Matt Waldman had an interesting piece in which he critiqued the way the NFL evaluates QBs.
His argument is:
We're brainwashed into thinking big arms, height and weight, college production, whiteboard prowess, and intellectual recall make a promising quarterback and that intuition, creativity, and decision-making savvy can be grown on an NFL field. No, it can't. There has to be enough of it present at the lower levels or you get what we've seen with Winston, Trubisky, and Dalton.
And thus you have teams (like the Bucs) that make decisions that are about avoiding public risk rather than the result of deep insight into the QB position. That's why teams take QBs like Weeden and Osweiler ("prototypical") over Russell Wilson.
After all, our politics, our corporations, and our football is a reflection of what can go wrong in our country—trying to avoid blame rather than seeking real solutions. In football, this risk management places too much weight on easy-to-explain assets because it's more difficult to discuss the intricacies of the craft if they even can identify it through the morass of technical and theoretical layers of information that has weighed down the development of this position.
No matter what we hear, the selection of quarterbacks continues to rely too much on big arms, approved height and weight minimums, prominent school, college production, and how much they can study for the test and wow coaches and scouts with the Sean McVay retention parlor trick of telling people details about their film from weeks, months, or years ago. What you get from this process are big, strong-armed, book-smart, people-pleasing prospects who can tell you to the finest detail how they messed up multiple plays in a technically approved way to scouts, coaches, and general managers.
Here's what Waldman sees as the difference:
There are so many complex coverages in today's NFL that expecting quarterbacks to properly identify them in 15-25 seconds before the play and make the necessary adjustments is even harder than it is for a bunch of high school and college coaches, former players, and analysts 2-3 days after the game while watching replay. And, these students of the game are often at odds about what is the correct label!
The best quarterbacks have a sense of who will be open and how to identify it at the moment. Some of them have a strong base of X's and O's theory to help them begin, but reading coverage is about understanding the position (leverage) of defenders on receivers and how to manipulate it. You don't have to identify if it's Cover 2 or Quarters as much as you have to understand where on the field you're facing man or zone coverage and see and react to it fast.
William Faulkner probably had no idea what the chiaroscuro effect was when he wrote Sanctuary, but he had the technique of writing strong sentences and a craft for telling a story that evoked deep emotions. It's unlikely that he thought, "I'm going to use the chiaroscuro effect in Chapter 9," when developing a scene. Sure, he had skills as a painter and drawer and seriously considered going into visual arts as a young man, but it's far more likely that his eye for imagery translated well to crafting details on the page.
Brett Favre had no idea what a nickel defense was until after two years of starting for the Green Bay Packers and leading them to a 17-12 record with a completion percentage of 62 percent, over 6,800 yards, 37 touchdowns, and 37 interceptions. Knowing that part might have helped him with the interceptions, but it hasn't helped Winston, Trubisky, Mariota, or Dalton. Franchise quarterbacks who aren't great but possess reliable skills—players like Tony Romo, Matt Stafford, Matt Ryan, Bernie Kosar, Donovan McNabb, and Philip Rivers—were competent decision-makers in key areas of game management, identified the open man, and rarely hesitated to act on what they saw.
And boy does this sum up the NFL media, GM, and draft landscape:
Productive quarterbacks find solutions, communicate and lead effectively, and blend that with a competent level of theory and technique to do the job. Winston, Trubisky, Mariota, and Dalton all had issues in college that were excused as immaturity that football management believed would have an investable shot of improving at a higher level of football. The stats may give them a half-baked argument that they were right to take the chance on these quarterbacks as starters but all they're doing is defending the risk management system they've created that the media has parroted with its analysis.
Article: https://subscribers.footballguys.com/apps/article.php?article=2019-gutcheck-490-mid-season-rants
