Is the NFL really in a down year or is it a changing of the guard?

[TheRainMaker]

A question I've also asked myself: were we spoiled with good QB's 2000-2016? I'm not sure how crowded the field looked before that as I wasn't watching much until 2001, then very closely starting in 2010.

Yes! I've been watching since the 90's and there seems to be something seriously off with these current crop of QB's. Many of them look like they are playing for the first time. They look like they can't read defenses and are extremely eager to take off running like Herbert was doing last night. There was a reason the "running QB" was frowned upon in 20-30 years ago. We are seeing why.

 

[aluminum seats]

I'm definitely interested in the plan for paying Maye. I like that they are carrying over cap space from one year to the next.

Had Maye shown a steady linear progression and not a meteoric rise in year 2 where he's in line for MVP, I'd be good with the Patriots continuing to roll as much cap as possible into future years for when Maye hits his "prime" so that we can field a Super Bowl caliper team around him at that point.

Now we are legit Super Bowl contenders with a rookie QB which is the dream scenario for any GM. It's a window of opportunity to load up on difference making FAs while Maye is on his rookie deal.

Interesting to see how Vrabel and the front office play it. Go all in or take a more measured sustainable approach to not leave the cupboard dry when he gets his next contract.

Well, re-signing Maye isn’t going to be easy. He’ll be a four-time Super Bowl winner at that point, so it’s going to be a pretty big contract.

 

[JoeSixPat]

I could go into more detail, but while there does seem to be a very good crop of QBs coming along, Roger Goodell AND the owners have long favored "parity" in the NFL.

To them, "parity" is that each owner gets his or her time in the spotlight as a champ and all that comes with it - including a lot of extra money and the adoration of fans.

To us "parity" might as well be the same as "mediocrity"

Once in a while you get a difference maker like Brady and that throws things off as far as the rest of the league is concerned, with the Pats going to a Super Bowl every other year on average and winning 6.

 

[VrabelJr]

Or maybe the league is coming back after KC was the lone standout in a 6 year long drought?

 

[Pape]

Down year or just not a dynastic year?

whenever the powerhouse teams fade a bit, that question about it being a down year get asked...

its not really a down year... this season is parity in a nutshell

 

[WhatJustHappened]

This is related to quarterback salaries. Once your quarterback gets his big deal, and you sign your other key players, the money left isn't enough to have a team that is strong in all 3 phases of the game. So you end up with teams that are strong on offense but weak on defense, or vice versa. The best teams can stay on top for 2-3 years after the big deal, but then attrition sets in and they start to decline. So I think what we are seeing is a changing of the guard overall.

People complain about how Bill did sht, he KNEW he needed solid DEPTH at reasonable $, which stole from the whole..
He paid guys good $ that he needed, but most just made "Decent" $
They all had a good chance at a Championship, and they knew it.

 

[Toofy]

I saw the chargers game vs eagles and boy ! It was awful. Tbe QBs had more than 3 seconds to throw but their vision was bad and they just take to running.

The product is diluted. With pocket passers you at least would wait for lanes to open and make the right read .

I think maye holding the ball long is good so that he can do multiple reads . That's going to be a differentiator.

Herbert looked good awful yesterday night and with chiefs vs Texans stroud just got lucky . Maye passes are at an altogether different level.


Earlier Brady, brees , rivers, eli, Peyton, rothlisberger a Matt Ryan, rodgers were all in a class of their own. Now hardly 4 QBs are worth talking about .

 

[Tunescribe]

There is a LOT of bad football being played this year. Just some really bad games, with each team trying hard to lose. I attribute it to:

(1) The short preseason with limited contact

(2) Bad coaching.

(3) Bad officiating.

(4) A really long season, with lots of attrition.

The NFL doesn't care. More games = more money, ratings are up, the public is too addicted to care.

The system is designed to be cyclical, it is really on incompetence that prevents major shifts. Pats, Bears and Broncos taking advantage. All 3 have good coaches. Liam Coen doing his best to make Jacksonville look like a good team, though I'm not sold yet.

You make some good points but I think the league has painted itself into a difficult corner with rules changes, chiefly those favoring offense. By putting a premium on scoring, owners have legislated the game out of balance placing disproportionate importance on the quarterback position. These days, if your starting quarterback gets injured or sucks badly, you can't compete, period. Whereas a few years ago teams with QB issues could compensate often successfully via the ground game, defense and special teams.

With offense and defense on equal footing rules-wise, football is the ultimate team sport. Messing with that just throws things out of whack and invites problems.

 

[Guts]

5) Bad QB play. Don't be fooled by bloated passer ratings. That's just QBs combining their mobility with bad rules that favor them. There are a lot of bad passers rocking a passer rating around 100.

This 100 percent
QBs cant process defenses anymore like before. Rely too much on athleticism

 

[slam]

Yes! I've been watching since the 90's and there seems to be something seriously off with these current crop of QB's. Many of them look like they are playing for the first time. They look like they can't read defenses and are extremely eager to take off running like Herbert was doing last night. There was a reason the "running QB" was frowned upon in 20-30 years ago. We are seeing why.

For QBs, my theory is that there was a lost generation of QBs which occurred between the drafting of Matthew Stafford in 2009 and Mahomes/DeShaun Watson in 2017. Stafford was the tail end of great QBs with long careers beginning with Manning and Brady but included Roethlisberger, Brees, Rivers, Flacco, Eli and lesser lights in Matt Ryan, Carson Palmer, and Alex Smith. Mahomes/Watson was the first of the current wave, followed by Ryan, Lamar, Burrow, Herbert and now Maye with some lesser lights we could name.

Between 2009 and 2017, there is a dearth of quality QBs and QBs with long careers. We have those whose promising careers were cut short (Luck, Griffin), QBs whose play fell off a cliff (Wilson, Newton, Wentz), mediocre starters (Bradford, Bortles, Jameis, Mariota and I'll put Bridgewater here though injury should be noted), and outright busts (Tebow, three 2011 first rounders, Manziel). The one guy who was drafted in this time who is still a top QB is Dak Prescott, who wasn't even valued by scouts much and went in the 4th round.

That's seven drafts in a row without a HOF candidate QB except for Dak and if you want to argue Russell Wilson.

The only two QBs drafted in this era to still be at all active as a non-emergency starter are redeemed busts Geno Smith and Jared Goff. And one of those is on the way out. There's a missing layer right now of veterans who can still go. What would Indy give for a 32 year old Ryan Fitzpatrick right now?

This lost generation benefitted late career Tom Brady in diluting the competition for his final four Super Bowl victories, and benefitted Mahomes for the same reason. They didn't have to battle mature but still prime Luck, Griffin, and Newton as much as they would have if they all stayed on track.

Now as for the current elite quarterbacks, I think a lot of them have games which won't age well with the loss of their superior athletic gifts. Brady's elite traits weren't sexy. NFL nerds aren't impressed by reading a defense presnap and changing a play from a bad one to a small, safe gain. But he could execute his skills at a high level until he was 44. There's a chance that Mahomes, Allen, and Jackson won't perform as well at the age of 34 than Brady at the age of 44. Also, many of the current elite QBs were not drafted at the top of their drafts. Mahomes, Allen, Jackson, Herbert. #6 pick or lower. Only Burrow was a #1 overall pick and a current elite QB. At the same time, top 3 picks Trubisky, Zach Wilson, Trey Lance all busted and others underperformed their draft position. There has been a disconnect between how NFL evaluates QBs and how they actually perform for some time now and it's still going on.

 

[fnordcircle]

I can't wait to read the sour grapes posts from angry Chiefs and Bills fans about how bad the ratings are going to be in the playoffs without them.

 

[Water Boy]

NFL is watered down: too many games. It was fine with 16 games and 6 playoff teams. It's not too easy to make the playoffs with 7 teams.

I agree about the 16 game season. 32 teams, 16 games, 6 playoff teams had perfect symmetry.

 

[Toofy]

Reduce 1 regular game and 1 preseason game and use it for extended training and preconditioning.

Bring forth salary cap for Max - most one person can have is 15% of total salary cap for that year.
Contracts cannot be more than 4 years . Nor more than 30% of salary can be moved to future years.
Dead cap for a year cannot exceed 25% of the yearly cap space .


Otherwise you are going to see 6-10 teams on average having crap rosters and playing real bad starting from first game.

 

[Huckleberry1]

Well, re-signing Maye isn’t going to be easy. He’ll be a four-time Super Bowl winner at that point, so it’s going to be a pretty big contract.

I think Maye is going to be happy playing for Vrabel and will take less to stay here. I think Vrabel is going to tell Wolf to construct smart fair market deals for players they want to keep. He's not going to go Belichick's route of bringing players in and busting their balls to squeeze every dime out of them. But players are going to have to live up to their contracts or be gone. They will give them the opportunity to restructure or be gone. I think we will see this with Onwenu and Stevenson this coming offseason, both will be given the chance to restructure or be released. And this coming offseason will give a good look into whether I'm right or not, Tonga, Chiasson, Hawkins, Gibbens, Ben Brown, Hooper, and Lowe are all free agents, my guess is that most, if not all will re-sign here, and Stevenson will redo his deal for less $$$.

 

[Thelonious]

The league manipulates draft positions and schedules to achieve "competitive balance. Without getting into whether this is a wise approach, their machinations do clearly have an effect. I suspect most but not all of the formerly elite teams who are having a down year will rebound. Some will not. I also think that the critical importance of QB and HC mean that teams can rather suddenly improve markedly. (A thing we are happily living through at present.) I don't see any of this as terribly unusual or worrisome. My main reaction is just how genuinely exceptional our twenty-year run was. The system is supposed to prevent that sort of thing, and we beat the system, in spades. Maybe we'll do that again. That'd be fun.

 

[TommyD4207]

It's a pretty clear changing of the guard.

People's perception of windows got skewed because of the Patriots run.

Most great teams have a 5-7 year window, and that's it. This is normal, it just so happened that 4 teams windows closed at the same time.