Sure, an offense with more predication on the quick pass game would help in theory, but you already described the rub – the Panthers’ personnel isn’t really suited for it at all. Mastering the quick pass game requires an incredible time and resource commitment, and they’re probably better off mastering the things that their personnel is built to do. Fleshing out their runningback and tight end screen game would probably be a better way to complement their deep drop pass game.

Teams like Denver and Minnesota are obviously bad matchups for their offense. But remember that the Denver defense also beat Tom Brady twice last year, and the New England pass game is as predicated on the quick game as you can possibly be.

Brent: Does a healthy Marqise Lee make the offense worse? It almost seems like Jags are obligated to feed him.

It’s not that they’re obligated to feed him, it’s that defenses are finding ways to funnel the ball to the Jaguars’ worst skill position players. It’s not unlike the problem Green Bay has with the ball being funneled to Davante Adams.

The crutch is that good quarterbacks make bad players look better than they are. The last throw I wrote about in this week’s Bortles piece is a perfect example of a quarterback playing poorly and making his wide receiver look worse. Lee’s bad enough as is, he doesn’t need help looking worse.

Azeem: Who will be good at football first – the Jags or Tarheels?

Both should just focus on themselves.

Lucas: Why do bad teams stay bad, and vice versa? With coaching/GM/player turnover, I feel like there should be more parity, but there definitely isn’t. Related: will the Bears ever be good again? Pls say yes.

A lot of it is because there’s way more dissension and political backstabbing inside most NFL buildings than you’d ever be led to believe. Remember that an NFL organization is bound by the limits of humans being forced to interact with each other. You’ve got different personality types, ways of learning and processing information, and a LOT of ego. And, ultimately, everybody is really looking out for their own best interests. I say often that what’s good for a GM or coach’s job security isn’t necessarily what’s in the best interest of the team. Good teams stay good because they don’t need to convince themselves that the shit they’ve bought is, in fact, shit. Self-scouting is the hardest type of scouting.

Also, there’s only like 3-5 teams at a time with a quarterback capable of covering up for a poor roster’s flaws. GMs know that if they find #theguy, they’re basically set forever. Look how long Ryan Grigson has been GM of the Colts, and the only thing he’s not fucked up in Indianapolis was picking Andrew Luck first overall. Strong resume there. The tantalization of finding the guy and then coasting on that leads to a lot of repetitive patterns for franchises.

Thomas: Is Dave Caldwell too tied to Gus Bradley for him to stay even if Gus is fired?

Hank and I talked about this on the latest Keep Choppin’ Wood episode, and it’s a good follow-up to the previous question. You can already see how Caldwell can set this up pretty easily to absolve himself of blame (remember that GMs are snakes, and everybody’s #1 concern in the NFL is to keep their job as long as possible). He can say that Gus has made bad coaching hires, mismanaged their talent, etc.

The black mark against Caldwell right now is he’s put a ton of draft capital into the offense, and few of those investments have paid off. Most GMs are judged by their quarterback selection, and very few get to make a second one. If Bortles’ poor play continues, I think you have to seriously consider bringing in someone new who has an unbiased opinion of Bortles and the other players on the roster. If Blake isn’t the guy, the worst possible outcome is retaining Caldwell, forcing his (bad) quarterback on coaching candidates and narrowing the pool, and ultimately wasting another two years. Caldwell isn’t as bad as his predecessor by any means, but you can see history repeating itself identically as to when the Jaguars hired Mularkey because they couldn’t get anyone reputable willing to coach Gabbert.

Ben: You have gone on and on about Blake Bortles’ regression and his current badness. But there of course is the question of why/how he’s gotten here?

I’ve said before that he’s not an overly-intellectual player, and that he plays off instinct. He’s not trusting what he sees, he’s not seeing the field clearly, and his accuracy has gone to shit.

Also, this is nothing but conjecture, but I really think Blake and this entire team got gassed up by their own hype (how a 5-11 team has hype, I’ll never know) and believed that they had arrived before they were even good. Example:

Well. Maybe that was a bad idea. https://t.co/1HP99v78YA

— Adam Bealyer (@Bealzies) September 27, 2016

You only won 5 games, the offense finally showed promise, so you immediately planned to work LESS.

— Adam Bealyer (@Bealzies) September 27, 2016

Weird.

JT: Can you explain why Zero WR is an especially bad fantasy draft strategy?

Honestly, the best fantasy team I ever drafted was a Zero WR team (RIP Josh Gordon), and I think in standard scoring leagues it might even be the optimal strategy. If you play PPR, it’s probably not the best strategy, but (like any draft strategy) it is viable if you pick the right players. However, you shouldn’t be playing PPR willingly (DFS excluded) because PPR is for fucking cowards and PPR with Flex spots is downright un-American.

I first read about RBx5 or Zero WR from this piece on Rotoviz. Gordon in the 8th round was really the key that made this entire strategy work. 2013 was honestly an amazing year for that strategy. I’ve had up-and-down success with it since then, but mostly I really like how disorienting it is during the draft for your leaguemates. People see the RB supply drying up even faster than usual, reaches happen, and shit gets weird. Having a league that is very trade-friendly helps too. If you have a bunch of assholes who sit on the same roster all year, you could end up screwing yourself.

Ask yourself this: if you had started a fantasy draft off with Ezekiel Elliot, CJ Anderson, Melvin Gordon, and LeGarrette Blount in the first four rounds, you’d probably be feeling pretty good about your team right now – wide receiver be damned. What if you had gone WR heavy and started with a Julio Jones/Sammy Watkins duo or Dez Bryant/Keenan Allen? It really always comes back to picking the right dudes, having good luck with injuries, and fixing your weak spots through the waiver wire or trades.

Colin: What do you think about poops after you shower? 

It’s almost as bad as PPR leagues with multiple flex spots.

The fact that we can even have a comparison between the two is highly disappointing. However, it’s not completely unfounded. Here’s a video from 2012 with current Jaguars Offensive Coordinator Greg Olsen. Olsen served as the Quarterback coach under the previous regime (Mike Mularkey’s sole season in Jacksonville). After the entire staff was fired, he went to Oakland and ran the offense in Derek Carr’s rookie year, then returned to Jacksonville as Jedd Fisch’s replacement on Gus Bradley’s staff. That’s a really convoluted way of saying that he’s worked directly with both Blaine Gabbert and Blake Bortles.

The video begins with Olson explaining their Out-Skinny Post concept, a Hi-Low against the Hook-to-Curl defender. The idea is to get his shoulders to turn and open with the Out, opening a window to hit the Skinny Post behind him.

This is a very basic concept that every single NFL team runs in every single NFL game. It’s versatile and can be successful against a number of different coverages, provided the Post runner keeps inside leverage on the corner and the quarterback places the ball into the window with the proper trajectory. If you watched the video, you saw Blaine complete this route combo a number of different times.

Now, here’s Blake running the exact same concept against the Ravens last week.

What should be an easy pitch-and-catch where Hurns can protect himself turns into a hospital ball. Hurns has to stop, jump in the air and contort his body which allows the safety to close and hit him in mid-air.

Not ideal.

On the very next play, they run the same concept. Baltimore runs Cover-2 instead of Cover-3, but it’s the same read – just with slightly different timing and trajectory on the ball.

As you can see, the window opens and closes a lot quicker here. The ball comes out late and behind the receiver, leading to another potential hospital ball (I’m fine with the low trajectory howver, because it gives the wide receiver an opportunity to protect himself in a really congested area.)

These are two opportunities where the offense gets a good look and a man open (albeit, in tight windows) where the quarterback busts the play. They proceeded to punt. Again, this is a really basic concept that every NFL quarterback has to be able to make. Blaine Gabbert routinely made this play.

Inaccuracy doesn’t show up on the stat sheet as much more than an incomplete pass, but what’s missing from the box score is yardage that a team leaves on the field. Here’s another example:

It’s 3rd and 8 in the first quarter with the game at 0-0, and the Jaguars call up for a Post-Deep Cross Hi-Lo of the deep safety. This Hi-Lo is another that will work against multiple coverages, man or zone, with the objectives being having the Post runner maintain inside leverage on the corner and to get the safety on that side (or in the middle of the field if it is a single-high coverage, as what ends up being the case here) to open his hips with the Deep Cross. As soon as the safeties hips open, the ball needs to be on it’s way over the top.

The ball comes out on time, but instead of leading the wide receiver into the middle of the field for an easy touchdown, he leads him back outside towards the cornerback. This is what I brought up in the podcast about the quarterback making a bad wide receiver look bad. Marqise Lee struggles adjusting to the ball in the air and making contested caches, and what should have been an easy touchdown leads to a drop and a punt because Bortles made him do exactly that.

These plays show how a quarterback struggling with timing and accuracy can completely break an offense. The scary thing is that aren’t Bortles’ worst plays – I wouldn’t even put these in his bottom five for the Ravens game. All of his turnovers this season have been downright reprehensible, and the sacks he took in crunch time against Baltimore were the worst outcomes you could possibly have on those plays. He’s struggling seeing the field clearly, cannot throw accurately, and is showing poor situational awareness. He is arguably playing like the worst quarterback in the NFL, and the rest of the season should essentially be viewed as an extended tryout.

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Chris: How do I become a successful gambler when it comes to CFB and the NFL? 

You should ask a successful gambler. They don’t build casinos with gold walls because they lose money.

Connor: Why does nobody care about Mizzou? Back-to-back SEC East champs, back to back Big-12 North champs, they’ve put dudes in the league . I‘m biased, but we gotta be the most overlooked program in CFB relative to on-field and NFL success, and it bothers me more than it should so I always ask folks who aren’t from KC or StL what they see and think when Mizzou pops up.

Honestly, I think everyone reaches a point where they unconsciously black out all information on Missouri and Kansas because trying to figure out why Kansas City is in fucking Missouri and not Kansas is a traumatic childhood moment for anyone that doesn’t live in either state.

Mizzou’s run at the top of the SEC East kinda reminds me of when Georgia clamped down on the division in the early 2000s when both Florida and Tennessee were down. Nice teams during down periods, but they’re definitely in the shadow of Saban’s LSU championship team and the undefeated Auburn team of 2004. That’s the same spot Mizzou is in – they’re a good program, but the East is a little down, and they’ve been overshadowed by the SEC West.

Also, fuck Blaine Gabbert.

Adam: I just have a sort of extended question on Teddy Bridgewater. We were all part of the #TeamTeddy movement that supported him coming out of Louisville. My biggest admiration of Teddy is footwork and balance. He climbs the pocket with fluidity and throws from a solid base. However, there isn’t anything exactly flashy or fascinating about his play. Given this, and irregardless of injury, is Teddy a good NFL quarterback?

Teddy is a Rorschach test, and what people say about him says more about the evaluator analyst than Teddy’s play itself. There really isn’t a lot ton of nuance in evaluating in evaluating him – good (possibly elite?) movement and awareness in the pocket; accurate enough underneath; struggles with placement on both posts and streaks, but can hit the corner route decently enough; not particularly aggressive throwing into tight windows.

What’s interesting about Teddy is that he was drafted into an ecosystem that doesn’t particularly work well for his skillset. I guess the thing that gives me the most pause is: Norv Turner had no problem featuring Philip Rivers (who doesn’t have a cannon, but can throw vertically) in a shotgun, pass-first offense. And that started right when Ladainian Tomlinson started slowing down. So why has their offense so closesly resembled the Jay Fiedler/Ricky Williams Miami offense that Turner was in charge of? That was the most fascinating part of that entire situation. And now neither one is going to be playing any time soon.

Al: What is so wrong with the Packers offense? Obviously Jordy isn’t all the way back, but one WR shouldn’t sink the offense.

It shouldn’t, but that’s the offensive ecosystem that Green Bay has created and maintained for years. Right now, the Packers’ problem is that they don’t have a single skill position player where a defensive coordinator says: “if we don’t stop that guy, we lose.” When that happens, the defense can take away who they want, and force the system to actually work against the offense by making the team ball go to inferior players (any time Davante Adams is targeted should be seen as a win for the defense).

It’s not necessarily Aaron Rodgers’ fault as these were the exact same things everyone was saying about Tom Brady during his slump in 2013 and the beginning of 2014. Then Gronk got healthy and Brady was an MVP candidate again. Jordy is that type of important for Green Bay, and that offense will go as his knee goes.

Also, everyone forgets that when Brady doesn’t have elite talent pass catching talent around him, he’s essentially a 3800 yard/28 TD passer.

Chef B: You have the right “eye”… In any universe, this or alternate, do you see Ryan Tannehill as a playoff QB or are Dolphins wasting their time that could be invested in an actual QB and not an athlete trying to be a QB? Thanks.

I liked Tannehill more than most coming out (I actually had him above RG3), but I think it’s fair to say that he is what he is at this point. There really hasn’t been much growth in his game since he switched back to quarterback after moving from wide receiver. He’s functional, but his production is largely attributable to volume. Michael Lombardi recently said on Bill Simmons’ podcast that he’s a guy who the game speeds up for in tight situations down the stretch, and that’s when his critical mistakes come. I can’t say I’ve watched a ton of the dude in the NFL, but that’s believable to me because that’s exactly what his problem was at Texas A&M.

Luck’s Neck Beard: Trade Chuck Pagano straight across for Gus Bradley, who says no?

Goatee-for-goatee? This is the Jon Baldwin for A.J. Jenkins of coach trades.

Jason: Why won’t Jacksonville change their defensive scheme?

I think that because coach’s have such little control over the outcome of play that they try to maintain control in ways that are familiar and predictable to them. Losing in a predictable way is psychologically more comforting than losing in an unpredictable one. Remember Brett Favre talking about how many times Holmgren chewed him out for doing his own thing and changing plays to better ones?

Myfanwy365: Do you believe @AwfulWhiteQBs has a point when it comes to how black QBs are evaluated & drafted, not given a chanceDo you believe @AwfulWhiteQBs has a point when it comes to how black QBs are evaluated and drafted and not given a chance?

I honestly love this question. While no sane person should be dying on Tajh Boyd hill, I think @AwfulWhiteQBs does a good job of highlighting a lot of the discrepancies in how black quarterbacks are covered by the media, analyzed during the scouting process, and the patience given to them by teams when they do get an opportunity.

I still can’t help but think of how weirdly Blaine Gabbert and Cam Newton were contrasted during the pre-draft process. The negatives that were discussed for Cam (spread offensive system, short track record of production were simply glossed over for Gabbert – and Gabbert had downright poor production in a very mediocre conference. There was the weird, dog-whistley Nolan Nawrocki draft profile.

The funny thing is that black quarterbacks are numerous in lower levels – where the outcome of the game can mostly be decided by putting the ball in your best athlete’s hands on every single play. The traditional NFL offense is very difficult to play for black and white quarterbacks alike.There are like five good quarterbacks at any given time in the NFL, and that’s a 32 team league. What the hell else are 100+ major-division college football teams supposed to do other than adapt to the talent at hand? While NFL teams are borrowing some concepts from lower levels, everything in the NFL is mostly a remix of what Paul Brown and Sid Gillman were doing back in the 60s. When people say “he’ll have struggling adapting as a running (code: black) quarterback, I always say: the number of bad, slow, pocket-passing quarterbacks vastly outnumbers any other type.

And I don’t think it’s that teams are necessarily consciously racist, but there are a lot of inherent biases that do exist. Like I said in amy nswer to the last question – coaches have little control outside of their systems and like to win and lose in predictable, familiar ways. I don’t know why losing with Christian Hackenberg is supposed to be any better or more preferable than losing with Geno Smith, but here we are.

Also, fuck Blaine Gabbert (again), I’m actually pissed he’s come up twice in the debut mailbag.

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You’re a boxer.

You’re matched up against an extremely aggressive fighter. He’s not a reckless one, either.

He has a plan. He’s been taught well. He’s calculated. Most of all, he loves punching.

Hard.

What are your options? You can go blow-for-blow with him. It might work if you’re bigger, stronger, faster, and more technically skilled. Your night could also end with fewer teeth than you started with. You can Micky Ward it – sacrifice yourself early in the hopes he punches himself out.

Or you can use his aggression against him. Don’t just avoid. Convince him to throw the punches you want him to throw.

See the rest at MattWaldmanRSP.com

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Bully Football. It’s the term I use for physical players who take the action to their opponents. When friend Ryan Riddle saw Myles Jack in the Rose Bowl last month, he commented that he thought Jack looked small. Beyond a game-sealing interception, Jack didn’t come up big in the box score against BYU, either. But Jack sees a lot of time as a coverage ‘backer against some schemes and this was the case in the game Riddle and I saw.

Known for his coverage skill, there will be questions about Jack’s 6’0″, 230 lb. frame holding up in the NFL. It’s why I suggested we watch Jack against Virginia’s more traditional, pro style sets. From the Will and Mike roles, Jack displayed that those questions should be met with a finger to the lips.

When asked to play in those roles, Jack plays bully football against big men and wins. Watch the 45-minute episode below and you’ll see what we noted:

• Technically sound striking.
• Understanding how to pick a side.
• Skill at crossing the face of linemen as a run gap blitzer.
• A smart balance of remaining gap disciplined and showing aggression.
• Explosive strength.

See the rest on MattWaldmanRSP.com

Linear thinking is important because it’s efficient, process-driven, and based around deductive reasoning. As the quote above says, linear thinking can also be limiting because it can only follow the path laid out by the starting point. In terms of the draft, I think it’s particularly helpful in identifying physical traits, as those things are observable, measurable, testable, and verifiable (and this goes for both the film and metrics sides of the spectrum).

Non-linear thinking is important because understanding physical traits is only part of the player evaluation puzzle. The other side of the coin is trying to understand the context of a player’s decision-making on the field. And trying to understand someone’s thought-process is tough. It’s even tougher when we think linearly and anchor ourselves to the starting point of our conclusion. That sounds paradoxical, but it’s often how this works: “This play is good/bad or shows this trait (starting point) because of X, Y, Z (observable information).”

The first installment of Every Play Tells a Story is a perfect example of why we need to use non-linear thinking when trying to figure out a player’s decision making. We’re going to remove all starting points. I’m ambiguous to the actual result. It’s not an example of something good, or something bad, or an example of a trait.

It’s peeling all the layers of information that the quarterback would have to account for and process through: what the play is trying to accomplish conceptually, and how both offense and defense dictate to each other. The difference is that I’ve got fifteen minutes to explain it. He’s got about fifteen seconds from the break of the huddle to the release of his throw.

Welcome to Every Play Tells a Story, starring Jacoby Brissett in his first drive of live action in two years.

See the rest at MattWaldmanRSP.com

I. Edge rushers are the easiest position to project in the NFL Draft.

The skills required to play the position are easily discernible on tape. Jene Bramel and Andrew Parsons have probably done a better job than anyone at showing what to look for biomechanically from edge rushers on film. Further, the physical ability required to use those skills at a baseline level in the NFL is easily discernible through the athletic tests performed at the NFL combine. Where Andrew and Jene are excellent as describing translatable skills, Justis Mosqueda has created a metric named “Force Players” that passes or fails Edge rushers athletically based on Explosion and/or Agility in relation to their body’s density. The list of players who have passed and failed is stunningly accurate in projecting success.

Read the rest at MattWaldmanRSP.com

Even with a set of clearly defined and traits to look for and a system in which to filter their importance, quarterback scouting can still be really, really hard. That largely has to do with sample size and the amount of useable plays a quarterback has per game. I’ve said often that the NFL likes Jameis Winston because he’s a straightforward evaluation.

Every game he’s in has exposure after exposure of him showing these things – whether he shows these things in a good or bad way becomes almost secondary. The lack of nuance required to actually see the traits elevates him almost on principle, and that’s largely due to the style of offense that Florida State plays. I’ve never been a fan of the term “pro style” when describing a college offense, preferring to call them “traditional” offenses.

His offense plays at a normal pace, he takes drops from under center, and he’s not a threat as a runner. In turn, defenses respond by playing Florida State in a more traditional manner. You get more man coverage and confusing pre-snap defensive looks, tighter windows to throw into, more compressed pockets for the quarterback to navigate, etc.

Marcus Mariota sits on the other end of the spectrum. The way they play offense (and, in turn, the way defenses respond to their offense) vastly limits the amount of usable snaps per game you get from Mariota. He’s asked to make some “traditional offense” reads and throws (it’s not like their pass offense is just a million screens over and over), but the way that defenses play Oregon makes things incredibly easy on the quarterback.

Oregon’s offense is actually very easy to figure out from a theoretical standpoint. They want to use their no-huddle pace and spread formations to get the defense to declare their intentions pre-snap. Spread formations and the hurry-up tempo prevent the defense from clustering or disguising their coverages pre-snap (and the coverages tend to predominantly be zone as opposed to man).

When the defense goes into a two-high safety look, Oregon wants to run it (or combine play-action with Quarters/Cover Two beaters). Against one-high safety looks, they’re looking to combo their run game with horizontal stretches or screens in the short areas of the field (or they’ll run Four Verticals when they feel like taking a shot play). Again, a lot of these pass concepts are “traditional,” but often times Oregon is getting the perfect play-call in against a clearly defined coverage/front.

This doesn’t necessarily make Mariota a worse prospect; it makes him a tougher evaluation. You just have to search harder to find plays that display projectable traits, and because you’re dealing with such a smaller sample of usable plays, the answers can be inconclusive or even contradictory.

Read the rest on MattWaldmanRSP.com

When I heard Dan’s Hatman’s description of “trait-based scouting” on the Process the Process podcast, it reminded me a lot of the grading scale Andrew Parsons and I co-developed when creating the Draft Mecca website. We knew that until we actually sat down and listed all of the projectable traits each position shows andweighing the importance of each trait, we would forever be chasing flashes and potentially overvaluing or over-correcting based on a few good or bad plays.

Think of a grading scale like a Madden rating. In Madden’s rating formula, coefficients like “Speed” and “Awareness” correlate to a player’s overall rating. The higher you raise a player’s “Speed” rating, the higher his overall rating becomes and vice versa – and this is universal across almost all positions. However, each position differs in how much the coefficients affect the rating. For instance, raising an offensive guard’s Speed to 99 doesn’t have the same affect as raising a running back’s Speed to 99.

What we did was list all the specific and projectable traits each position has – essentially, determining “what” we were looking for in each position. We then assigned weighted values to each trait. We then assigned weighted values to each trait and it’s sub-categories. Some things are more important than others. Moreso than simply spitting out a numerical grade, it allowed us to see a players’ playing style in totality.

Dan’s wide receiver example in the podcast is a perfect illustration – you might have three wide receivers with the same level of “goodness” in a vacuum, but they succeed and fail in vastly different areas. Visualize a player’s skill set like a Mockdraftable web: the more spikes a player has, the more projectable traits and integrated skills he has. However, you don’t need a full web for a prospect to be good. You mainly just need to see some spikes in important areas.

Long story short, this is a breakdown of the traits that matter to me when scouting quarterbacks. The bold-underlined portions are the major categories. Each one has sub-categories (and some of those have sub-categories as well). Again, if you put together a formula of how to weight each of these traits, you can alter how much each one affects the total overall grade. If something is italicized, it means it’s the most important part of that category (for example, Pocket Comfort is the most important of the major categories. It will have the highest impact on the overall grade, and Eye-Level carries the most weight of the sub-categories inside of thePocket Comfort.)

Read the rest on MattWaldmanRSP.com