Thinking Skins

Yeah, but we know BRob and Gibson. He is just learning them. He's just learning how good the TEs are vs the OL and stuff; There is some stuff that he wants to add to BRob;s game like Screens but he makes mistakes (protection). And Gibson with the fubmbles. And in the midst of all this, he's got to develop Howell because we're only going as far as Howell can take us. So If we have a bunch of games like that Dallas game and that Philly game last year and the Tampa game then Howell isn't developing much and so when crunch time comes and its 3rd and 9 and he throws it 3 yards and you want his head, you will have to look back and say we developed him that way (Pickett, Ridder, etc).

I just remember things like that were said about Jimmy G.

I am so excited this morning that I couldn't give less of a **** about getting robbed by the refs last night. Those things happen. You know what doesn't happen? Finding a franchise QB in the fifth round? Finding one who can keep his cool when everybody is counting him out and calling for him to be benched. I had twetted Kevin Sheehan to watch our Comeback Kid bring us back because the Eagles had left too much time on the clock. 103 seconds. Way too much time for this guy. And he used every second. And scored. This is the makings of a new rivalry.

In fairness though, its only his 4th game with them as a team. He's still learning how to use them in live non-practices. One thing we've seen all season though is that the 2 minute drill has paid off. That work in the offseason has come in handy. I wonder if we're going to see some 2 minute speed up checks like other teams did.

Yeah. I wasn't going to include Purdy at first. But still. I'll put him in with the last 3 at too early. Or maybe with Lawrence. I don't think he's in a class above Howell though. I think he'll come down too earth like Mills did and Jones did and Sanchez.

Howell > Jones Howell > Fields Howell > Pickett Howell > Ridder Howell > Z. Wilson Howell > Trask Howell > Mond Howell > Mills Howell > Young Howell > basically everyone but Lawrence and Stroud and Richardson and Purdy from those last two or three drafts and 3 of those are too close. EDIT: It was brought to my attention that I left out Purdy so I'm going to put him in the class with Stroud and Richardson.

I'm thinking about this again and maybe it's also tied to his drop backs and to timing. Maybe he's hitting the top of his drop back too fast so he can't hit his reads. That was an issue before.

So I figured I'd post this here for lack of a better place. But I found a nice site that has some things that I've gotta come back to. They're algorithms for kids. But the algorithm is seen as a book. Like Snowy Day. And they have the events in the book that have to be done. It's an interesting way of doing it because it's nothing but fundamental CS, but tied into the book itself so that they get to why they love the book. Cool stuff.

I read this thread, even if I don't post. I was thinking about the spy duties. Are they going to make Davis spy Hurts? That speed really can neutralize Hurts's speed and possibly keep him in the pocket. Is this how we've played him in the past?

I need Sam to trust his WRs more. Throw it up and trust Terry. Those are coverage sacks but our boys are better. Especially at WR. I'm thinking about it more and that's what I'm taking from this week. Cooley in his film review, the comments about the WR separation. He's not seeing what he wants to see. He's got to get more Heinicke in him and just YOLO.

My son calls them the Evils. I'm calling them that now

I disagree. It's all about reading defenses, disguising blitzes, spotting the blitzing man, throwing to the open guy, throwing it away, scrambling, hitting the open man, etc. Principles Now there's more running QBs though.

But that's exactly the point. That was only Joe T's second (third) year as a starter if I'm correct. So he was still going through growing pains. His sack rates were 11.9, 14.2, and 9.7. We see Howell with his numbers and they are not unprecedented.

Yeah, I remember. I had a lot of thoughts this week and rather than putting them all on here, I just took some time away from football as I do when we lose. It helps. But when I listened people were so frustrated with the now, with what they were hearing, wanting solutions, and stuff. One guy was saying that sack rates from colleges don't change into the pros. I want to look into that. I want to see how accurate his work is. I know it's not true in general because of the people I've mentioned here. There are several people here who took a lot of sacks early on and then stopped. Was it because they suddenly got good lines? Or did they get good pocket presence? Maybe his results show that for guys, college stats and early in their careers they have similar sack rates, but that's misleading. I look at Aikman and Theisman and say you can get better.

I'm having problems with my Internet connection but I want to look into some other questions - how were the running games in those offenses? - how young were those QBs? - how did the team react? Both in the next game and the locker room of that's available? - how did the team offenses rank? I'll probably come up with more but this is just something I'm thinking about right now and I don't feel like thinking about other things. Maybe I'll answer these questions maybe not. Thing is. Howell is not alone.

So one question I have is...why did the coaches leave the QB out there? So i looked up some of these games. Teddy B for example. That's his rookie year, and he only had 7 sacks going into that last drive but they took him back out there. and he dropped back 7 times, sacked once, and ran once himself. but couldn't get to FG range. But they already had their 3. Similar things can be said about Cunningham's stats although we should note that he threw 3 ints and took 10 sacks. But he was very early in his career so they probably wanted him to learn from it. And in the AIkman stats, he actually belongs in the 3 & 11 club. But it was early in his career so he had already shown some promise worth developing. PHilly beat Dallas 24-0 that day. Aikman had only 112 yards and Emmitt had 44 yards on the ground. It must have been brutal. But he learned from it. I wonder if any of these guys have reached out to Howell. Not saying I expect them to, but it'd be cool to be able to share these stories with somebody, like belonging to this club. Talking to Warren Moon like "yeah we both suck now. " but only joking. ITs also interesting that (I think) the only name I see on there twice is Cam. Does that mean something? Did he never learn to protect himself like the others? Or did he learn after the second time? Or did the injuries just take him away from the game?

I noticed that too but my thought when I saw Cunningham was that maybe this was a partial product of running QBs not giving up on plays and this taking more sacks and making the OL look worse.

Just for solace I wanted to look up who else was in this company. Who else has been this bad? Well we know nobody. But surely somebody has been sacked 8 times and thrown 3 ints. So I looked that up and these are the names I got.. 14 Joe Theismann WAS 1978 15 Mike Rae TAM 1978 16 Jim Plunkett RAI 1983 17 Ron Jaworski PHI 1983 18 Eric Hipple DET 1983 19 Paul McDonald CLE 1984 20 Warren Moon HOU 1985 21 Randall Cunningham PHI 1986 22 Troy Aikman DAL 1991 23 Donald Hollas OAK 1998 24 Tony Banks STL 1998 25 Terrelle Pryor OAK 2013 26 Cam Newton CAR 2014 27 Teddy Bridgewater MIN 2014 28 Tyrod Taylor BUF 2015 29 Cam Newton CAR 2016 30 Sam Darnold NYJ 2019 31 Sam Howell WAS 2023 https://stathead.com/football/player-game-finder.cgi?request=1&match=player_game_count_season&ccomp[1]=gt&cval[1]=3&cstat[1]=pass_int&ccomp[2]=gt&cval[2]=8&cstat[2]=pass_sacked That's the link in case anybody cares and wants to do anything with it. I've been up late doing chores and don't have much time to number crunch any more. As you can see, there are some names I didn't include. The name that stands out to me is Joe T. He belongs to the 3&8 club and definitely has the similar measurables as Howell and lived to have the career. That's what I want to see. On the other end is a guy like Aikman who I wouldn't compare to Howell (Howell is more of a Young guy) but, this is promising still because it shows it's not the end of the world.

Ok, first things first is that we need a breather. I took a long break from football just to relax and think about other things because I didn't want to be mad or deal with mad fans. Anyway I thought I would come here and put some thoughts about the game here. 1. Howell is growing / needs to grow. These are the mistakes he is going to make. There is a pic I posted on Twitter saying "this too shall pass. It may feel like a kidney stone, but it will pass." Several really good QBs have had bad games and stretches. Like Lawrence, Kirk, heck even Josh Allen. Few QBs come out the gates swinging and throwing dimes. I felt good that unlike Beck in the Buffalo game in 2011 when he was sacked 10 times and all he would do is throw it to the RB over and over again, Howell threw it immediately to Curtis Samuel 37 yards down the sideline on a beautiful throw that I loved. It showed that he wasn't afraid. Same with after the ints. He didn't get Kirk's fear like he did in that Giants game. 2. I know Allen is now one of the premier QBs in the league and he has beaten us a few times now, but we got no pressure on him all day. I'm not going to say it was embarrassing, but I thought it was going to be more of a battle. We have four #1s and they ate us up like soup. 3. I'm not going to go hard against EB too much because we were moving the ball, we got the ball, moved it 39 yards and threw a pic. Then 2 drives later moved it 73 yards and turned it over on downs. We could be talking about a 13-10 game and its a whole different story. This game got out of hand because of a lot of things but namely Howell making mistakes that stemrolled. So like I normally do, I'm going to analyze the drives. Drive 1: RPRPPPPP (2 Runs 12 yards, 6 Passes 35 yards (-9 sack yards) and an int) Drive 2: RPP (1 Run 1 yard, 2 Passes 0 yards, -10 sack yards) Drive 3: PSPPRP (1 Runs, -1 yards, 1 Scramble 18 yards, 4 Passes 14 yards) (turnover on downs) we're now down 10-0. Drive 4: PPP (3 Passes, for 9 yards and an interception) Drive 5: R (1 Run for 10 yards) Drive 6: RPPPRPPRRRP (5 Runs 46 yards, 5 Passes 17 yards) Drive 7: RRPPPP (2 Runs 19 yards,3 Passes -1 yards (2 sacks for -7 yards)) Drive 8: P (1 Pass -2 yards fumble lost) Drive 9: PPP (3 Passes 5 yards, interception) Drive 10: PPP (3 Passes 4 yards (2 sacks -10 yards)) Drive 11: PPPPPPP (7 Passes, 51yards 2 sacks -9 yards)

Very similar to above

You know that technically he's not the GM not right? Mayhew is. I like the structure now. If Ron leaves and EB comes in and keeps the same structure I wouldn't have a problem. We complain, but Ron fixed a big problem here. I loved Kyle Smith, but I like this structure more with our council of GMs. Sure it's not perfect, but I like the way doesn't simply use the draft to start day 1. Some can, but there's a huge learning curve and a rookie wall. Most of our guys have great second years. So I'm more on favor of keeping Martys than Ron.

You funny. He's not the best. but he's not the worse.

That's kinda true but I like the way Ron drafts. Let them sit. Get the skills and coach them up. Athleticism is hard to find. So is passion for the game but we're working with a lottery here. I don't want there to be any real necessity to put any rookie on the field next year. If we do, I want it to be because he earned it, not because of draft status.