Here's Eli's first few seasons in a nutshell: Year one - put in for a future hall of famer with a playoff spot on the line and throws it all away, which is exactly what was likely to happen. Year two - starts from the get-go and is pretty mediocre the entire season including throwing several games away. Year three - same. You really believe there was ever any competitive pressure on Eli Manning with the Giants? You think he was ever going to be kept off the field for any reason other than injury once he took it? This Sanchez coddled thing is delusional in the extreme. The Jets threw him on the field right off the bat and then never took him off despite some really bad performances his rookie season. That's not coddled, that's tortured. Show me a team recently that drafted a 1st round QB and then benched him at any point in the first few seasons and then brought him back. It just does not happen. People are like: well if Sanchez had just been benched his rookie year things would be all different now. Well, show me the rookie that got put on the field elsewhere and then was subsequently benched. The reality is that the Jets really screwed up Sanchez development but not for the reasons that people talk about. They threw him on the field with almost no professional experience at all after he'd had very little high level college experience. They gave him a QB coach that was hired because he was best buds with the defensively-oriented head coach who is clueless about developing QB's. They gave him an offensive coordinator whose specialty was running QB's out of town. They told him to win now despite all the above.
Who cares about whether or not he was coddled? This isn't the third grade. How you develop a QB is totally overrated, short of allowing opposing defenses to repeatedly bash their heads in (see: David Carr). Tom Brady was drafted in the 6th round and meant to be Bledsoe's back-up. They signed Bledsoe to a massive extension the year before Brady won his first Super Bowl. He got in, got his chance, and rocked it. Peyton was drafted #1 and was the heir apparent from Day One. Brees was drafted in the second round, replaced, and had to start from scratch with a new team. Roethlisberger? Awesome from Day One. Aaron Rodgers? Slowly developed as a backup. It doesn't matter what you do. Great players rise to the top, particularly at the QB position. This is the NFL, the big boy league. There's no faking it. You've either got it or you don't, and whether or not your hand was held in your early years doesn't really matter. Sanchez just doesn't have it. It's got nothing to do with anything other than him.
This is somewhat accurate although I gotta point out somebody like Alex Smith who was developed poorly and then finally succeeded once he had a coach who knew what the hell he was doing, played to his strengths, and surrounded him with talent. He got very lucky that Harbaugh came along or he would never have "risen to the top."
You give too much credit. All three led their respective teams to the super bowl, and two of them won. That's a feat Sanchez will never equal.
This is very true. Only a handful of QB's ever come around that could excel in just about any situation. Most QB's that come into the league are system guys. Get the right guy for the right system and whammo. Rich Gannon was a perfect example as well. It's a shame, put Sanchez, this year, on the 2009/2010 teams and we go to the SB...back to back, in my opinion. The timing was off. Now the line has degraded and the running game is for shit with no WR's. I've been very impressed by his poise and delivery this year but you can only do so much when you have 35% of your passes dropped, spend time running for your life and/or have no RB to hand off to.
No, Tebow is different. There are a couple of reasons. First, he didn't really see the field his rookie year as a QB until the end. Then the coach who drafted him got fired - with many of his judgments about talent being questioned by the owner. Sanchez was drafted with a top 5 pick and should not have seen the field until midway through 2009, if then. Really, with his resume he should have been on the bench for the whole season and probably part of 2010 as well. There isn't a QB who has been drafted top half of the 1st round and put on the field early who got benched without losing his job for good in a long time. The last guy this happened too was JaMarcus Russell and there were obvious off-the-field issues going on there the whole time.
It'd be more research to figure out why his play pattern was so weird the first few years than I'm willing to do right now. He definitely had some injury issues but that first year was just bizarre. That was Terry Bradshaw/Terry Hanratty territory there and I have no idea why the 49ers did what they did with him.
The reason Tebow was uniquely suited to pressure Sanchez is the wildcat stuff. There's a way with Tebow, to keep him visible and involved, looming, without saying it's because he's going to start over Sanchez. You can say all day "Sanchez is our starter," and then meanwhile have this other guy constantly pushing him for playing time. If anything, they seem to be coddling Tebow now.
Alex Smith was a lot better than he got credit for before Harbaugh came. He was at 60% completion and 81+ passer rating in 2009 and 2010, pre-Harbaugh, on terrible teams. Sanchez has never even hit 57% completion or an 80 passer rating. Harbaugh helped get more efficiency out of him, but that has as much to do with the rest of the team playing better as Harbaugh's system. The truth is, his completion percentage changed less than 2% and his yards per attempt only went up 0.2 from 2010. The big differences were just that he stopped throwing INTs and threw 3-4 fewer passes per game. Anyway, my point isn't that a system or a better team can't help a QB look better. My point is that after a few years, a good QB is a good QB -- regardless of the circumstances surrounding him. Smith only started 7 games for 2 of his first 3 seasons in the NFL -- since then, he's been a good QB. Sanchez has started 58 games and counting in 4 seasons, and he still stinks. His career high completion percentage was 56.7. His career high passer rating was 78.2. His current completion percentage and passer rating are 48% and 66. Guys like this don't magically become good down the road. Eli is probably the best example of a guy who stunk for his first 4 years, then became good. But time is running out for the Eli archetype. Eli didn't get to start until halfway through his rookie season, and by the end of Eli's fourth year in the NFL, he was a Super Bowl winning QB. His fifth year, he was elite and had a 60% completion percentage and an 86 passer rating while throwing 21 TDs and 10 INTs. Sanchez is struggling just to hit 50% completion at this point.
That IMO says it ALL. The dude is running for his life, getting head trauma yet has to be better than avg all the while No Receivers and no Running game.. IDGAF WHO you put back there. Right now Peyton may have been in a wheelchair if he had gotten hit the way Mark has been hit. It's ridiculous when people don't take any of this into account and just look @ the #'s and say "he sux" ...
You do realize the protection has actually been decent this year compared to last year. A lot of the sacks he has taken is a product of Sanchez just not getting rid of the ball. Leave it to Sanchez fans to blame everyone but Sanchez though...
It's impossible to convince someone like this. You are impressed by Sanchez's poise and delivery? Really? He's completing 48% of his passes and his passer rating is 66. According to profootballfocus, he has the dead-last accuracy rate in the NFL after accounting for drops, throw aways, spikes, batted passes, and passes during which the QB is hit as the ball is thrown. He's having 35% of his passes dropped? Really? According to who? The Jets, as a team, have dropped 8 passes this season according to Stats GameZone. Sanchez has attempted 159 passes. That's 5%. Seventeen teams have dropped more passes than the Jets. He's literally indefensible and there are still people defending him. He's dead last in completion, 31st in passer rating, and he's thrown 6 touchdowns -- and 6 interceptions -- in 5 games. He couldn't be worse. This is like a worst case scenario hypothetical. "What if a quarter of the NFL's starting QBs were rookies, and Sanchez was in his fourth year on the Jets, and he still was bottom 3 in the NFL in both completion percentage and passer rating? And he was tied for 6th in the NFL in INTs? And the Jets were bottom 5 in total offense? And we had a losing record? And our offense had only scored 3 touchdowns in our last 4 games? What about then? Would you still defend him?" Apparently, for some, the answer is "yes".
Yeah I don't buy into either the coddled or ruined by bad coaching. I do think Sanchez is a flawed QB who has reached his ceiling. There are worse QB than him but he is by no means elite. People like to focus on him but he is only one of many reasons the Jets struggle. In order to get rid of him you would have to have a better alternative, which the Jets don't. Benching him is pointless. One of the worst things you can do is have revolving door at QB. They did what that had to do, which was stand by your first round rookie, to see if he could develop into a franchise QB. Maybe now is the time to start looking for an alternative in the draft but this team has so many holes to address I just can't see how they're going to fix this mess of a team. It be a different story if he was the last link that was holding this team back from achieving great things. I think in a year or two a new GM will be brought in who will clean house and start over again. For now we are doomed to tread water in mediocrity.
No #1 or #2 WR + No #1 TE + No running game + No offensive line protecting or dominating in the run game = You having no clue how this game is played.
The Jets have had a top 5 defense and great special teams the past 3 years and Sanchez still sucked. The Pats also had the 31st worst ranked defense during their first Superbowl year. The Giants and Patriots had the 27th and 31st ranked worst defense last year as well. The Giants also had the worst rushing attack in the league last year.
