Did nobody read my posts? I clearly stated multiple times that I hold Big Blue accountable for all the same problems I pointed out in Philly. As far as how great McNabb is compared to Collins, I forget which NFC Championship game McNabb won 41-0…could somebody remind me?
Furt seemed particular offended by my opinions:
After that title game performance, I’d say there are 2 better ones on the Eagles alone. All kidding aside, I disagree with the mobile QB paradigm, and I have maintained (and always will until proven wrong) that a scrambler will never win a Superbowl, for several reasons. Listed in order of relevance:
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Scramblers take too many hits and so can’t stay healthy
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Scramblers are loathe to stand there that last fraction of a second and make the clutch pass for the big play when they know they’ll take the big hit; instead, they pull the ball down early and try to create something out of nothing, which is not what being a passer is all about.
To be clear, a pocket “big hit” will usually knock the wind out of you, or crack a rib. A scrambler’s “big hit” may involve high ankle sprains or #CL tears. (Unless, of course, you’re Vinny Testaverde. sigh)
- Scramblers, as a rule, don’t trust either their receivers or their OL. That’s why they scramble. As a QB you need to trust your teammates to do their jobs, even if they get beaten. You have to forget the bad play that just happened and keep playing. This is what Scary Kerry abjectly failed to do in 2003, and I have serious concerns that he will not be able to rebound next year, if he ever can. McFlabb has yet to trust any receivers in his career, but after that last game, I can hardly blame him.
It was pointed out to me that I cannot have respect for Andy Reid, who calls the plays, and not have respect for McFlabb, who is just running Reid’s plays. I don’t understand the logic behind that. Why can’t I respect a system, but not a skill position it employs? I don’t (as a rule) respect RBs who can’t block, but I can still respect a scheme that doesn’t call for RBs to block. In such a case, I probably wouldn’t respect those particular backs, despite respecting the coach’s scheme.
Basically I am extrapolating from the job descriptions. Running Back and Wide Receiver pretty much sums it up.
Joe Montana. Are you seriously comparing him to McNabb?
No, that’s not. I guess you were asleep in the first half of the season, but I saw game film broken down calling out McNabb for not throwing to wide open Wide Receivers down the field and instead dumping it off to backs coming out of the backfield. It was downfield plays that worked correctly where McNabb, inexplicably, decided to go with the safer dump off. That is gutless.
A couple weeks later, around the time that McNabb achieved his first WR catch of the season, that Rush shoved food up his ass and crapped out his mouth, and then nobody was able to openly criticize McNabb for the rest of the season. Several weeks after that, the Eagles got their very first TD catch out of a WR.
I disagree. I think Reid wins despite McNabb’s (apparently justifiable) utter lack of confidence in his WRs. That has to be fixed. Bring in T.O. I betcha McNabb still throws a gazillion dumpoffs, and T.O. will go apeshit about his gutless QB not throwing to him.
You people have to be able to make the distinction between systems and positional play. By some of these arguments you could also say that the Panthers have a top two passing game, because they are in the show. That’s ridiculous. Stats are indeed for losers, but stats let you understand and appreciate the game.
But okay, so I’m an utter buffoon for pulling those percentages out of my ass. I admit that I did. They are my intuition based on my grasp of the game. Let’s see how close I am to correct. To make the scope manageable, let’s confine it to Superbowl teams.
2003 Patriots: WR: 55%, TE: 20%, RB: 27%
2003 Panthers: WR 64%. TE: 11%, RB: 25%
2002 Bucs: WR: 53%, TE: 15%. RB: 32%
2002 Raiders: WR: 54%, TE: 14%, RB: 32%
2001 Patriots: WR: 62%, TE: 6%, RB: 30% (Patriots seem to never add up)
2001 Rams: WR: 59%, TE: 13%, RB: 28%
2000 Ravens: WR: 42%, TE: 27%, RB: 31%
2000 Giants: WR: 53%, TE: 12%, 35%
Okay, that’s every Superbowl team in this century. Let’s see, I think the true distribution ideal is somewhere between my instinct and the counter argument, Joe Montana. Let’s average them out:
WR: 55%, TE: 15%, RB: 30% (similar to Bucs of 2002)
I had said:
WR: 62.5%, TE: 22%, RB 15.5%
McNabb’s distribution, which I claimed was skewed heavily to RBs:
WR: 46%, TE: 18%, RB: 36%
Two things immediately jump out at me. Having Shockey has skewed my perception of what the TE position is supposed to be. (Which is also reflected in Heap’s superbowl-winning rookie season, where TEs caught 27% of the Raven’s completions.)
Also, running backs should get far more than 15.5% of the completions. Around 30%. I find this interesting, and may download the entire pro-football-reference database for actual analysis one of these days.
I think my point is solid, however, that McFlabb threw too many dump offs and not enough completions to WRs. That may be because they had a ton of drops, or he didn’t trust them not to drop it, or he chickened out and pulled the ball down and ran. Whatever the case, a decent passing game does indeed involve throwing more than 50% of your passes to WRs, and the WRs should be catching almost twice the number of passes as RBs. Clearly, the Eagles distribution is out of whack.
The scariest thing to me in all this is that the Bucs of 2002 had the “ideal” pass distribution. Yikes. I need to download that database. I am really curious to see the % of passes caught by all players broken down by position.