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


patriotsheatyan

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11 hours ago, patriotsheatyan said:

I find it interesting that Brady, Brees, Rodgers, Rivers, and Romo were all backups for at least their first year. That is five of the top seven best QBs of the last decade.

On the other side of that coin, you have guys like Roethlensberger, Cam, Wilson, Luck, Carr, Stafford, Peyton and Eli - guys who started year 1 and thrived eventually. Bridgewater was on this list as well before his knee injury, too.

There's no science to it, IMO. Some guys are mentally prepared to take the reigns early.

One thing I see as a prevailing trend - nobody tried to change the guys from what they were during year 1. Wilson, Can were both running QBs, and the coaching staff let them use that running skill as opposed to pigeon hole their offense to traditional pocket passing. Guys like Ben and Teddy we're told to lean heavily on a run game. Carr, Stafford, Luck, the Manning brothers? You let them throw. 

You let a guy be themselves year one. Install your philosophy later on, let these guys do what they do best while they compete, let them learn the speed of the game on their own terms, THEN start to tinker around.

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As long as you have the OL to protect him and keep him upright, then he should start if he's the best that you have.

If you are in 1999 Cleveland territory, or, let's pause for a moment of silence, David Carr and the Texans territory, then he should unquestionably sit his first year and you should sign some career scrub/journeyman to take the beating for him. He's your future.

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12 hours ago, patriotsheatyan said:

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.

That's particularly interesting because one of the guys you mentioned (Romo) had to completely rework his throwing mechanic between OTAs and Training camp before Parcells would consider him anything more than a camp Arm.

More recently Prescott had to make similar strides, even though he was thrown smack dab into the fire, he needed serious mechanics work and his first under-center snaps came at Senior Bowl practice.

I just find it more than coincidental that you have two back to back successful QBs who had to make radical changes to their mechanics to become so. Maybe it's more about the ability to make that change while absorbing the complexity of an NFL offense (and, perhaps more importantly) NFL defenses... and maybe some QBs (Romo) need more time than others (Prescott).

Just offering up one team's experience as possible confirmation of your idea.

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It depends on the QB, and the team. If you draft a guy knowing he needs some work, and throw him into a bad situation, things get out of control fast and the QB is going to get blamed. Now that can be overcome too, but you want to set a QB up to have success. You NEED to give a young QB at least a somewhat decent OL. It's going to take time for them to see it and if they are trying to play with defenders in their face and running for their lives while they are still trying to learn to read NFL speed D in real time, it's not giving that QB a great chance. If your OL can't give a rookie QB that time then it's better to be patient.

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I saw it with the Bengals and Carson Palmer sitting a year behind Jon Kitna.  I think it helped Palmer to have that year, and he was looking like he was going to be one of the stars of the NFL until Kimo Von Oelhoffen blew up his knee.  If the Bengals go completely in the tank and end up drafting one of Darnold or Rosen, I would let Dalton take the beating in 2018 while they spend multiple early picks on oline in 2018 and 2019, with the 2019 first round pick ideally being a franchise LT.

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4 hours ago, tom cody said:

To me it helps. You get a young QB learning from an older mentor. Look at Young and Montana, Rodgers and Favre. Brady and Bledsoe?

Trouble is that a rookie can be playing and still have a veteran mentor on the team, plus there is the QB coach. He does not have to sit to learn. Playing is the best teacher since it is well known that of everything we are taught, we lose 85% of it if we did not put it into practice right away, so riding the bench can be a real stopper in learning the QB position.

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All this talk about sitting a QB a years, is rather moot. The GM and HC decide when rookies get a chance to start and when the fans are yelling for their heads on the block because the team is loosing so badly, the GM and HC know very well that their jobs are on the line and if they want to keep them, they had better give the fans what they want and play the rookie QB by at least by the 8th game of his rookie season. It simply is rare that a high drafted rookie QB finds a very successful NFL franchise QB ahead of him, so the team can afford to let him sit for a year without the fans screaming for a change. Of course Rodgers/Favre was a prime example of this, but this type of situation is extremely rare in the NFL as most high drafted rookie QB's usually find nobody who is even close to being capable, ahead of them. They were draft by QB desperate teams and these teams always start their rookie QB's by game 8 or sooner to both placate their fan base and ti give the rookie QB some experience, so it isn't a complete shock when they start in year 2. .

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11 hours ago, Iamcanadian said:

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.

So what is your basis for this belief?

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11 hours ago, Iamcanadian said:

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%.

I don't think you realize how bad the oline prospects have got in the past 10 years. With all the spread schemes it's getting harder tp built a quality one. 

You need good pass protection or else more often than not with franchise qbs.

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1 hour ago, Iamcanadian said:

All this talk about sitting a QB a years, is rather moot. The GM and HC decide when rookies get a chance to start and when the fans are yelling for their heads on the block because the team is losing so badly, the GM and HC know very well that their jobs are on the line and if they want to keep them, they had better give the fans what they want and play the rookie QB by at least by the 8th game of his rookie season.

Buddy Ryan said: If you start listening to the fans, pretty soon you'll be sitting with the fans.

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