

Why was Bradford better? Because he didn't just have the freaky physical skill set — he also had the work ethic and intelligence of the less-talented quarterbacks, despite Dilfer's pre-draft assertion that Bradford hadn't been sufficiently "challenged" in college. And that's a terribly important lesson -- it's an enormous mistake to assume that just because a player has a skill set that puts him above the fray, it doens't mean that he doesn't work his butt off. But if you're looking at one type of guy, you may miss that.

Exhibit B: Dilfer's really interesting love for the quarterback potential of TCU's Andy Dalton(notes). Very much like Clausen and McCoy, Dalton is a player with limitations that he will have to overcome with on-field toughness, off-field playbook work, and the right scheme. Selected by the Cincinnati Bengals in the second round, Dalton was Dilfer's pet before and through the draft — he bashed one of his old teams, the Seattle Seahawks, for not taking Dalton in the first round despite that fact that based purely on tape, Dalton looked like a prospect with anywhere from a second-round to fourth-round grade. After Dalton was selected, Dilfer basically intimated that the Bengals had won the draft, and he continued his promotion of the Dalton Ideal the day after the kid was drafted.

"Andy Dalton carried the burden of the TCU program," Dilfer said during ESPN's Sunday draft coverage. "The bright lights were on them every week — people wanting them to lose. And he didn't flinch — he never flinched his entire career. And the stories you heard from the Rose Bowl against Wisconsin — how it was like an NFL team against a 1-AA team — and he sits there and says, 'Bring it on!' And he ran that show all day long. And that tells me more than any workout in shorts, and how the ball spins."

Well, there's a bit of revisionist history there. As TCU rose up from underdog school to legitimate BCS, they were led by a defense that paced the NCAA in value and effectiveness for three straight seasons. Hmmm. A "winner" who was actually led by his defense. Sound familiar? TCU's home unis even look a bit like the ones Dilfer wore for the Ravens in that Super Bowl year. Dalton was unquestionably a good college quarterback who helped his team win, but there are issues. First, he played in a spread offense in which he frequently rolled right in part to cut the field in half and decrease the complexity of his reads.

Second, (and this is a comparison Dilfer has made), the comps to Drew Brees(notes) are pretty weird. They work on the surface because Brees isn't a big guy and he played in a pseudo-spread at Purdue, but if you watch Brees and Dalton make deep post and seam throws, you'd think they were playing different sports. Brees is perhaps the best deep seam thrower in the NFL today, and Dalton doesn't seem to have the arm to make those deep throws with the velocity that gets the ball to the receiver before the cornerback closes on the route.

And if that's evident in college, imagine what it will look like for Dalton in the NFL, where the windows are about 10 times smaller.

Again, this not intended to bash Dilfer or Dalton specifically — it's more to illustrate that when it comes to player evaluation, we all come to the table with our own biases. Dilfer seems to gravitate to the guys who would rate an "O" on the NFL's letter grade system -- a competitive overachiever who falls short in certain vital athletic areas. As veteran NFL personnel man Tony Softli once told me, "There is a place in the NFL for a player like this that is smart, aware, has good character, is tough and productive, but just lacks the athletic skill set."

However, it's also true that the best players in the personnel game are conversant with the entire alphabet. You have to be able to evaluate players who don't fit your "type", or your board is going to have more talent gaps than any other, and you probably won't have a job for very long.

Dilfer isn't responsible for such things — his job is to analyze the game in an overall sense, not to break things down for a particular team. But for anyone watching tape and trying to understand what's important, it's a good idea to take yourself out of your own comfort zone as much as possible. Fixating on types isn't a good idea, no matter why you're watching that tape.

[COB]

This thread made me think of something Lewis said many years ago ('04 or '05, I think). When asked who was the best QB that had played for him, he responded (in somewhat typical Marvin fashion) that it was Dilfer -- because he had won a ring with him. At the time, I took it as him refusing to be baited into heaping praise upon Carson "Superman" Palmer and thus inflating expectations on his young qb.

Now, with the emergence of another Lewis game-manager, I'm starting to wonder if he wasn't being more straightforward than I realized.

Anyways, while I was searching for that quote, I found this writeup from this past spring that probably should be included in this thread.

Type bias’ makes quarterbacks tough to evaluate

Trent Dilfer > Doug Farrar

[Walrus]

This thread made me think of something Lewis said many years ago ('04 or '05, I think). When asked who was the best QB that had played for him, he responded (in somewhat typical Marvin fashion) that it was Dilfer -- because he had won a ring with him. At the time, I took it as him refusing to be baited into heaping praise upon Carson "Superman" Palmer and thus inflating expectations on his young qb.

Now, with the emergence of another Lewis game-manager, I'm starting to wonder if he wasn't being more straightforward than I realized.

Anyways, while I was searching for that quote, I found this writeup from this past spring that probably should be included in this thread.

Type bias’ makes quarterbacks tough to evaluate

Trent Dilfer > Doug Farrar

No doubt.

However, the Dalton/Dilfer comparison hadn't come up before and I think it's just as valid as some of the others I'm reading here...

[Spor_tees]

This thread made me think of something Lewis said many years ago ('04 or '05, I think). When asked who was the best QB that had played for him, he responded (in somewhat typical Marvin fashion) that it was Dilfer -- because he had won a ring with him. At the time, I took it as him refusing to be baited into heaping praise upon Carson "Superman" Palmer and thus inflating expectations on his young qb.

Now, with the emergence of another Lewis game-manager, I'm starting to wonder if he wasn't being more straightforward than I realized.

Anyways, while I was searching for that quote, I found this writeup from this past spring that probably should be included in this thread.

Type bias’ makes quarterbacks tough to evaluate

Trent Dilfer > Doug Farrar

No doubt.

However, the Dalton/Dilfer comparison hadn't come up before and I think it's just as valid as some of the others I'm reading here...

Dilfer was a stud in college at Fresno State in the right system. So that should be a major lesson to NFL teams who draft quarterbacks. If you are going to draft a guy based on his superior stats you better be expecting to use the same type of system he used in college. If you want a quarterback that is going to play in your system, you better chuck the stats out the window and look at the intangibles and whether the guy can make the plays your system requires.

[Earendil]

This thread made me think of something Lewis said many years ago ('04 or '05, I think). When asked who was the best QB that had played for him, he responded (in somewhat typical Marvin fashion) that it was Dilfer -- because he had won a ring with him. At the time, I took it as him refusing to be baited into heaping praise upon Carson "Superman" Palmer and thus inflating expectations on his young qb.

Now, with the emergence of another Lewis game-manager, I'm starting to wonder if he wasn't being more straightforward than I realized.

Anyways, while I was searching for that quote, I found this writeup from this past spring that probably should be included in this thread.

Type bias’ makes quarterbacks tough to evaluate

Trent Dilfer > Doug Farrar

No doubt.

However, the Dalton/Dilfer comparison hadn't come up before and I think it's just as valid as some of the others I'm reading here...

Dilfer was a stud in college at Fresno State in the right system. So that should be a major lesson to NFL teams who draft quarterbacks. If you are going to draft a guy based on his superior stats you better be expecting to use the same type of system he used in college. If you want a quarterback that is going to play in your system, you better chuck the stats out the window and look at the intangibles and whether the guy can make the plays your system requires.

I think that's exactly why Gruden wanted Dalton.

[HoosierCat]

Today's win means Dalton has now tied the man he replaced, Carson Palmer, in consecutive wins. Palmer had four straight four times but never got No. 5. The record for most consecutive wins is held by Boomer with six.

[Stripes]

The current poll on the espn.com home page is this:

Who is the better quarterback?

Andy Dalton

Joe Flacco

It's almost dead even right now. Considering it's a nationwide vote, that surprised me (pleasantly).

[HoosierCat]

Who is the better quarterback?

Andy Dalton

Joe Flacco

Animal > Bert

[Sea Ray]

As I recall Dilfer was terrible in his early yrs in the NFL. Dalton has had much more early success. Dilfer was also at the top of his class on draft day. Thus more should be expected of him

[HoosierCat]

Number of rookie QB who have thrown 12 TDs in their first 8 games since the 1970 merger: 1

Today's lesson: you never know when you get to watch history.

[Spor_tees]

Number of rookie QB who have thrown 12 TDs in their first 8 games since the 1970 merger: 1

Today's lesson: you never know when you get to watch history.

Number of 4th quarter comebacks in Andy Dalton's short career: 3

Amount of crow eaten by members of this message board: s**tloads

[membengal]

Does Pimp still think Dalton sucks and Palmer is awesome?

[BengalszoneBilly]

Number of rookie QB who have thrown 12 TDs in their first 8 games since the 1970 merger: 1

Today's lesson: you never know when you get to watch history.

Incredible.

[Spor_tees]

Does Pimp still think Dalton sucks and Palmer is awesome?

No Pimp attended the Church of Dalton, then ascended to the closet mountain and shouted at the top of his lungs, "I will now drink the Koolaid!"

[membengal]

Number of rookie QB who have thrown 12 TDs in their first 8 games since the 1970 merger: 1

Today's lesson: you never know when you get to watch history.

I had no idea. That's a fantastic stat.