I’d say by years 3-4 (2002-2003) Brady was showing the velocity that he would carry for the rest of his career. Certainly by 2004 he was putting frozen ropes 40+ yards in the air in horrible conditions in the AFC Championship game (not atypical of the types of throws he was making all of the 2004 season). I don’t see Mac going near that throwing power now or ever. Mac’s pathway to success is going to look more like Drew Brees (most optimistic version) or pre-shoulder injury Chad Pennington (still optimistic version).
Of course in the low case his arm is going to hurt him so much that any increase in accuracy / mastery can’t offset it and he’s at best just an average starting QB (Derek Carr / Kirk Cousins). That’s not horrible either but probably can’t win a ring with that unless the rest of the roster is absolutely stacked. Should be good enough for playoff contention regardless if we can get the rest of the roster sorted…
Patriots lost badly to the Dolphins, but I put that more on the OL and offense as a whole rather than on just the QB. Hard to make throws from your back or without time to throw it or a clean pocket.
As far as arm strength goes, it's true that it can get better. So I'm not worried about it. Drew Brees had a fantastic career with not the strongest arm. But you need to compensate for that by being very precise and decisive with your passes so you get the ball out sooner before the defenders can react.
I'm just not surprised that the Pats lost.
The Pats offense looked like it was going to be bad early. They weren't click in training camp or preseason.
Did you think they were suddenly going to flip the switch in Miami because reasons?
COACHING: Bill said it best in one of his pressers this week. The fact that Patricia and Judge will run the offensive side can call plays for the first time shouldn't be a factor. McDaniel had one year of coaching on the offensive side and had never call plays before he did, and he was a WR in college and yet he was also the QB coach. Bill O'Brien was a DE in college and only coached RB's in college until he got a college OC job running a triple option offense at GaTech. He never called offensive plays in the NFL, until he DID.
I'd say the coaching looked to be a negative factor on Sunday. The Patriots offensive play calling failed to establish a rhythm in any way shape or form. A lot of the blame has to be laid at the feet on the man calling those plays. Usually you script your first 20 plays and if the game plan is working you should see results early. Instead we saw pretty much nothing positive at all and were getting skunked 17-0 at halftime.
QB- 2 positives I took from Mac's preseason snaps was that he looked quicker on his feet. That very positive athletic ability he has (4.8 forty and 7.04 3-cone) showed up a bit more. He still doesn't have "instinctual" evasive moves you see from other "athletic QB" who have similar quickness and speed, but little by little I think THAT will come over time.
The second was he looked like DID add some velocity to his fast ball from the House training. It took Brady about 5 years before he ceased to be a weak armed game manager to a strong armed power thrower he evolved to be. I'm just looking for incremental gains, it isn't going to happen overnight.
Bottom line for this game is ball control and no turnovers. The margin of victory is small enough that even one TO could prove fatal. If we lose the TO battle we are NOT going to win this game.
Mac doesn't display any offensive instincts running the football. Just because you can run with above average speed in a straight line, doesn't transform you into an escape the pocket, make plays happen with your feet QB.
He did commit the turnover we can't afford.
Who's to blame on that play, the QB, the call, the WR, or all three?
OL - Looks like we are going to see Brown, Strange, Andrews, Owenu, and Wynn on Sunday. Again the most important thing I will be looking for is minimizing the mental errors. They aren't going to win all their reps. That ARE paying the other guys too. But these guys are the key to the running game and a successful run game will go a long way toward a winning game. We KNOW our RB's are strong, so its up to the OL to give them enough room to move the sticks.
OL looked terrible. Couldn't protect their QB well enough against Miami. We're just lucky the xray of his back injury came back negative. I probably wouldn't risk Mac vs Pittsburgh. Let Hoyer or Zappe handle the snaps instead. You have backups for a reason.
DEFENSE - While the offense reeked with question marks this preseason, the defense often gave up more to expect. Again I don't care WHO is calling the defenses. Jarod or Steve, I don't care. While the last few games left a lot to desire, overall the defensive numbers were decent and I think we have improved the overall personnel. And what I said about the offensive play calling goes double for the defense. Whatever call comes in is even more affected by what the offense lines up in and what motions are made.
The defense did fine enough under the circumstances. Not great, but certainly not bad. The offense sputtering did not help us in the field position battle. Tyreek Hill and Waddle are who we thought they were. The leading receiving threats for Miami, but I wouldn't say they 'torched' the defense as much as feared, 163 yards and 1 TD between the two of them.
Although I'm not so worried about the defensive unit, I don't think the D is good enough to carry a bad, sputtering offense, which is what we have right now.
We're starting 0-1 in the worst 4 game stretch to start the season. 0-4 is possible, but I'm thinking we need to steal a win somewhere to even have hope for a winning season.
1-3 you can come back from, we saw the Patriots do it last season. 0-4, it's pretty much over because that means everything has snowballed, you can kiss the playoffs goodbye.
