When he plays in the regular season, he’s a decent-to-good NFL QB, it seems to me. But he never caught on at the various non-GB teams he’s tried. Is he a bad practice QB? I went to LSU, so I may be a bit biased… but as bad as so many teams’ QB situations are, it just seems ridiculous that he hasn’t gotten another chance to start somewhere besides GB.
In the last few years it seems like there are only about 15-20 players who are capable of playing QB at least pretty well consistently at the NFL level- and Flynn might be one of them.
From what I’ve read, at least part of the knock on Flynn is that he doesn’t have a particularly strong arm.
He’s had chances to start elsewhere…he’s just failed to capture and keep the job.
Seattle signed him to that big contract with the intent to have him start, but he got beaten out in training camp by a rookie (Russell Wilson).
Oakland traded for him with the intent to make him their starter, but he got beaten out in training camp by Terrelle Pryor. When he got his chance to play for the Raiders (when Pryor was hurt), he wasn’t terribly effective, and was demoted, then released.
Also, I’ve read that Flynn was apparently nursing an arm injury earlier this season, which may have contributed to poor play in preseason, and when he played in relief of Pryor in Oakland.
He ran into a buzz saw in Seattle. Russell Wilson pretty much has it all for a team that thought they were rebuilding at quarterback and only costs 600k a year.
Oakland can make a lot of quarterbacks look bad, and is not known for making prudent long-term decisions.
He’s pretty much out of shots. The NFL will take a chance on the unknown, but after bouncing around a few times you need a little luck and a lot of hard work and preparation to maybe get another go.
The good news is that he has seen enough offences and gained enough experience to reach the tipping point and become a possible long term backup.
He’s back with Green Bay. They put him in during the third quarter of Sunday’s game and it sounds like he did pretty well. I don’t really know what happened to him in the larger sense. He got a huge contract based on one great but not very meaningful game; Russell Wilson is awesome and won the job in Seattle; and I’m not sure if Flynn was terrible in Oakland or if they realized they were still rebuilding and decided to go with a younger, cheaper guy for that reason. I’m not sure what anybody will think of him after this season.
In my opinion, even if he performs great in GB he will only be thought of as a productive backup. Teams might bring him in to challenge an underperforming starter or take over a mess until the next draft. It’s sad to say but I feel he’s tainted goods. Nobody will have enough invested in him (trade or money) to give him multiple years as a starter, and it takes a lot of success to change that.