ROFLOL!!! Touché! Don't forget the mushrooms. We'll see what happens. Meanwhile, I think it's pretty hilarious that Jets fans think they are better judges of talent and whether a QB has what it takes to be successful in the NFL than NFL scouts, NFL GMs, NFL QBs, former NFL QBs (some of whom are in the HOF), and our own HC and GM. There's a lot of overly-inflated egos amid Jets fans.
You know, it’s funny, though, because if I look back at (too many of) our drafts, I think we can find MANY examples of times where the collective wisdom of this board was MUCH better than what the actual professionals in charge of our drafts actually did! I don’t think too many posters here were banging hard for the likes of Kyle Wilson or Quinten Coples, and we turned out to be MUCH smarter than our GM’s of the time. I hear you, and I’m with you, but just pointing out that the collective wisdom here of just fans is not always wrong!
Found on another Jets fan site. I think the following is incredibly insightful and points out why I have been right about MLF and his failure to run an offense that matched Zach's strengths. I just didn't have the statistics/graphics to back it up. I do now. "Here's something I find incredibly interesting and I believe somewhat validates what I have been saying about LaFleur In another thread someone posted a video of Rodgers. The point that the video made is that Rodgers almost NEVER throws over the middle. This is timestamped at the right point Lets look at Zach's Heat Map in last year of college. It matches Rodgers very closely. There is almost no passing in the middlle. You can note several things here. He was not very good at throwing short to his right as you can see the difference between routes and completions. Another thing that shows up is that was VERY good down the sideline (like Rodgers) and just EXCEPTIONAL at the 10+ yard OUT to the sideline Now lets look at what LaFleur was asking him to do (see bottom having issues pasting in right spot. Some obvious things here. 1. First, the Jets receivers ran more routs up the middle by FAR than the league average (the offense in a phone booth concept) 2. The Jets basically NEVER ran the 10+ yard out the thing Zach is best at 3. They never ran deep down the sideline, only deep down the numbers 4. Basically NEVER using the sideline. The thing that Zach and Rodgers excel at. So you have Rodgers in Green Bay playing for the brother. Their offense is almost exclusively down the sideline, sideline outs and along/behind the LOS. You draft a QB that has these exact strenghths. So what does the idiot LaFleur do. He chooses an offense that is exactly opposite I mean like completely opposite of what Zach does well and completely different even than the offense his brother is running with Rodgers. And he NEVER adapted. One of the points that the video makes is that the middle of the field is congested and the most dangerous place to throw, yet that loser forced a rookie into an offense Rodgers would probably refuse to play. And he may have already. Remember when the older LaFleur became HC Rodgers was vocal about not agreeing with the offense. Speculation but maybe he wanted to run the "offense in a phone booth" as well. But THIS is why there is still hope for Zach. In the end the Hackett/Rodgers offense will focus on the things that Zach does best and greatly de-emphasize the things he doesn't. LaFleur was 90% of the issue. It would be like a golf coach taking an exceptional golfer that plays a slight fade and insisting he just play a sweeping draw on every shot. It just would not work."
Yes, they have, especially those employed by the Jets. I've been just as guilty as other Jets fans in thinking I knew better than the HC, or GM or scouts. Sometimes I have been right, and sometimes I have been wrong. I think I'm on the positive side of the ledger, but there are still too many times I've missed, and that's why I'm posting on a Jets fan site, rather than working for an NFL team. I think the same probably goes for most Jets fans. Overall, they're right more, because they have a lot more firsthand knowledge about the players and the behind the scenes stuff involving the players that we never hear, they have been trained to do their jobs, and have years of experience doing them.
Thanks for digging this up! I've maintained for a long time - really since Zach's first year - that the Jets were not using Zach properly and were trying to totally remake what he was successful at in college. In the beginning I thought that maybe they were just trying to expand his game, and to get him to play with more discipline, but in actuality MLF was trying to completely suppress what he was naturally good at in favor of an offense that LaFleur could better micro manage. It was professional malpractice, and Douglas and Saleh finally realized it after last season. Bringing in Hackett and Rodgers was a total admission that they had screwed up and needed to hit the "reset" button, not just with Zach but with their own idea of what the offense should look like. From the looks of things so far, it seems Zach is much more comfortable and confident, and while he's still making some head scratching mistakes, he's also flashing some of the things that caused the Jets to draft him #2 overall. And it's very interesting to learn that a QB bound for the HOF went so completely against the "common wisdom" of everyone and developed his own successful style of play. And if you look at most of the great QBs they all did the same thing: they knew what they were best at it and stuck with it. Those QBs who follow the "cookie cutter" models generally don't become great, and many often fail because of what happened to Zach: they listened to their coaches who "knew better" and went against their own instincts. Maybe, finally, the Jets have got it right.
The sideline throws are the most difficult. Wilson couldn't hit the guys right in front of him and you want throws at the sideline and deep down the sideline??!?!? that would be handing out pick 6s WTF, the football knowledge here is so low. Sad. this used to be a great place
Watch the tape on Zach. He has MUCH better accuracy and success throwing down the sideline, as Rodgers does, and as that video above explains. This place used to have people with open minds. Sad.
where are these MUCH better accurate throws coming from? Corner Canyon High School? you guys are killin me
Hey, I agree. That just shows how bad the leadership of the owners has been that they have hired such incompetent GMs and HCs more often than not. We all can be right at times, and the "experts" wrong, but more often than not they're right and we aren't because we don't have nearly the knowledge, training, or experience they have. They have access to info that we never see.
So we have charts for routes run and charts for targets; is there such thing as a chart for completions? What you call "EXCEPTIONAL" simply means it's where he threw the ball, not that it was caught or even on target. I find nothing at all exceptional that Wilson's highest concentration of passes was to a point seven yards behind the line of scrimmage in the middle of the field particularly when the routes were concentrated outside the hashmarks three to five yards downfield.
Zach's incompletions are some of the most polished attempts ever. He ALMOST completes them every time. This is what happens when the Internet takes over reality. Yikes. If you have to pull out some random ass analytics, pages long, to make the case for a marginal QB then you just know he ain't getting the job done. You know a good QB when you watch him play, bottom line.
