@miktoxic said:

DFWBear:

let me ask you this from someone who brings a different perspective than most of these guys that are just in love with RG3 for no other reason than his big smile and his cute dreads:

from a standpoint of building a team within a time line of say three years...... and if you look at the browns and their talent level right now with the roster they have and you realize you've got tons of holes to fill i.e. !) another cover CB 2) another DE 3) at least another WR 4) at least another LB 5) a RT 6) a speed RB. so right there that's 6-8 picks we need.

would you trade one of your picks to move up to get a QB or trade down, get another pick, and complete an already competent (but not dominate) defense, add some weapons at WR and RB and fix a problem on the right side of the OL?

another question: do you think 2 years is enough time to evaluate a rookie QB with no right side protection, no running game, wide receivers who can't get open and when they do drop the ball, injuries, a new coach and a new system in one of the toughest divisions in football?

do you think RG3 is a "once in a lifetime talent that we have to do anything we can to draft him?" (as i pointed out to the RG3 ball tuggers yesterday is that in my lifetime i've seen marino, kelly, elway, brees, rodgers, favre, brady, newton etc. etc. etc. drafted. i guess all of them were once in a lifetime too, if you're a flippin bee).

I can recall only 5 quarterbacks in the modern era that were considered "locks": King Hill in 58 out of Rice, Bradshaw in 70, Elway in 83, Manning in 98, Vick in 2000. All but Vick cleared that bar. No, I would not place Griffin in that group. If anyone is curious, yes, I would put Luck in that group.

Yes, I think 2 years is enough given the player that Colt is.

Finally, in today's NFL an elite QB is breathing room. The Giants had subpar running backs, merely above average WRs, average linebackers, and the worst secondary in the league. They just won the Super Bowl. Conversely, look at Baltimore ( I know you guys see them constantly ). Quality receivers, good line play, dominant defense, consistent running game, and haven't made it back to the Super Bowl since they've won because of the QB play. Without an elite QB, your margin is so slim it is borderline impossible to win a Super Bowl.

@halfsane said:

Thanks for dropping by with your perspective.

I would really like to hear what you have to say when comparing the two quarterbacks.

Yay, the server is back. RGIII time ( and forgive me for rambling; asking me for a RGIII breakdown is like asking an old Browns fan to talk about Jim Brown, though I will be as honest as I can

From a 30 000 foot overview, I would encourage people to not be lazy and assume the Vick / Newton comparisons. If you are looking for a comp, the best one, BY FAR, is Steve Young ( from a prospect point of view, as well as a skill set ). For the lulz, his nickname on the team was "3000" because he looks so much like Andre 3000.

Griffin will measure a hair below 6'2'' ( say 6' 7/8'' ), and in the 220 range. When at his track weight of 185, Griffin was clocked at 18 at under 10.1 in the 100, and "track measured" ( meaning timed, not the crap football coaches use with their thumbs ) of 4.38 in the 40. The additional 35 lbs is all muscle, and he his frame will support another 10 MAYBE 15 lbs. At his current weight, I expect him to run in the mid 4.4 range.

Griffin is an extremely hard working kid that has worked tirelessly on this throwing motion and footwork. Prior to his ACL injury, he was splitting time between track and football. The injury changed that, and his sole focus became football. He has excellent vision, a fast release, and a strong arm ( though it is not rocket launcher strong like Brady or Cutler ). Griffin has had to work a lot at "training himself out" of his athleticism. In 2008, he made the most ridiculous throw I've ever see in my life as an 18 year old against Washington State: moving to his right, he "jumped" off of one foot, whipped his body around, and threw a laser pass 55 yards down field from the opposite hash to the back pylon, dropping it between 2 defenders. As a result of his athleticism, he can get impatient in his technique, instead preferring to rely on his athleticism. It is a constant battle. His arm slot has improved, but he does have a tendency to drop out of it on quick strikes. He lacks touch on his short range throws . . . they are either too hard or too soft. His footwork has dramatically improved, but he still suffers from "track feet" I've already mentioned; once he starts to move in the pocket, his footwork breaks down. He is a ghost behind the lines, very difficult to bring down unless you have a clean shot. He has a quick release. He has extremely fluid hips ( he would make a great safety ), but is still raw in his rotation, which leads to overthrows on occasion. From a mental standpoint, the kid really is that freaking smart. He won't be dropping a 10 on the wonderlic. Sees the "whole field", and began to show ( particularly in the Texas game ) an ability to move linebackers with his shoulders and head. From a leadership standpoint, he does rub his teammates the wrong way sometimes, though personnel guys will tell you most elite QBs have this quality . . . a, "I'm that fucking good" confidence that isn't fake. He's also tough ( played another 10 minutes in a half after he had torn his ACL ). He does have a little showboat in him, particularly when he takes hits, he lays on the ground maybe 1 second longer than I would like. Not injury prone at all, outside the ACL tear.

His biggest asset is his accuracy on mid - long range throws. He doesn't just hit the strike zone, he paints the black.

If you are looking for a range, I would say his ceiling is an overpowered Steve Young . . . a little faster, a little more athletic, a little smarter, a little better arm. Unless he gets injured, his floor is probably a poor man's Randall Cunningham.

Finally, from just a personal belief, I really believe, as a football fan, that unless he gets injured he will be a top 15 QB in the league at a minimum; the man just works too hard, and is too competitive, for him to ever satisfied with anything less.

@halfsane said:

Thanks for dropping by with your perspective.

I would really like to hear what you have to say when comparing the two quarterbacks.

The easiest thing to do is to start with Colt. Please note, all relative adjectives are used in the NFL context. Also, since this is long, I'm going to break it into two posts.

Colt is a very hardworking kid with decent talent, though his leadership skills are questionable due to the amount of sheltering he got at UT. At Texas, he was originally the third man on the roster, but he was such a "gamer" that he was able to fight against Texas' bad coaching to take the mantle. Colt is a good decision maker ( we'll get to this in a second ), though he takes his time with it. Due to the amount of work he puts in, he has very good mechanics for a player of his caliber. His arm slot rarely deviates, his legs are typically in unison w/ his torso on rotate, he has an average release, he has slightly below average arm strength. Defensive speed in the NFL has negated what made him special at Texas, which was the threat a scramble put on 2nd level zone players. He has good pocket awareness, and shows a very good ability to shift in the pocket to provide blocking angles for his OL to reengage ( there are't a lot of guys that do this, including Rogers ). What has impressed me the most about Colt is that he was able, for the most part, to shake off the "track feet" he had to develop as a necessity at Texas due to their HORRENDOUS play calling. I say this as a Football Fan and not a Baylor Fan; the coaching one gets at Texas is a hindrance to NFL performance, at all positions except secondary.

Colt's biggest problem though is a monster. QB coaches refer to Colt as someone who is "bicycling". Each "decision" a QB makes from the moment the ball is snapped is often referred to as a "cycle", and QBs practice each component of the cycle relentlessly. How to turn your head, whom to identify first, where your feet should be, hip placement for fast rotate, ball placement prior to the throw, on and on and on. Colt's fundamental issue is that while he makes good decisions PER CYCLE, he has never demonstrated an ability to "string together" a series of cycles to form a coherent mental image of the play at hand. In essence, when Colt drops back, he goes through his progressions until the play breaks down. He does not have the ability to hit his first cycle, connect it to what he saw pre-snap, then skip his normal 2nd cycle to hit the third option 2 seconds into the play.

This is a point of huge disagreement between coaches and personnel guys. Personnel guys see a quality decision maker and think that good coaches should be able to "get him off the bike". Coaches tend to believe that such ability is innate, and that while you can coach the decision process per cycle, you can't coach them to string it all together. The reason this is so important is that without the ability to understand the entire play at hand, a quarterback can never do the Ph.D. level work of looking off safeties, skipping covered hot routes to hit the backside, or making high quality audibles at the line.

This was never an issue at Texas due to their talent. When you have a lot of guys winning one on one matchups, eventually your cycles are going to lead you to someone that is open. When you lack talent, it becomes a huge issue. I do believe that the Browns could make the playoffs with Colt, but I am dubious that you could ever win a SuperBowl with him unless you had 2 or 3 All-Pro quality skill position guys.

If you're looking for guys that got off the bicycle, the best example is Troy Aikmen. If you're looking for guys that had it all but never could get off the bicycle, that's McNabb ( though he did have some technical issues that consistently plagued him throughout his career ).

@tour2ma said:

Please explain how you came to be both a Browns and a Cowboys fan. I ask this as a member of your age group who grew up believing this to be an impossibility...

One of my grandfathers emigrated from Cleveland to Texas after he returned from WWII and married my Baylor grandmother.

The Cowboys wouldn't come into existence until 1960, and it would be another 5~7 years until people in Texas paid more attention to the Cowboys than the Southwest Conference.

The Rangers wouldn't move from D.C. to Dallas until 1972.

As a result, my grandfather STILL roots for Cleveland teams first, and my dad grew up in his household . . . it wasn't until he was a teenager that he began to replace Cleveland with Dallas teams.

@miktoxic said:

boy, that's some stiff competition there. i'm glad all it took was one player to beat up those tomato cans.

Kansas does indeed lick chode, no arguments there. None of those teams were elite, you will get no argument from me. However, the fact remains that without Griffin Baylor wins 5 games.

Baylor is rising from 15 years of oblivion from a talent standpoint. Honestly, our 3 first round draft picks the last few years are the rarity . . . these are individual players that don't begin to describe the derth of talent on the roster at most spots. It is improving, but its no where near what schools like OSU or Mizzou have, to say nothing of OU and UT.

@bringbackbrownie2 said:

If this isn't promoting a losing culture I don't know what is. We already went through that media crap with Brady Quinn. And everyone knows how that turned out..

As much as I love Griffin, this is correct.

Well managed teams recognize that the media only shines on winners in football; as Seinfeld says, we're really just rooting for laundry.

@rgiii-to-da-c-l-e said:

Excellent post.

Now can you give your view regarding Browns fans believing its better to keep the #4 + #22 picks to build around Colt McCoy versus trading them for #2 to get RGIII. Given you're a Baylor fans I sense you've seen Colt in college and the pros.

I have seen plenty of Colt in both college and the pros. I can give a comparison between the two if asked.

No, I won't pass judgement on fans that desire to keep the 4 and the 22. I am not intimately familiar w/ the Browns roster in the way I am Big XII schools / NFC East / East Texas high schools ( yeah its a cliche, but yes I drive out into small town East Texas most Friday Nights in the fall to see games ). Thus, it would be inappropriate of me to disagree with someone that has far more knowledge than I do of the situation.

I will say this: if Griffin isn't on the team last season, Baylor wins 5 games. RGIII literally doubled our win total. TCU / Kansas / UT / OU / Washington are all games we lose if our backup, who is a good college QB, is in the game.

@the-gipper said:

Can you guarantee us upon pain of death that he will become the next Otto Graham?

no, but no can offer such a guarantee

@choco said:

the real knock that concerns me is that he lacks anticipation....which is a problem with mccoy at the moment. he wont pull the trigger until the receiver is open, rather than throw to a spot and expect the guy to be there.

also, can you guesstimate how much time he has played from under center. our coach is notorious for having a rigid system and doesn't like to use the shotgun often.

1.) Let me give you the back story here. Briles ( Baylor HC ) is legendary for how slowly he brings along QBs. In Griffin's freshman season, he was literally reading 2 guys on half the field before a delayed run action w/ the line would develop, and he would take off. Read 1 -> Read 2 -> run. That was it, EVERY play. In 09 he had the knee injury. In 2010, Briles opened it up somewhat by calling basically "two plays in one", two reads to one side, two reads to the other side, run. Briles emphasizes "decision making" with QBs before he really opens up his offense. It was not until the second half of this past season that Briles "opened up" the playbook for throwing into windows prior to a receiver being open. A lot of this has to do w/ play design . . . Briles LOVES to go vertical on the rails, so there isn't much anticipation in unleashing the bomb ( and there isn't any QB in college history that has experience throwing into the Cover-2 hole at 15-17 yards anyways ). Between the numbers, Briles relies on crossing actions typically 2~3 yards in front AND behind the second level deployment line ( lots of zone in the Big-XII ). Griffin shows quality anticipation in throwing into these windows, particularly the last half of this season. However, the play design is different from the NFL, and he doesn't have a ton of experience in it.

As to throwing guys open, on "The Play" ( as Baylor fans will call it 30 years from now, the winning pass against OU ), he threw open Terrance Williams, allowing him to use his speed to create separation towards the corner of the endzone.

2.) His freshman season he spent the majority of time under center, as Briles likes to use what can only be described as a "square dance" of run action calls . . . double pulls, traps 2 gaps over, he's a bit of a nutjob. As the line talent progressed, I'd say 80% shotgun and 20% under center, excluding goal-line sets. Of those under center plays, you are looking at 50 / 50 run-pass ratio ( Briles loves ghost action from the short side to the wide side ). Griffin handles the ball very well on initial drop back, in my opinion.

Griffin's footwork on "initialization" is quite good. Where he gets into trouble, footwork wise, is once pressure forces him to move. He still has "track feet" once he moves, as every leg action puts him into position to take off. He's much better than the was, but he must develop "QB feet", where ever movement IMMEDIATELY puts you back into position to rotate and release. At this time, once he starts moving, he typically has to slow down and reset his lower half, unless he's on a sprint out to the right.

First time poster, and I hope a future long time member. I've got family that migrated from Cleveland to Texas about 60 years ago, and have always rooted for Cleveland times when they aren't playing Dallas teams.

If you've got any questions about Griffin, fire away. I'll try to be as honest and as non-biased as possible. If you don't, just throw a Cool Story Bro pic up and I'll slink off into night.

If you are curious about the loyalty that Griffin inspires, I and most Dallas fans loathe the Deadskins in ways that aren't rational. If Washington got him, I, and a lot of other Baylor / Dallas fans, would seriously consider switching allegiances while he's there ( especially since Jerry Jones is such a dumbass ).