This post has a very "Josh Allen vs. Sam Darnold" feel. There were numerous posts just like this where people were glad we took Darnold over Allen because he would be the better pro.
The rules also make it a lot more sustainable. 20 yrs ago, they just couldn't last more than a couple of years. Now, defenses are getting flagged and players are getting ejected for what they were coached to do back in the day. There will be more running qbs in the future because of what you wrote, and theybwill last longer because of the rule changes.
the game still hasn't slowed down yet for the QB. There is certainly a lot that goes into "slowing down" but in general I have not seen evidence of it on a consistent basis. His mental game HAS to catch up with his physical talent. sure he looks like marino/favre on a few plays but they are too few and far between. IMO, as the season goes on more of the emphasis has to go towards his coaching and preparation. Usually the second half of year #2 is an important pivot for a young QB. let's see if that holds with ZW.
You might be right. I did favor Darnold over Allen then, but I still believe that Allen would never have become anywhere near the QB he has under Bowles and Gase. I certainly underestimated the job the Buffalo CS could do in developing him, but I still am certain I was right about the inability of Bowles and Gase to develop any QB. As to Fields and Zach, I don't follow Chicago and don't really know if their CS is capable of making Justin into something akin to Allen or Lamarr, but from the way things look, they're just turning him loose and letting him do what comes naturally. Maybe that will work, IDK, but I don't think it's a recipe for long term success in the NFL. But I've certainly been wrong before.
Most people said they just wanted to see Zach make progress this year, and the team show improvement as well. Well, the team has massively improved, and Zach has also improved, as well as being a central part of the team's amazing winning record. Now they want him to be like Allen, Mahomes, Burrows, and be a finished product. There will likely be no satisfying them ever. The bottom line is that he's shown he learns from his mistakes and gets better, and he hasn't reached his ceiling by any stretch, and last but not least, Douglas, Saleh, and MLF have complete faith in him to become their FQB. There really isn't much more that can be said.
The talent has improved massively around him though. These are very small improvements given the talent upgrade, and the huge success of the run game.
Clearly he improved compared to last year. Though improvement hasn't been massive yet, keep in mind he missed 7 weeks including preseason, and only played 6 games thus far. I expect much more in the remaining 8 games, with the very good last game being a launching pad.
It's still rather early. I am looking at the success of other QBs this year, like Tua and Hurts, and they are both in 3d year, and last year performed at unspectacular level. They both (much like Josh Allen before) benefitted from having just added a super star receiver on the roster and good OlIne. This third year emergence of a QB, a la Josh Allen, is not an exception to the rule, it seems to be happening a lot more often. Tua and Hurts even played quite bad to finish their second year. I think over the course of the last games Zach needs and will have good performances to the point where his overall second year looks similar to these guys. Then he will be in position of 3d year breakout.
I think Wilson has regressed since last year. The last 7 games of last year he played much better than he has the 6 games this year. He has had some good moments this year. The 2nd half against Pitt, Miami and Buffalo that compare favorably with his games against Jax and TB but he was much more consistent and better the last 7 games of last year. His turnover worthy rate was 2.8 percent over those 7 games. The league average is 3.3. The first 5 games this year he was over 5 percent. He was stepping up in the pocket and using his legs as weapons. Something he has only done against Buffalo this year. Some things have gotten better such as his mechanics, play fakes, short passes and more but his overall play is much worse this year. That being said he is a work in progress that is developing, learning and progressing. Hopefully he will grow as the year goes on.
He had to play 3 top passing defenses out of 6 games (Denver, GB, Buffalo), and was coming in cold after injury to start the year. With that said, he has to play better. If his play of first 5 games continues, I would agree - he regressed, and we are screwed. But that's not what I have observed studying film. Majority of the mistakes stemmed from running for his life at the first sign of trouble plus some carelessness. These mistakes are possible to fix and he took a big step forward in Buffalo game. Still he had a TO, which should have been a TD if he didn't bail too early, but it was a giant step forward. One game though is not enough. He needs to string 3-4-5 good games together, and I want to see a breakout game too. All of this has to happen before we can conclude he can take a leap forward, and I believe soon it will, starting, or rather continuing this Sunday.
Fields is putting up big rushing numbers. He is not putting up prolific passing stats. So I really don’t understand all the hype. Sure, he is playing better, but his team is still losing. I’d rather win
Most metrics indicate Zach's actually playing better this year than the final 6 games of last year (I made it 6 instead of 7 to have comparable sample sizes). The Good: Comp% up from 53.3% to 57.4% Yards per game up from 170.2 to 200.3 Passer rating up slightly from 78.2 to 78.4 QBR up from 41.9 to 48.5 aDoT (average depth of target) up from 7.05 to 8.2 The Bad: TD/INT ratio is a lot worse, 8/1 Total TDs (5 passing, 3 rushing) to 1 INT last year to 5/5 Total TDs (4 passing, 1 rushing) to 5 INTs this year TTT (Time to Throw) is slightly worse, from 3.05 to 3.07 (hopefully that continues to go down with more game plans like Buffalo but we'll see) TWP(Turnover worthy plays) up a lot from 5 to 11 Obviously, Zach still has to improve in terms of taking care of the ball but generally speaking he IS playing better than he did last year, even better than he played down the stretch which a lot of us pointed to as growth from him. However, one could argue that the TD/INT ratio is the most damning stat listed above and I concede that is does influence the game moreso than any of the other stats listed. However, he's up 4.1%, 30 YPG, 0.2 in terms of passer rating, 6.6 in QBR, while having a 1.15 yard higher aDot. He's not a finished product by any means but he has improved, albeit not at the rate that a lot of us hoped for going into this season. The good thing is he still has 8 more games to continue to develop. The most important thing for him right now is to continue to get the ball out quickly and in-rhythm, take what the defense is giving him, and stop turning the ball over. If he can do those things, I expect to see his numbers continue to get better as we progress through the season.
Great comment, and I couldn't agree with you more. With the improvement of the run game, his YPG numbers don't need to be 300+, but his completion percentage needs to be better than it is. These days 60% is the bare minimum and the TD/INT ratio has to get to at least 2 to 1. If he can get those up and keep them up throwing for 200+ yards per game, the Jets will be a tough team to beat.
The biggest problem is that his performance is really bad last year and this year. You can bounce the numbers around however you like and it's not going to change the fact that 80% of the QB's are clearly performing better than him in all groupings of stats. This is situation normal for Jets QB's. We draft somebody and they underperform and it takes us two or three seasons to see what is clear for everybody else from the get-go and then we're in rinse-and-repeat land. It's not shameful to admit we made a mistake and correct it. It's absolutely shameful to pretend we did not and live with it for an extra season or two. That's why the Jets are such a bad franchise. We can never admit that which is plain to see and move on.
My argument isn't that Zach's not playing bad, he is. He's got to play better going forward if this team wants to realize it's full potential, that's not really up for debate. My argument is that he's playing better than he did last year, which is admittedly a low bar to clear. Like I said previously, he's not progressing as fast as a lot of us thought he would but he is playing better by a lot of metrics which demonstrates growth, small growth but growth nonetheless. The QBR is especially noteworthy, if you believe in that sort of thing, because he's currently 18th in the league whereas he was 30th last year. It's one metric so that in and of itself doesn't prove that he has taken some gigantic leap but it does show some development IMO. My hope is MLF and Zach figured something out with the Buffalo game, so I expect to see a lot of similar game plans going forward. It'll be up to Zach to execute that game plan and prove Buffalo wasn't just a flash in the pan.
Big opportunity for Zach this week to flip this narrative. Can he stay composed and execute the offense knowing that the Pats are going to bring the heat early and often? We'll find out on Sunday.
