Login

TheAll22 · 02-27-2017, 04:29 PM

Quote:This is my 40th year as a football fan.

Over the years, I've heard many axioms and clichés to explain various truths about the game we all love.

"Build from the trenches," "Defense wins championships," "run the ball, stop the run," are just a few of the myriad catch phrases used to represent various beliefs and philosophies that govern NFL football.

However, one such phrase seems to be antiquated, if not obsolete, at least in the minds of fans.

That phrase is "draft and develop."

I offer this because when it comes to analyzing young players, the analysis invariably oscillates between two extremes: immediate superstar or absolute bust.

This is evident when reading the board and the names Blake Bortles and Dante Fowler come up for discussion. For a long time, the thought regarding QBs was it takes 4-5 years to develop them. Bortles is in his 4th year, yet there is a sizable number of fans on this board, if not a majority, who have already given up on Bortles as a viable NFL QB. Many of the same fans have already surrendered all hope that Fowler will be anything remotely resembling a viable pass rusher, despite the fact last year was his first on field action and he produced 4 sacks.

Please forgive my considerable cognitive dissonance stemming from these reactions. It exists because many of the players we celebrate today-past and present- and wish our players would develop into- were themselves not immediate superstars. Going into his third season, Troy Aikman had a 14-24 record as a starter, missing all or parts of ten (10) with injury. His TD/INT ratio was 31-46 in that span. He is now in the Hall of Fame. Aaron Rodgers rode the bench his first three years in the league, sitting behind a QB in Brett Favre who garnered no playing time his first year and was deemed such an incorrigible party animal, his original team, Atlanta, traded him away. There have been fans on this board who have advocated signing 37 year old Tony Romo to supplant Tony Romo as the starter here. But Romo did not become a starter until his 3rd year. His TD-INT ratio from his second year as a starter was 36-19. Those same numbers regressed to 26-14 the next year. For comparison, Bortles' 2nd year numbers were 35-18, and last year's totals were 23-16.

The irony continues with every other position, including DE. The current AFC South champs, the Houston Texans, feature two defensive ends who are dominant in J.J. Watt and Jadeveon Clowney. Watt had five sacks his rookie year, and Clowney was viewed as a bust until this year. Super Bowl LI, just played about 3 weeks ago, featured the Atlanta Falcons, who drafted another edge rusher in the same draft class as Dante Fowler in Vic Beasley. Beasley, who did not suffer an ACL tear, notched the same 4 sacks as a rookie as Fowler did last year. However, in his second year, he led the league in sacks with 15.5.

If those teams used the same logic as the fans who are clamoring for Fowler and Bortles to be banished to the scrap heap, they never would have reaped the benefits they did in sticking with those players. Instead, they would have resembled Atlanta in the aftermath of trading Brett Favre.

Am I saying definitively Bortles and/or Fowler will develop into the players I mentioned above? No. Those are at least very good, if not great players.

Is it possible that Bortles and Fowler will fall short of expectations? Absolutely.

But given the countless man hours the team invested in scouting all of the available players, and the draft pick investment used in acquiring them, can anyone give a compelling reason why their development should be abandoned altogether at this stage? Is there any reason why impatience should preclude the chance for these guys to improve the way the above players did? Why do the principles of player development that produced Antonio Brown and Emmanuel Sanders not apply to Bortles and Fowler?

You have several competing issues here Bullsye:



1. Cliches happen over time in football because there are so many philosophies regarding how to build a franchise in relation to what sounds good and how winning teams actually come to be



2. Obviously multiple builds have worked and for many reasons



3. Eras, Team Types, Team ages overlap



4. The NCAA is an secret/not so secret developmental league

- Don't be fooled, this is where development is happening the most, this is where kids are being taught football and today's players are more prepared than ever

- this is the beginning of the impatience for player development once players are already in the NFL



5. Don't mistake anomalies for relative variables

- Brady was a 6th round pick is an extreme example for why you still don't wait 6 rounds to find a QB

- The Redskins are the constant example of bad free agent spending

- Aaron Rodgers is an example of a QB completely changing his throwing motion and mechanics

- Adrian Peterson is bad example of a player coming back from ACL surgery



Ultimately there is no easy or clear answer to your question because there are two options for Borltes and 80's ways of getting to those conclusions

For me it's pretty simple. Bortles has physiological (not mechanical) flaws that make him unable to progress fundamentally and technically and it's very hard for anyone to change those types of issues. I questioned his accuracy last off-season during the hype-fest surrounding the offense and I let it slide like many here did thinking the team was in good enough shape to be successful even if that meant 7-9 wins. We saw that his flaws were too much to overcome this season. Even if Borltes is at his peak, when is the lazy throw going to cost this team serious games. We can't have good games against garbage teams and consider it a success or progress like in the past. that is something that this Coughlin era is supposed to overcome and the only reason there is commitment to Bortles right now is the lack of draft-able options right now.