You realize you just compared some of the top and veteran QBs in the league with a 3rd year QB? All built around passing offenses who are getting 7.6+ YPC with more than double the amount of 20+ yard receptions. Apples and oranges. The sacks just illustrate that you have a 3rd year QB being rushed on every single play, and a receiving core built under a garbage OC. Sanchez isn't without blame, but he's also not going to grow under the current conditions.
Sanchez was sacked 39 times -- 12 times more than his previous career high. He lost 9 fumbles and threw 18 interceptions. Some of the turnover stats are driven by increased usage -- he threw the ball more, therefore he threw more picks (and more TDs). You could argue that he maybe didn't regress but was essentially the same guy as last year, only they asked him to do more. But the main problem with Sanchez is that he doesn't do any one thing particularly well. Even Tim Tebow has an obvious strength running the ball. Sanchez is athletic, but he's not Michael Vick or Joe Webb or even Tim Tebow running the ball. He has a good arm, but it's not significantly better than average. He doesn't take good care of the ball, doesn't throw the deep ball especially well, and he's not really a dink-and-dunker -- in fact he's definitely not good at the short-passing game, often throwing the ball too hard and/or inaccurately, leading to drops, tips, and interceptions at worst, or quick tackles at best (he doesn't put the ball right on the money, which would lead to high YAC totals). So if you're Sanchez's coach, what do you build around? The vertical game? The short-passing game? He's not even a classic game-manager type, useful on a team with a strong running game, because his most glaring weakness is that he makes two or three really bad decisions every game. You could live with his mediocre production if he took care of the ball, but he doesn't. I just don't get what people see in this guy. Forget about being good at everything -- is there even one thing Sanchez is good at?
You say this as if it's easy, as if somehow 25 teams this year finished above .500 and with better records than us, when in reality that number is 12.
Are you guys former Giants fans? I'm just curious because this was the same shit the vaGiant fans where were spewing about Eli in year 3 and year 4 too actually. He's in his 7th year and he's starting to look brilliant. Odd how after 4 years of being the QB at Ole Miss, and 6 1/2 years of being the Gints starters he's looking good. You people have no patience. Sanchez is a baby from a football perspective. Holy shit - sit back and enjoy the ride. Two consecutive AFCCG appearances and a down year. You would not have signed up for this when Mangini was fired? LMFAO @ Sanchez fault for all fumbles when Ed Reed hits him at 0.8 seconds after the snap and carried the ball in for a TD.
That excuse works fine with Plax, Mason, and Kerley. It does not explain the relationship with Holmes or how he was missing his backs on or Keller on short passes so often.
The other side is that the stupidest ones are probably also the most correctable, i.e. the passes that resulted in the INTs by D-lineman. Still stupid, though.
I think our standard for o-line play has been spoiled the last couple years, when it was among the very best. Greene, a completely average HB, managed a respectable 4.2 YPC on a team with limited ability to stretch the field and cause opponents to respect the passing game. Wayne Hunter was a terrible pass blocker. Anyone with eyes could see it. The rest of the line as a unit, I'd score as average.
fftopic: I don't have the stats but I would guess Sanchez was being hurried on almost every single snap. I mean it got so bad that, I think it was the Ravens game, they started clocking how fast guys were blowing past our OL to get at him. You do that enough and the QB is going to be making bad decisions for the rest of the game. We should know this all too well because it's our game plan every time we face Brady. Put on big pressure before the end of the half and he's shot for the entire game. As Fozzy said above, he absolutely got raped in the Ravens game.
I understand that it's not easy to find an elite QB in this league. What I'm worried about, is that Sanchez, who's shown no indication that he will be elite, will be around here for the next 5 yrs just being average. You are forgetting the one thing that kept Giants management on course, Eli is a MANNING!! We must give him time for that to kick in! What are we banking on in Sanchez?? Nothing other than our bone headed move up in the draft to select him 5th overall.
It's simple. All we have to do is give Sanchez a top 3 defense, top 3 running game, top 3 offensive line, and a couple of All-Pro wideouts and HE will win 9-11 games for us. And if our idiot coaches could just find a way to give him an all time great defense, all time great running game, 5 All-Pro offensive linemen, and 2 or 3 Hall of Fame receivers then there is no question that HE would get us 12 wins and a 3 or 4 seed in the playoffs. Asking a 5th overall draft pick to be successful without these BASIC components that nearly every other 10+ win team has is just not fair.
huh? Keller led the team w/ 65 receptions this year (and could have had 70+ if he wasn't such a dink at times).
Sanchez doesn't need to be elite for us to win. Our defense and running game may have carried us over in total the last few years, but Sanchez has won games for us when they haven't - including in the postseason. Sanchez needs to improve a few things, but he's not that far off. This off-season will be important for him to correct his issues. His main issue is locking onto his target right after getting the snap.
In his 4 postseason wins, the defense allowed 14, 14, 16, 21 points, while creating a total of 5 turnovers. Even in '09, our worst offensive year of the three, we averaged 21.75 points. The D was at minimum "above average" in all 4 playoff wins. Yes, Mark deserves credit for four road playoff wins, but there was none them was a signature put-the-team-on-my-back game that you hope for in a developing quarterback. The Pats game was the closest, but while efficient, 194 yards does not qualify.
Why wouldn't that qualify? You can't just judge his importance to that win by yards passed. He did his job perfectly in that game.
The two road losses the D outright sucked. For a team built on running the ball and playing D, Mark did exactly what needed to be done to secure those wins. Any team that needs a young QB to carry them to the SB is dead meat. Brady won his first SB on the back of a very aggresive D that was allowed to hold WR all game. Those days are over but you can't say Sanchez didn't play very well in those wins, he did.
A Super Bowl caliber team can win when one of its phases isn't firing on all cylinders. For how terrible the defense was against Pittsburgh last year, they only gave up 17. Yes it was 24-0 at the half, but here were the offensive possessions: 1. (After a long PIT scoring drive) 7 plays, 29 yards: Punt 2. (After an interception) 3 plays, -2 yards: Punt 3. (After a goalline stand, game is 10-0) 3 plays, 3 yards: Punt 4. (After PIT TD, 17-0) 3 plays, -7 yards, Sanchez sack/fumble, Pit defensive TD. 5. (Now 24-0) 6 plays, 44 yards, FG as half expires. That first half featured the Jets offense scoring 3 for themselves, 7 for the opponent, and they only managed to spend NINE MINUTES on the field while amassing 66 total yards. The defense didn't have much of a fair chance.
Pittsburgh blew us out, they didn't need to score but when the D needed one stop Pittsburgh converted. The D put the pressure on our O right away when they came out flat. Pittsburgh's D was able to play a much more aggresive game once they had the lead and our O wasn't able to play the field position game that we depended on. You can't blame that game on Sanchez the D clearly shit the bed and put our team in a hole that couldn't be dug out from. Say what you want Rex's D blew 2 straight AFC finals.
There is no way sanchez will be looking to sign an extension now as both he and his agent know that they would be lucky to get the same deal as a matt moore type based on his current play – he will be praying for a good campaign next season (as will we all) and will to renegotiate off the back of that.
Blew us out? I don't understand. After Pit opens with a long TD drive, we respond with no score, punt, the D gets pushed down field again but gets a huge momentum shifting INT! We follow with a 3 and out. After 3 drives per side it was 10-0, we had 30 total yards and 3 punts. They score again, partially because the defense cannot even catch its breath, then Sanchez coughs it up.
He had a bad year, sure, but he's only in his third year. Couple that with the fact that they decided to put less emphasis on the run game (well, at certain points in the season...they seemed to flip flop a bit) and you've got a young QB that is going to make some mistakes. Even with that I look at his numbers and most of them are going up. He had more attempts, more completions, more TDs (last year he averaged a fraction over 1 TD pass per game, this year he was over 1.6), he also ran it in himself more times. The bad news is that he added a fumble a 5 picks to his total from last year. Although when you factor in that he was sacked a dozen times more than last year that would account for some of it. I'm not a Sanchez apologist. I'm not convinced he is a Super Bowl level QB...but I also wouldn't write him off completely. He needs to improve certain areas of his game (mostly the turnovers) or we're going to have to look elsewhere. Only problem is people aren't lining up to give away legit starting QBs.
