The “system” that matters is that Mariota (and Manziel, RGIII, Newton, Kaepernick and others before him) ran a spread offense that is so different from the NFL systems he will be asked to run, that it’s like starting again as a freshman in college. Things like knowing what the plays are, calling them in a huddle, taking a snap from under center, doing a 3, 5 or 7 step drop, are all foreign to these guys, let alone the more complex stuff like reading a defense, spotting a mismatch, calling audibles, or working through progressions. It’s like they come into the league as remedial students of the game and they are so far behind the curve in learning how to play the position that they’re simply not ready to start.
Which is why Luck was such a once-a-decade QB, because he was ready for those aspects of the game.
The question is whether or not Mariota can learn to be an NFL QB when he will be starting over at square one. Maybe he will, maybe he won’t. But #2 pick in the draft seems a bit high for someone with such a huge question mark. And the track record for spread QB’s in the NFL isn’t the best. Especially as passers.
I think today there’s a good chance Mariota ends up with the Eagles and the Browns get Bradford.
Why anyone treats Bradford as a valuable assets, I don’t know. The guy was pretty decent at best in the 7 or so games he played over his career. He’s made of glass. Why is he a big enough asset that Philly was willing to give up a lot to get him, and why do the Browns want to bank on him? Is there reason to think he’s going to be a top 10 QB if he stays healthy?
The Browns have…made some poor decisions…in the past, but I can’t see why they’d trade for Bradford with that price tag and only a year left on his contract. The Rams-Eagles QB swap was in the realm of reason, but a pick for him? Especially now when veterans’ values are at their lowest.
The word here in South Florida is that the Dolphins are really interested in Georgia RB Todd Gurley, who is being compared to Adrian Peterson, but is coming off an ACL injury. It’d be a bold move, with lots of potential upside, but it doesn’t address an area of need (they have Lamar Miller, who rushed for over 1,000 yards last season and averaged over 5 yards a carry). For need, they probably need to lick up a corner or safety, but it doesn’t look like Trae Waynes will still be available at pick 14.
Exactly, Manziel threw it up for Mike Evans to go get and Mariota was hitting receivers with no defender within 15 yards. Credit to him, he won a lot of games. But I don’t know if his skill set translates to the NFL.
Heard someone say this morning that was actually good because then Johnny could sit and learn for another year. In other words, the Browns could have not one, but two years of guaranteed shit QB play.
The chances of Bradford playing a full season healthy seem slim. Not to mention the Browns have nobody to catch the ball regardless of who’s throwing it…
I think he can do better than Manziel, not having a known drug problem. I’ll say next off-season - which will start the day after the Bucs’ Game 16, or maybe a few weeks earlier.
The Titans reportedly countered the Browns asking for both 1st round picks, a 2nd round pick and next year’s 1st round pick. For Marcus Mariota. No stinking way.
Titans GM claims to be in discussions with 3 or 4 teams. To me, that means 3 or fewer and he’s trying to drive up the price in the last hours.
The Titans demands are ridiculous. I’d be willing to part with a 1st and 2nd this year, and a first next year, or both firsts this year and a second next year, I think. And that’s a pretty reasonable price. No higher than that.
22 year old Peyton Manning isn’t worth 2 first rounders and a second?
Maybe you mean “no prospect” is worth that much. But was Andrew Luck? If someone offered the Colts 2 firsts and a second for Luck, they should’ve traded?
A franchise QB, if you know that’s what you have, is worth 10 first round picks. Maybe more. But of course you can’t know that for sure coming into the draft.
Not until the Colts put a good team around him, no. They could have become winners sooner if they’d had and used more picks on smartly-chosen midrounders. Do please recall the “Manning or Leaf?” debate, only narrowly chosen in Manning’s favor, and the unavailability of foresight at the time. I think you’d agree Leaf wasn’t worth any pick at all.
That’s all that’s available this weekend - prospects.
You know that now. You couldn’t and didn’t know then. The pick was a gamble, they all are, and to point out only gambles that pay off is called cherrypicking.
Again, when do you know that? Not until years later. Certainly not when you have to make the decision.
Ah, yeah, the “nothing but superbowls mean anything” theory of football evaluation. Manning was useless until he got to a superbowl, when suddenly he became someone.
The Colts had league average talent at best for most of their years, yet they got 10+ wins year in year out, essentially all because of Peyton Manning. A top 5 quarterback is easily worth 5 other top-5 players at other positions. The Colts would’ve laughed at an offer of 2 firsts and a second for Andrew Luck, as would I. I would’ve given up 4 first rounders for the guy, and would’ve been correct to do so.
No other position in team sports is as important as a quarterback is to an NFL team. 2 first rounders and a second rounder is a pittance to pay for one.
That’s the most idiotic line of thinking that I commonly see about football. “We have to use the [last year’s superbowl winner] model of building a team! They’re the only correct way to follow, everyone who didn’t win is worthless!”
Worse still is when someone acts as though the team that loses the superbowl is a lesson in what not to do. As if losing the superbowl were a worse state than going 4-12 and staying home for the playoffs.
What if a run-and-play-defense team wins the superbowl, so you start drafting to mimic them, and then the next year a wide open air raid passing game wins it? Do you just change your philosophy completely over, chasing the last superbowl winner? Cut all your players that were a scheme fit for the former and overpay/overdraft the latter?
Trent Dilfer is a better QB than Dan Marino by an infinite amount. You should hope that you draft the next Dilfer, not the next Marino. Tom Brady has won the most superbowls in the modern era, you should only draft your quarterback in the 6th round.
Football isn’t even a very deterministic game. The Pats/Seattle game last year came down to almost nothing. If they played that game a hundred times, do the Pats win 55 of them? 45? And yet because they happened to flip the coin and it came up heads today, we should only emulate the Pats and ignore the Seahawks. And yet if an interception is dropped, or a thousand other small factors flipped the game in favor of the Seahawks, then suddenly we should emulate the Seahawks and ignore the Pats.