When it comes to the care and feeding of rookie quarterbacks, NFL coaches are clueless. They can beat the Tampa 2, they can create endless stunts and blitzes, they can detail the intricacies of the spread offense, but they can’t figure out how to handle a rookie QB. NFL teams spend millions of dollars on wildly successful college QBs and then they turn them over to their coaches and cross their fingers.
The NFL isn’t actually very good at coaching in general. It’s very much a copycat league that occasionally understands why things work after they’ve been effective.
You have to make the offense around your QB, you can’t really do that with a rookie as you don’t really know what they can do. It’s further complicated by teams drafting QBs that have no hope of fitting in with what a team currently does.
There’s probably a lot of coaches that would be amazing in the NFL that never get a shot because the league is so incestuous at the moment.
In spite of the article, I wouldn’t say it’s impossible for a rookie QB to do well eventually. But I think it’s safe to say that no team should expect a rookie QB to be effective at all that first year. The kid is basically learning on the job, and should be expected to make mistakes (and learn from them). Any team that starts a rookie is basically treating that whole season as pre-season games. And they better have a good O-line, because the guy is still learning how to evade tackles.
That rookie QB also needs good coaching no matter when he plays. The article talk about how badly Jets QBs have fared, but I would chalk that up to the Jets’ historically poor coaching more than anything else. (As much as I loathe the Jets, I have to begrudgingly admit that Saleh is doing a good job now, and Rogers doesn’t need any coaching anyway, but their prior coaches’ ineptitude is well documented.)
Total Agree on the Jets. You mess up with that many rookie QBs, it’s likely not poor drafting that’s to blame, you definitely look at the coaching situation. Take the guy who is starting for my Vikings as an example: Sam Darnold. He failed with the Jets and Panthers, had some good signs of improvement under Shanahan with San Fran but was still backup to Purdy because Purdy is just good, and now (granted only 2-game sample size so far) may be having his comeback moment ala Mayfield last year with Minnesota under KOC, a former quarterbacks coach, who also was able to get a few solid games out of Josh Dobbs with little to no prep time and was himself planning on not throwing JJ McCarthy to the wolves right away. A coach who knows how to handle the QB position can make a world of difference to new QBs coming into the league and supposed “bust” QBs who weren’t handled well early but may still have potential.
The NFL is a win-now league. 2 bad seasons and everyone, including the people who drafted the QB, are usually gone. And if those people are gone the QB is usually next out the door too. No one is given more than 2-3 years to figure out a rebuild.
Not every team is like that. Since 1969, there have been more Popes than Steelers Head Coaches.
That’s fair, but how many losing seasons have they had since then? You don’t fire success, unless you’re the Bears firing Smith after going 10-6 but kissing the playoffs
unless you’re the Bears firing Smith after going 10-6 but kissing the playoffs
He was such a good kisser too.
Great typo?
Good article naybe but I downvoted and won’t click to read it because of the source.
Deseret News is owned by the Mormon Church. I won’t support their hate.
I didn’t know that! Thanks for the alert.
You get better at football by playing football. There isn’t enough practice time to fully develop a QB if you start him and give him every practice rep, let alone with the massively limited work you can do if you if he’s the backup.
Jordan Love looked like a rookie last year. Mahomes lost playoff games because he didn’t know how to read a defense after wasting a year on the bench.
Either a guy learns from his experiences or he doesn’t. But not playing doesn’t give him a path to the learning that’s required to play QB at a high level.
I’m having a great time watching Justin Fields find his legs within the Steelers org. Tomlin is such a great coach, imo it’s because he focuses on the man, and not the game. Watching him interact with Broderick Jones after he gave the Steelers like 4 penalties in 7 plays, you see him talking to the man, and in the press conference later on, he doesn’t trash him in any way. Steelers also are notorious for dismissing even top-level talent if they start to become toxic, or fail to meet Tomlins expectations off the field. It’s really just a great organization to support, and it doesn’t hurt that they just keep winning.
We now have Fields operating behind a fanTASTIC offensive line, and under a new offensive coordinator that is really playing to Fields strengths. I’m kind of hoping that he remains the starter, because while I think Russel Wilson may have better accuracy, Fields is so dangerous on the run, that it forces defenses to play in a way that minimizes that threat, which can open up the field for splash plays to Pickens.
@korny CJ Strout has ruined life for rookie QBs these years… 😏
With Caleb you can tell it’s just adjusting to the speed of opposing DBs. He will have to figure out that they’re all the best of the best, and some of the right throws in college are the wrong ones now.
