Did Nate level off his last season?

[Fryowa]

That's it... Where you go has everything to do with your chance at success... There's all this talk about Burrow maybe not wanting to go to Cinci.

It worked okay for Elway and Manning, it'd work out okay for Burrow too.

The Bengals could be pricks about it but when the rubber meets the road and some team makes them an offer they can't refuse, money talks and bullshit walks.

My thoughts...

1) I've always said that in the long run financially it makes more sense for a QB to forgo money to somehow join a good team. Imagine Tom Brady playing for the Jets or Dolphins or Browns. Those organizations didn't have the periphery (players, staff, owners, or the city itself) for Brady to succeed no matter how good he was.

2) This just underscores how much the NFL needs to go to a lottery system. And I don't mean a weighted lottery system like the NBA, either. Straight up 32 ping pong balls in the machine. Instead of competitiveness and equity all the current system creates is early career deaths for good players.

 

[trj]

I don't agree with a lot of the takes here. He was clutch at the end of the Wisconsin game, almost leading us to a comeback win. He was clutch at the end of the Nebraska game. He made a clutch third and long pass in second half of the ISU game. It seems to me he also made less dumb throws last season than he made the season prior.

I'd say he got moderately better between his junior and senior seasons.

He had 12 losses as a starter, you eliminate 3 of those losses, maybe even 2 and we are having a entirely different conversation.

 

[trj]

That's it... Where you go has everything to do with your chance at success... There's all this talk about Burrow maybe not wanting to go to Cinci. Just for this sort of thing pretty much. Him going there feels like he'll be the next Matthew Stafford. Yeah he'll do well sometimes and put up stats. But probably won't hit his ceiling and won't win any meaningful games. So depends what his goals are. If it's to go to a good fit with the best chance to succeed on the field the Bengals can't be his first choice. Now that's not how the draft works but if he were to threaten to not sign they'd probably pass on him and take Chase Young or another QB...

I am a Steeler fan, Ben Roethlisberger is a good quarterback and a likely hall of famer ......if he got drafted by the Bills he is Ryan Fitzpatrick.

As great as Patrick Mahomes is, he landed in the perfect spot with Andy Reid.

Obviously, there are other factors, but a good chunk of this is luck and timing.

 

[ChosenChildren]

Beathard also kept his head under duress and in big game situations; he got taken ahead of some other guys who had more athletic ability.

That's the part of the puzzle that's so frustrating. Put Stanley's arm on a guy with CJ's toughness and mental fortitude and you have a first rounder.

And the NFL ain't gonna get any easier for him on that front. First of all NFL coaches don't give two shits about developing you. If you don't have the stuff you're gonna get shipped on down the road. Fans are even more brutal and there isn't going to be a locker room full of guys telling you they love you and "Go get em, tiger." Pro ball is strictly business and everyone in that locker room wants a QB that has ice in his veins and takes charge. They're here to make money, not ra ra ra, yay college, turn boys into fine young men, blah blah blah.

That's the part that Stanley lacks the most. In big games he had that look where he had been completely overwhelmed with terror and panic. Penn State that time was terrible...their players said after the game they could tell they had him rattled, and if a college team can smell that he shit his pants what do you think an NFL defensive line is gonna do to him? A guy like CJ can and did operate under those conditions when he had the chance and had Garropolo not been part of the picture he'd still be starting IMO.

what I saw with Beathard was a guy who was nimble and quick in the pocket and therefore could use his legs when under duress. The flaw with Stanley was that he had very little mobility. It is easier to fluster a QB who cannot move in the pocket.

Just my two cents

 

[bitmap]

Arguably the only stat that matters at the end of the season is the number of wins. Every QB during the Ferentz era had his most wins, for a variety of reasons, in the year in which he became the outright starter with the exception of Nate Stanley. Nate garnered one more win each season over the three years he started.

The question the decision makers in the NFL have to answer is: Has Stanley reached his plateau?

Their statisticians will look at how Nate's numbers fit in with the rest of the team's stats each year to determine the answer to that question. His win/loss record is only one stat they will consider. They may decide he was a bigger winner with teams that ostensibly had less talent around him and draw a conclusion based on that. Maybe they will think his OC's play calling was holding him back or that the play calling got better over time.

He will get drafted if someone thinks he hasn't peaked yet.

 

[SteveGarvey1]

I am a Steeler fan, Ben Roethlisberger is a good quarterback and a likely hall of famer ......if he got drafted by the Bills he is Ryan Fitzpatrick.

As great as Patrick Mahomes is, he landed in the perfect spot with Andy Reid.

Obviously, there are other factors, but a good chunk of this is luck and timing.

If you want to hit the way back machine, if Chuck Long doesn't get drafted by the disastrous Lions, his career would have been a lot better.

 

[guffus]

1) I've always said that in the long run financially it makes more sense for a QB to forgo money to somehow join a good team. Imagine Tom Brady playing for the Jets or Dolphins or Browns. Those organizations didn't have the periphery (players, staff, owners, or the city itself) for Brady to succeed no matter how good he was.

You got to give Brady credit for jumping on his chance when he got it. Brady was a 6th round draft choice backing up a pro bowl QB Drew Bledsoe who had already guided the Patriots to the Super Bowl once. Brady not only took over for Bledsoe when Bledsoe got hurt, he did well enough that Brady remained the starter when Bledsoe came back from injury, including Brady starting in the playoffs and the Super Bowl.

How many 6th round draft choices have done well enough to beat out an . already established pro bowl QB as the starter? Then hold on to the starting job for almost 20 years!

Come on, give Brady some credit

 

[thetrza]

I'm not sure Iowa's offensive style, playbook, or more importantly the offensive strategy really suits quarterbacks improving their numbers in their second or third seasons. I mean, if you run an offense to limit turnovers and keep the game close until the 4th quarter there just isn't much of a chance to pad stats or put together a highlight reel.