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Does sitting a QB his first season help or hurt his career?


patriotsheatyan

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2 minutes ago, DontTazeMeBro said:

I think QBs who are going to be good are going to be good either way. And QBs who are going to suck either way. People will always point to David Carr's early years destroying him mentally but if you can be destroyed mentally I don't think you ever had a chance 

The argument I heard on this is that muscle memory causes many rookies to revert to college mechanics quickly, while if they sat they can be more easily reworked. No idea if there is any merit to that though. 

 

I agree though that if sacks and hits ruined Carr mentally, then he was mentally soft to begin with and would have eventually broken mentally.

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It depends on the situation. With a competent offensive line, I think you're better off starting them immediately. If you have a horrible line and are only going to get them killed, let them sit a year and adjust to things and just take mental reps.

There is something to be said for what @DontTazeMeBro said. If you're worried about a player getting destroyed mentally, you're already in trouble. My main concern is tossing the guy that I want to lead my franchise for a decade into a situation where he's very likely to get hurt. Like Mariota's rookie year where he took an absolute beating. He probably came out stronger for it, but thankfully there wasn't any long-term damage done.

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Ehhh it depends on the team/coaching/situation. 

If you sit a QB for his first season, more likely than not it's going to help his development. But you can make the arughment that if he played his first season (Regardless of the team around him) He'd have a lot more expierence and would've been able to approach his second season better.

Take Christian Hackenburg as a recent Example, no matter how much time he got to develop he was never going to pan out for the Jets given the fact their roster is garbage. 

Another recent example is DeShaun Watson, more or less the texans are a (Good) QB away from being a SB contending team. The Texans line is a big ? right now, but they're set up for him to play well. He has a great defense, a good running game and some pretty good weapons when they're healthy.

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I'm not a fan of drafting players who need years on the bench to relearn and reshape themselves in the HOPE of becoming a good NFL player. I think the best way to learn to play in the NFL is to play in the NFL. Everyone doesn't need to be a day 1 starter, but the sooner you get some actual in game experience the better. No amount of 1 on 1 coaching to fix mechanics or film study is going to prepare you for NFL game speed.

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1 hour ago, DontTazeMeBro said:

I think QBs who are going to be good are going to be good either way. And QBs who are going to suck either way. People will always point to David Carr's early years destroying him mentally but if you can be destroyed mentally I don't think you ever had a chance 

I don't share this opinion. I think there are guys who would suck pretty much anywhere. I think there are guys who would be great pretty much anywhere. And I think there are a lot of guys who fall someone in between.

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25 minutes ago, jrry32 said:

I don't share this opinion. I think there are guys who would suck pretty much anywhere. I think there are guys who would be great pretty much anywhere. And I think there are a lot of guys who fall someone in between.

This. If it was a simple situation where players just are as good as they are, the draft would seem like far less of a crap shoot, and we'd see substantially less variance in the performance of free agents. Player performance would be far more predictable if player development was that simple.

Honestly, I think as fans, we often really undervalue player development. Most college teams and coaches really aren't trying to develop players for the NFL. They're just trying to win. So if you have a LT that's stronger than every DE in the conference, you're not overly concerned with his technique. If your QB can outrun most of the defenders in the conference, you're not too opposed to him taking off and running too often. Many flaws that can sink players in the NFL aren't corrected in college because they just aren't as important there. And if those players are thrown in too soon, they can easily revert to those same bad habits. Sometimes it can be valuable to give them time to adjust to good habits in a more controlled environment (practice, preseason) than competitive games. And I think this is especially true at QB. Issues like footwork, throwing motion, pocket presence, etc., are not fixed with game time. Getting better at reading defenses and catching up to NFL speed will happen. So if those are the only rookie concerns, by all means, throw them into the fire. But I'm glad KC is sitting a guy like Mahomes, for instance, because many of his flaws are bad habits more than weaknesses. He doesn't struggle with accuracy or decision making, but with things like technique, which IMO is more fixable outside of proper games.

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I kinda disagree about Carr.  It wasn't just an above average level of sacks that destroyed a rookie mentally, it was the most sacks of all time.  That's gotta be bad for the development of any rookie.  Now, I don't know how much of that was on him, but still, it was all cards stacked against him.  If you knew ahead of time that your rookie QB would get sacked 76 times, I think you wouldn't play him.  But at the same time, if he was ever gonna be great, he would have adapted and overcame.

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I think if you have an oline any qb with accuracy can be successful. Look at Alex Smith, Sam Bradford, Trevor Siemian last week. They are considered average run of the mill qbs but give them a line and some playmakers and you have something special.

Theb look at Andy Dalton was an efficient top 15 qb take away his 2 best olineman, draft an injury prone wr and you have disaster.

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5 hours ago, DontTazeMeBro said:

I think QBs who are going to be good are going to be good either way. And QBs who are going to suck either way. People will always point to David Carr's early years destroying him mentally but if you can be destroyed mentally I don't think you ever had a chance 

I really agree with this. QB's are either mentally tough or they are not, so sitting them or playing them right away will not impact them a whole lot. I would say Rodgers was an exception to that philosophy, his mechanics were really screwed up coming out of college and playing for his college HC who had multiple failures with 1st round QB, which is why he fell so severely on draft day. The year he spent riding the bench really gave him a chance to dramatically change his mechanics under pro coaching, otherwise he may never have reached his potential, but he obviously always had the mental toughness necessary for success.

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1 hour ago, thebestever6 said:

I think if you have an oline any qb with accuracy can be successful. Look at Alex Smith, Sam Bradford, Trevor Siemian last week. They are considered average run of the mill qbs but give them a line and some playmakers and you have something special.

Theb look at Andy Dalton was an efficient top 15 qb take away his 2 best olineman, draft an injury prone wr and you have disaster.

I think this is just not true. Backup QB's can win a game or 2, but sooner rather than later, their lack of skill or physical talent will catch up to them and they will revert to mediocrity. An OL will only carry a QB so far otherwise there wouldn't be around 10 to 15 teams pretty desperate to find a franchise QB.

Only QB's drafted in the top 10 have had any meaningful rates of success in the NFL, QB's drafted after the top 10 see a very dramatic drop off for success. This does not mean there aren't a # of successful QB's drafted after the top 10 playing well in the NFL but when you compare them to the # of QB's who floped, the rate of success is very minimal, somewhere around 6%.

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