Mac Jones

Wonder if that had anything to do with Zimmer looking so mad draft night.  There were 4 clear top QBs and a huge drop after that.  We needed to draft a QB and one of the 4 were there.  Sometimes it is just not that complicated.  

@"JR44" said: Wonder if that had anything to do with Zimmer looking so mad draft night.  There were 4 clear top QBs and a huge drop after that.  We needed to draft a QB and one of the 4 were there.  Sometimes it is just not that complicated.  

i can not tell you how frustrated I am watching hom play. We did not have to do anythig to get him.

Zimmer hasn't seemed to care about qbs since Teddy though. I don't know if that was it.

I guess the NFL Draft is a game of hindsight. I do think NFL QBs are best judged in Year 2 and 3 than one, good or bad.

@"mblack" said: So why did we not draft him again? Ugh!

Seems like it would be a good move but he would probably be a bust behind the Vikings O-line.

@"mblack" said: So why did we not draft him again? Ugh!

I dont know what Mac Jones' ceiling is...

They had a choice; double down on their investment in KC and those magnificent skill players with 2 high draft picks on the OL or not...

Time will tell re: Darrisaw and Davies. It's a bummer neither have contributed yet. 

I see what KC can do with decent time - he's a very good passer. IMO its too early to say it was a bad move - but it will be if neither of those OL are contributing this year or next.  

hmmm.. a few of us were really pushing for drafting one of the QB's with our first pick.

My three main points for the months leading up to the draft were:

1 -  A QB rich draft doesn't happen only when you need it to.  In fact, most teams reach and convince themselves that the QB available is the guy even though if he was in a draft before or after lumped in with others you could see that he was a reach (Ponder of course).  

2 - We usually don't draft very high and we were sitting at 14 which was high enough to get 2 of those 5 first round QB's.  We did not have enough ammo to even get into the Top 7 and the the first 3 went 1,2,3.  

3 - Spelly/Wilf/Zimmer had to view Cousins contract as a sunk cost and it should not preclude you from going after a Top QB.  

The way the draft fell we had at a shot at moving up a few spots for Fields (we had the ammo if you want to and have conviction) or taking Mac Jones and not dropping back.  We obviously decided that Fields was not worth moving up for and Jones was not worth 14.  Personally without hindsight I said I would have been fine moving up for Fields into that 10 range.  I was not sold on Mac Jones so at the time I was not that bummed that we did the move down and still got the Tackle I wanted.  But, I am just your average die-hard fan, and I believed that with a pretty experienced draft room ( I know first year w/out Paton) that they would know if either Fields was worth the move up and Jones was worth the 14 pick.  I would have supported any first round Top 5 QB pick and said so before and after the draft based on my 3 main points above.

Now next years draft might be totally different in terms of the QB pool.

Are we going to have a new front office making those decisions and if so who is out there?  Easy to want change but who is out there at the GM level to right this ship starting with an Offensive minded HC.  

One bad game from Kirk and everyone is saying we should have drafted Mac Jones...lolz that's funny. If the Browns had Kirk instead of Baker they likely beat us by 30. The OL showed its true colors again yesterday, total doo doo. If Darrisaw is good to go then you play him over Hill. I know it wont happen, but I fully support giving Davis a shot at center because Bradbury aint it.

I don't think it matters which qb is behind this OL.

@"Hawkvike25" said: One bad game from Kirk and everyone is saying we should have drafted Mac Jones...lolz that's funny. If the Browns had Kirk instead of Baker they likely beat us by 30. The OL showed its true colors again yesterday, total doo doo. If Darrisaw is good to go then you play him over Hill. I know it wont happen, but I fully support giving Davis a shot at center because Bradbury aint it.

My statement about Mac Jones has nothing to do with Cousins. It was based on how he has played so far and yesterday's game

@"mblack" said:

@"Hawkvike25" said: One bad game from Kirk and everyone is saying we should have drafted Mac Jones...lolz that's funny. If the Browns had Kirk instead of Baker they likely beat us by 30. The OL showed its true colors again yesterday, total doo doo. If Darrisaw is good to go then you play him over Hill. I know it wont happen, but I fully support giving Davis a shot at center because Bradbury aint it.

My statement about Mac Jones has nothing to do with Cousins. It was based on how he has played so far and yesterday's game

@"Hawkvike25" said: One bad game from Kirk and everyone is saying we should have drafted Mac Jones...lolz that's funny. If the Browns had Kirk instead of Baker they likely beat us by 30. The OL showed its true colors again yesterday, total doo doo. If Darrisaw is good to go then you play him over Hill. I know it wont happen, but I fully support giving Davis a shot at center because Bradbury aint it.

It's not one game, but 3+ years of watching the exact same thing - totally refusing to make any kind of move to get out of the pocket, poor pocket awareness, holding onto to the ball too long, inability to read a defense pre-snap.  I am tired of hearing he needs better protection, the game has changed, QBs do not get to sit in the pocket all day, defenses are too good for that, your QB needs to be able to create on his own and buy more time.  A smart QB of like Brady would have torn apart their defense the way they were selling out to stop the run, instead Kirk was content in going into a deep drop and just sitting there.  Next week he will throw for 400 against the Lions and we will have several posts again about how we need to stop criticizing Kirk.  If you do not mind mediocrity and floating around or under .500 then Kirk is your guy, but to take this team to the next level we need a QB that can play the current NFL game.  

@"JR44" said:

@"Hawkvike25" said: One bad game from Kirk and everyone is saying we should have drafted Mac Jones...lolz that's funny. If the Browns had Kirk instead of Baker they likely beat us by 30. The OL showed its true colors again yesterday, total doo doo. If Darrisaw is good to go then you play him over Hill. I know it wont happen, but I fully support giving Davis a shot at center because Bradbury aint it.

It's not one game, but 3+ years of watching the exact same thing - totally refusing to make any kind of move to get out of the pocket, poor pocket awareness, holding onto to the ball too long, inability to read a defense pre-snap.  I am tired of hearing he needs better protection, the game has changed, QBs do not get to sit in the pocket all day, defenses are too good for that, your QB needs to be able to create on his own and buy more time.  A smart QB of like Brady would have torn apart their defense the way they were selling out to stop the run, instead Kirk was content in going into a deep drop and just sitting there.  Next week he will throw for 400 against the Lions and we will have several posts again about how we need to stop criticizing Kirk.  If you do not mind mediocrity and floating around or under .500 then Kirk is your guy, but to take this team to the next level we need a QB that can play the current NFL game.  

It's difficult in life to know when it is over.....time to move on from Zimmer and Kirk after this season and that is clear to me.  Not sure about Spelly so maybe I am unaware of the "over" part at GM level.  
But Spelly is responsible for the huge money we will owe Kirk next year so there is that..............

@"Hawkvike25" said:

I wont entirely disagree but how much of what you listed is on the OC then? Kirk isn't repeatedly calling plays where he goes into a 5-7 step dropback. Does he need to be more mobile? Absolutely. Mac Jones doesn't make that game any better for us...unless he's able to help Hill not give up 9 pressures to Garrett. Against teams with really good DL we have struggled mightily over the last 3 years and it isnt just Kirk who struggles.

@"JR44" said:

@"Hawkvike25" said:

I wont entirely disagree but how much of what you listed is on the OC then? Kirk isn't repeatedly calling plays where he goes into a 5-7 step dropback. Does he need to be more mobile? Absolutely. Mac Jones doesn't make that game any better for us...unless he's able to help Hill not give up 9 pressures to Garrett. Against teams with really good DL we have struggled mightily over the last 3 years and it isnt just Kirk who struggles.

I agree, what was so refreshing about last week was that we called the game to match Kirk's skills, most of the plays were designed for short drops and quick hitters and we also designed some plays to get him on the move and out of the pocket, all of which worked exceptionally.  I felt like I was in a bizarro world yesterday as it seemed like last week never happened.  I did not understand how we didn't continue with what worked last week. I do think that a QB with a quick release would give us a better results in this current offense, but it is definitely the OC who needs to game plan around the strength of the team.  

@"Hawkvike25" said:

@"mblack" said:

@"Hawkvike25" said: One bad game from Kirk and everyone is saying we should have drafted Mac Jones...lolz that's funny. If the Browns had Kirk instead of Baker they likely beat us by 30. The OL showed its true colors again yesterday, total doo doo. If Darrisaw is good to go then you play him over Hill. I know it wont happen, but I fully support giving Davis a shot at center because Bradbury aint it.

My statement about Mac Jones has nothing to do with Cousins. It was based on how he has played so far and yesterday's game

Absolutely it does. The reason we didnt draft him is because we have a bad OL and tried to address that by taking the best OT on the board. Rick and Zim are well aware that their times with the Vikings are near the end so why would you draft a QB in the first round instead of trying to address the biggest reason Cousins tends to play poorly? OL was the right call, we will see if Darrisaw was the right pick.

Mac had 19 consecutive passes at one point against a TB defense that was blitzing him relentlessly.

Kirk has admittedly had a lousy OL to play behind this year but he doesn't handle defensive pressure or game pressure well enough to win a superbowl IMO.

I was happy to get Darrisaw... but would have been more than OK in drafting Mac.

fix the OL first,  then go find your QB of the future.  Pointless to take a QB so high you have to start him immediately,  or nearly immediately if you cant protect him, which our line cant do.  want to talk sunk costs,  how about the first rounder that was spent on Bradbury,  he just doesnt have the lead in his ass to get it done,  focus on finding the OL first, and then go looking to put your future franchise guy back there and let him learn without fear on every single drop back.  Our OL with Zimmers preferred game plan equals David Carr 2.0 IMO,  I am curious to see what else we have at center and give Bradbury a week off to get his shit together.  Let Kirk make the OL calls from the QB position so that the back up can just focus on his assignment.

@"JimmyinSD" said: fix the OL first,  then go find your QB of the future.  Pointless to take a QB so high you have to start him immediately,  or nearly immediately if you cant protect him, which our line cant do.  want to talk sunk costs,  how about the first rounder that was spent on Bradbury,  he just doesnt have the lead in his ass to get it done,  focus on finding the OL first, and then go looking to put your future franchise guy back there and let him learn without fear on every single drop back.  Our OL with Zimmers preferred game plan equals David Carr 2.0 IMO,  I am curious to see what else we have at center and give Bradbury a week off to get his shit together.  Let Kirk make the OL calls from the QB position so that the back up can just focus on his assignment.

Thats the thing.....a franchise QB just doesn't appear when you need one or have built the best OL.  The most important position in the sport needs to viewed like that in every draft.  I wonder what Spelly's draft grade on QB's have been over the last decade.  You can gauge your acumen by tracking that.  I thought their were 5 potential franchise QB coming out of this past draft which has only happened about 20 years ago.  Who knows about next years draft or the following.  I thought, and still think, that their could be 3 and maybe even 4 franchise QB's after the next few season pass on the 2021 draft.  Most drafts you will be lucky to find 1 maybe 2, so we will see.  We decided to pass on the Top 5 or really 2 of the Top 5 because we had zero chance at Lawrence, Wilson and Lance.  But Fields was within our reach if we had the conviction on him an clearly we passed on Mac Jones because we didn't value him at 14.  

I like what the Chiefs did to get Mahomes or what the Bills did to get Josh Allen.  That is trust your evaluation and if a guy jumps off the charts you go get him come hell or highwater.  The funny thing about both the Chiefs and the Bills is that they were both playoff teams the years they decided to trade up for "their" guy so the teams had some talent but some clear weakness's as well.  It is similar to what the 49'ers did to move up and get Lance IMO.  They knew who they wanted and they made it happen.  

Basically, if you are waiting for the perfect moment of building a special unit like an OL, it will never come.  You have to go get your guy!!!!