Ah, yes, the Wonderlic Test. I had forgotten about that! You do sound like Gruden, BTW. But I agree with everything you say. True, for a 7th rounder he looks good. I am a little worried about what we have behind Sanchez though. I need Brunell to come in and lead some preseason TD drives to convince me we'll be OK with our QB depth. Gotta admit, Brunell looked good last year when he got to play. Better than I thought he would. Last night when I saw the Texans with Schaub/Leinert/Yates and saw some nice throws from all three, I started to worry a little about what we had behind Mark. Shame we dealt Ratliff (joking) the hero of these threads three years ago. I just prefer a bigger arm, bigger QB. Physically, McElroy didn't look like an NFL starter to me.
Despite his less than stellar arm strength, I thought that the kid did very well considering it was just his first time out, how chaotic pass protection was at times and the quality of personnel he was working with. While his weaknesses were obvious to many, I was extremely impressed with his composure and confident presence on the field which are qualities that might possibly allow him to reach performance levels that will enable him to overcome the very weaknesses that some are inclined to use as a reason to dismiss him as a potential future starter at this very early point in his career.
Same here. I was thinking they should punt/kick a FG on third down at one point, because it looked like Sanchez might get killed.
All things considered, I thought McElroy had a pretty decent night excluding the tard play at the end.
Dropped catch to win the game? I chuckled... Love pre-season football. Would have liked to have seen our first offense score a TD. Cumberland made some nice plays, and I hope Turner with a 6'5 frame can learn some things from our vets. Lets hope he is willing to put the work in, work hard and be motivated, he could learn a lot from Plax on how to use his large frame against corners and safeties (ln before someone makes a gun safety joke).
Hi guys, Forgive me for dropping in here. I'm a Bama fan who was excited to watch McElroy play in the pros last night. Seeing that he did a respectable job on his first outing, I was rooting about the internet for fan reactions, and found my way here. You guys seem like a reasonable bunch, so I thought I'd put this here: For those who may not have seen him play much in college, here's a highlight video: youtube.com/watch?v=jQPVv4pafN8 (Link broken because of the 50 post count rule. Trust me, though. It's worth the watch.) 1) No, he doesn't have the STRONGEST arm, but it's not exactly a noodle either. As you can see from the above reel, he is perfectly capable of putting plenty of zip even on difficult scrambling throws (see 1:30). 2) What's nice about McElroy is that, with some o-line protection, he can squeeze tough throws in accurately, he can rifle it when he needs to, and he can put nice touch on a floater to get it over a defense. Most of his trouble last night, it seemed to me, was because the pocket collapsed quickly, and he threw off his back foot quite a bit. That'll lead to ducks even in experienced QB's. One stretch where he did get into a bit of trouble in college was when he was under pressure to hook up with Julio Jones more often. He still didn't get many INT's, but there were a lot of drops and deflections. As soon as he settled back in to his progressions, though, he got a lot better (which, of course, loosened up coverage on Jones and freed him up for some very big games late in the season). When McElroy has protection and checks through his receivers, he's very competent at getting the ball to any open spot on the field. He routinely threw at Marquis Maze, Darius Hanks, Colin Peek, Preston Dial, Mike McCoy, and was extremely good at getting back to his TB check-downs. He made quite a nice little living getting the ball to Mark Ingram or Trent Richardson late for some explosive gains. 3) He's tough, both physically and mentally. The kid does not get down. He gets mad. What you won't see on the highlight reels are the games where, for one reason or another, he gets hit a lot (well, other than last night ). I'm thinking specifically of the Tennessee/Bama game last year, Auburn/Bama 2009, and a few others. He took so many hard licks against Tennessee that his jersey literally looked green rather than white. He still finished up with 264 yards in a 41-10 rout (and he didn't even play in the 4th quarter). Also, he rather famously played the national championship game against Texas with 2 cracked ribs. The kid's got guts. 4) He's smart. Really smart. As in, not just clever and elusive, but truly analytical, studious, and retentive. Rhodes Scholarship finalist, etc. He did pretty well with a brand new playbook on one week's work, on a big stage. 5) If the play breaks down, though, he can be quite deceptively athletic on the scramble. Again, you can see that on the highlight reel above, and those are not the only times he did it. I don't say all this to say that he's the next Joe Namath, or that he's going to set the NFL on fire as a 1st string Superbowl winner. Just that I think you guys are going to be happy with him. I personally think he DOES have the tools to be a starter someday, including the passing tools, but obviously, opinions vary. What I do know, though, is that he doesn't often make bad decisions.
Agree. For all of those that complain about his deep throws, I would suggest that partially it was driven by the total lack of time the OL gave him to set up and plan his foot forward. Overall he did extremely well
Cumberland looked awesome. Big, strong, fast, and he can catch the ball, really impressed by his yac.
First off, sorry if my tone was "douchey". That wasn't my intent. Second, I didn't say the pass was a bullet, but it led Campbell perfectly and hit him right in the hands, so it was obviously thrown hard enough and far enough. Campbell didn't have to slow down or stop for the ball, he just effing dropped it. I don't see how anyone can claim it wasn't and say it was underthrown or thrown without enough zip on it. Just makes no sense to me, but whatever. I didn't claim that he has a strong arm, either. That was the knock on him coming out of Alabama and why he dropped to the 7th round. It isn't a rag arm like Penny's, however. Would I rather he had a stronger arm? Undoubtedly, but it is what it is. One comment doesn't equal harping, either, but maybe that's just a defensive reaction because my post came across more negatively than I intended. As for the underthrown pass, Gruden & Co. aside, we may be talking about a different pass, but based on your description, it has to be the same play. The pass I'm referring to was so far short and to the side of the receiver and that imo there's no way it could have been simply underthrown. I have seen similar passes in windy games when the QB was throwing into the wind, but it wasn't windy last night. The only other times I have seen a pass that far off the mark is when the QB and receiver weren't on the same page and the receiver ran a totally different route or did something different than the QB expected. If you see it differently, we'll just have to agree to disagree.
If the ball hits a receiver's hands and he drops it, it's called a "drop" for a reason. I don't care if the ball floated like a frisbee to Campbell, the throw was perfectly catchable, thus making it a perfect throw. His arm wasn't the strongest, but also wasn't that bad. Let's start throwing that word moxie around a bit with him. Not saying he's a future starter (we've done that too much in the past with guys like Kellen Clemens and Brett Ratliff), but he looks like he could be a good backup in this league after that limited exposure.
Has anyone complaining about his arm strength ever seen him play at Alabama? It's the same arm strength he's been playing with his whole career. He was picked in the 7th round to be a long-term backup/game manager. If the Jets wanted someone who would never start and could throw bombs down the field all day then the FO could probably have looked into trading for Kyle Boller or Patrick Ramsey.
Lets calm down with our debate about McElroy a little bit. First of all, he's our 3rd string QB. The 'Chez isn't going anywhere anytime soon. He's an understudy. You expect him to have this blazing guns arm that allows him to make all the throws??? Come on, if he did he wouldn't have fell to the 7th round. He's known for having good pocket instincts and above average accuracy. Last night, he showed that.
Don't forget the other running back that isn't a little white dude. He was ok........Beelzebub Powell. That Felcher dude was smoking poles instead of watching the game.
