While you could very well be right on target with this, is my opinion everyone in the Jets org is hoping Geno will surprise us all with a strong performance and gets the job. If not, there is a very good chance we might have to start all over again with a QB search for the future. A task that is nearly impossible to achieve through the draft unless you either totally tank and get a very high pick in a superior draft year for QBs, or you get incredibly lucky in a later round. For our sake let's hope Geno is our guy sooner than later.
I could be very wrong too, just my opinion. I am of the opinion that Geno could benefit nicely from a year or so on the bench watching Vick run the offense while he works on polishing his fundamentals. It seemed pretty clear he had a lot of work to do with this fundamentals, most noticeably footwork, last season.
I totally tend to agree with you. Ideally, he could have benefitted tremendously by sitting on the bench last year while a rookie, working on his fundamentals. Unfortunately for him he had no one like Vick he could watch and benefit from. A year under Vick could do him a world of good. I wonder if the brass has the cojones to make the switch if Geno proves not to be ready by the end of preseason.
Agree here 1000%, which is why I was happy with the Vick signing. A healthy Vick will beat out Geno, unless Geno takes abnormal strides in talent over one offseason. Having said that, Geno is now aware what the NFL demands from a quarterback, having started for a season. Taking notes and watching Michael Vick run a West Coast offense could do him wonders. A seasoned veteran who has perfected his skills would be a great help in Geno's progress.
Ok but the facts are he did go undrafted and the Jets sign him in 2012 so he been with the Jets for 2 seasons. The reason he was only on the roster for one season was because Sanchez got hurt. Ok my bad I did make it sound like he been around awhile. But he will only be a back up his whole career if he makes it much longer.
The pass protection was not as poor as you think, the reason it looked so bad was Geno's lack of ability to make quicker reads and then holding on to the ball like it was a 40 ounce of Old English malt liquor. The oline also goes by the adjustments the QB calls out. The notion that the job is his to lose, is not true in my opinion. The job is his to win, Vick will win the job if he does not get hurt. If the jets had better QB play from Geno they would have won 10 games. He improved towards the end of the year because he started taking what the defense gave him, which meant keeping the drive alive by scrambling and running for 3-4 yards. The one thing I agree with you about the oline was the penalties, They did hurt their momentum on many drives, hopefully they can clean that up this year.
This is where I part ways of thinking with most here. Constantly hoping to find that "franchise QB" is a fools errand. Oh sure it would be great to have, but a team built with talent can have success with just an above average QB and can change him out every 2-3 years if need be. Geno shitting to bed this year or losing out to Vick does not end the possibility of him stepping up next season, or later this season. Throwing him out there when he's not ready will do more damage than sitting him for a season. If he's turns out to be not our starter, we know he can come in to be a solid back-up for a year or more. The good news, I think he's an average QB at this point. He doesn't have to prove out to be great this year, just better, better this year and more better next year. If Vick has a great year, we ask him back, if not, we move on. Either way we continue to build a team that allows any above average QB to step in and run the show.
Honestly, there NEVER is a competition in TC. Because Rex has and always will play his favorites right or wrong.
...He hasn't really had a lot of options or anyone who stood out as clearly better than those he did play. When picking the best mediocre player, he goes with experience.
Why can't you do both -- build to be successful with an ave QB and look for the franchise guy? I agree with your post for the most part, except I don't think those two things are mutually exclusive. Geno showed improvement and I think we all hope this will continue. So you continue developing the kid and I love Vick being here - it allows for further development with safety blanket in place. But at the same time continue looking for that gem of a QB that pops out from time to time. I guess what I'm advocating is to keep drafting promising QBs and evaluating them over ~2 years period. Meanwhile build your team in such a way that an average one will be successful.
Oh I agree. My point was not giving up on a QB's after one bad year or giving up on a season because we don't have "The guy" at the helm.
I agree that the Jets are probably really rooting for Geno (and hedging their bets with Vick), and that if Smith plays terribly in 2014 the Jets will probably move on. But I don't agree that you have to totally tank to get a very high pick - usually there is a team in position to take a top-rated QB prospect, that already likes their QB, and you can trade up for their pick. That said, it still seems like most early 1st round picks don't live up to the hype; most of them just fizzle out to mediocrity or sometimes bust out completely. It seems like a lot of random luck is involved. And of course the downside of trading up for a pick is that you could've used those picks to improve other areas of the team, and if the QB ends up not working out then you can be set back a couple of years.
I might agree with you about Smith causing sacks the first 4 games. But the last 12 no. In game 5 he learned how to step up in the pocket and did a very good job extending plays the rest of the year. It was very rare that Smith would take a sack from holding the ball too long. The plays he held the ball a long time were normally from extending the play and trying to wait for a player to come open. In almost all these cases he ended up throwing the ball away and taking an extra hit. If you want to see how bad the pass protection was take a look at the Saints game. I doubt one will ever see a game with worse pass protection. On almost every pass play in that game there was an uncovered pass rusher which had a clear line at the QB resulting in Smith being forced to get rid of the ball in less than a second. Play after play. Smith could have certainly improved but he was nit the problem. If we had Sanchez starting there is no chance the team could have won more than two games last year. He would never be able to play with an OL that played that poorly. I agree somewhat with what you said about improving at the end of the year because of Smith running the ball. Smith running the ball was huge as it greatly slowed down the rush and helped open up the run game. It also helped that we were not playing dominant DL the last 4 games like the ones that had manhandled our OL all season long. Next year should be a bit better as we simply do not play as many teams with great DLs like we played in 2013. But in terms of OL play we have gone backwards form last year. Losing an ascending player like Howard for a limited player who takes lots of penalties is a pretty big downgrade. Colon coming off an injury is scary as well. He has had a very bad injury history and one has to wonder if he will be able to stay as healthy as he did last year. After Colon and Winters we have no one yet to fill in with us no replacement for Ducasse yet..
Last week on talk radio Dan Patrick assumed Vick would start if DeSean came to the Jets. But one of his 'Danetts' said Geno actually had the better down field arm and completed more 20+ yard passes than anyone and Geno had the 2nd best QB rating in the NFL over the last month of the year. I didn't 'fact check' any of it but sounded pretty good to me.
Do you know where he got this stat? I've heard this as well but NFL.com only lists 20+ yard completions and Geno wasn't close to tops in the regard in 2013. Is it passes that traveled over 20 yards? I'm not sure who's got that stat. _
I don't know how to look league wide but you can see what Geno did for 21+yard passes here http://espn.go.com/nfl/player/splits/_/id/15864/geno-smith 23/59 38% 761 yards 3TD 7INT 64 QB Rating I don't know how that stacks up to other QB's but it doesn't seem impressive at face value. Without the context of other QB numbers it's pretty useless though.
Well he's listing as having 43 completions of 20+ yards and the top QBs had over 65 of them and even a guy like Andy Dalton had 56 of them. I'm not sure Geno's downfield passing was as impressive as his arm would lead you to believe or some here believe. He threw some beautiful bombs but he under threw a bunch of balls and some of them led to his pics. He's got a strong arm, not sure his deep ball is his forte and I'm not believing some "Danett" that he throws a better deep ball than Vick. The more useless stat is QB rating those last 4 games. He wasn't asked to do anything other than not turn the ball over which he did. But he only threw for about 195 yards per game over that span, he was efficient but he wasn't light in anything up with his arm. His legs were more impressive but I'd prefer to see less of that and more pocket awareness. _
I don't know where you're seeing 43 completions of 20+ yards but the ESPN stat is for balls thrown 21+ yards in the air, not passes that resulted in 21+ yards. Obviously a 1 yard pass that goes for 40 yards says nothing about a QB's ability to throw the deep ball. I think we're in agreement for the most part here.
