ckparrothead
Premium Member
I just watched the highlights of that GB/Detroit game. Some nice throws, but a whole lot of yards after the catch, and this could easily have been a 2 or 3 TD game, not 6. The 1st TD I saw was Ryan Grant taking a dump off screen 80 yards. Donald Driver turned a relatively short pass into a TD. The Lions secondary looked crappy and allowed what should have been nice completions turn into touchdowns. 4 yard TD pass to Finley, nothing special.
i'd like to watch this whole game- nice deep pass to James Jones, nice TD pass to Jordy Nelson. But was I blown away by Matt Flynn? No. Was I really, really impreseed? No. This strikes me as a similar situation to last year- if getting Kyle Orton is going to cost a ton of money (and a high draft pick in that case) and it's a lateral move as per Chad Henne, is it worth it? No, as Stephen Ross said directly.
I don't see anything terribly special about Matt Flynn, and I'm not sure that he's any better than Matt Moore. I sure as hell would rather draft Brandon Weeden than sign Flynn. In the absence of Weeden I'm not against signing Flynn- what I am against is signing him to huge money that could be spent elsewhere and having him be handed the starting job. From what I've seen, Matt Moore deserves it more than Flynn does.
Could an SEC guy out there or specifically an LSU guy answer me this: why was Matt Flynn, after a great high school career and leading LSU to a national championship, drafted in the 7th round? What were his implied flaws and weaknesses? Many as I recall viewed him as free agent material out of college. Was it that he rode the bench behind Jamarcus Russell for so long? It must have been something- and personally I'm sure as hell not blown away by Flynn's arm. I'm guessing that CNNSI wrote a nice piece on AJ Feeley as well after the trade, pimping him and his bright future in Miami- it's a nice feel good story, same as Flynn. If Flynn comes to Miami I hope that he does great- I just don't see throwing big money at this guy with 2 games under his belt and a so-so arm.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHjJ2lipORQ
1. David DeCastro
2. Brandon Weeden
3. Joe Adams
A couple of things.
First off let's talk about LSU and him coming out as a 7th rounder.
Yes, sitting behind Jamarcus Russell and only having ONE year of starting when you're coming out does indeed take its toll. He didn't have statistically the season he could have if he'd had more experience than just that one year. Why does Tom Brady go in the 6th round? Sometimes it just happens, the unwritten rules that the NFL has had in place for so long are not there because they're full proof, they're there because of percentages. You observe those rules ACCEPTING that every now and then a Tom Brady (well, hopefully not someone as ridiculously good as Tom Brady) slips through the cracks.
I think when people talk about how Brady slipped through the cracks, they talk about how sometimes a conflagration circumstances, ignoring intangibles like competitiveness, and lack of overwhelming tangibles...can snooker the field. Particularly the competitiveness, take a look at that issue. Flynn only lost two games in the year he started for LSU. He lost to Kentucky in triple overtime, going score for score in the overtime period but when Woodson tossed in a go-ahead TD in triple overtime, the Tigers called 3 straight run plays with Jacob Hester and then on 4th & 2 called another run play to Charles Scott. You've got a quarterback that's been helping you match score for score but in the end you don't give him the chance to keep trying to win the game.
The second game they lost was to Arkansas, again in triple overtime. This time how did he lose? Well for starters the man separated his shoulder in the second half and finished the game despite having to go to the locker room for treatment. Again he matched score for score. He ran a 12 yard touchdown in single overtime. He had a nice 12 yard completion that set up the touchdown in double overtime. But then in triple overtime the Razorbacks took a touchdown lead and then CONVERTED the two-point conversion. Matt Flynn threw a touchdown to Brandon LaFell to give them a chance, but the two-point conversion failed. Tough, competitive game from a guy with a separated shoulder, forced him to miss the SEC Championship Game against Tennessee.
It strikes me how similar the two are, though...in the toughness/competitiveness category. That toughness/competitiveness went ignored in both players. The decision-makers out there seemed to want to ignore that Flynn started the year 29 of 46 (75%) for 345 yards (7.5 YPA), 2 TDs and 0 INTs with 1 more TD on the ground...before taking an ankle injury against Virginia Tech which forced him to miss the Middle Tennessee game. He came back the next week against their next "real" opponent South Carolina but there's no doubting he struggled with the injury. Over that next 4 game stretch struggling with the ankle, he was 55 of 110 (50%) for 602 yards (5.5 YPA), 3 TDs and 4 INTs with 0 more rushing TDs.
He started to get healthy and lo and behold, he played better. Against Auburn, Alabama, La Tech, Ole Miss, Arkansas and Ohio State, he was 118 of 203 (58%) for 1286 yards (7.2 YPA), 16 TDs and 7 INTs with 3 more TDs on the ground. He saved a 19 of 27 for 176 yards, 4 TDs and 1 INT performance for the NCAA Championship Game against Ohio State.
But when you've got a guy that has only started one year, doesn't blow you away with tangibles like Jamarcus Russell or Ryan Perriloux who both played with Flynn at LSU, sometimes you don't like to pay attention to things like that. You don't like to pay attention to circumstances. You need a guy that just blew your effing mind in his time as a starter, because there's so little of that tape out there.
Sometimes Giacomo wins the Kentucky Derby and sometimes guys like Tom Brady and Trent Green end up good quarterbacks. It happens.
I can tell you, coming into the Detroit 2011 game, I was a guy that did NOT particularly like Matt Flynn. Why didn't I like Flynn heading into that game? Because I'd dissected the New England game back in 2010 and where everyone was just completely fawning after the guy because of his 100 passer rating against NE...I saw a guy that made some bad decisions in that game and got away with some, didn't get away with others. Also, I have high standards for accuracy when I'm looking at a franchise guy. I knew that he went through stretches of inaccuracy in college (though to be honest I'd forgotten he fought through a bad ankle injury there), and I was looking at the NE game and I didn't see my usual standard for percentage of catchable balls. Put that together with bad decisions/mistakes and I thought, hey there's no taking away that he did well out there...he had a 100.2 passer rating against a defense that allowed everyone else a 78.5 passer rating, led his offense to 27 points against a team that was allowing everyone else 18.6 points per game...but there were so many people making out like he just had this huge breakout performance that shows he's the next big thing, and I just didn't think he'd shown that yet.
Then there was the Detroit game, and I watched the whole thing several times, not just highlights. I was impressed with his accuracy, which was up to my expectations for a franchise starter. I was impressed with how he spun the ball. I was impressed with his decision-making as he'd cut down his questionable decisions considerably, yet was still unquestionably aggressive. I liked his mobility, showed the ability to throw accurately on the run either to the right or left. He had this great performance against the Lions even though the Lions absolutely were going all out trying to win that game, and there were a lot of players on the Packers that were NOT doing that, treating it like the meaningless game that it was.
What that game made me do, because no matter how askance I viewed it I could not do anything but admit it was an utterly fantastic performance, was I had to go back and look at other performances in 2010 and 2011. I had to go back and take a look at what happened to him in college. I had to go back and watch preseason footage.
What I found is a quarterback that was much closer to the guy I saw in the Week 17 game against the Detroit Lions than the guy I thought he was prior to that game. You mentioned Kyle Orton as a comparison. It's a good point to bring up because I think it's incumbent upon us to show why he's NOT a Kyle Orton, and I think based on the tape I've watched of him, I've seen that. When I watched all kinds of tape of Orton back in 2010, it was obvious to me that he would be an upgrade on Chad Henne...but not a great one. He threw a good deep ball. He had more aggressive decision making. But no matter what, you couldn't get around two weaknesses. The first was his streakiness. Does Matt Flynn have streakiness to that degree? I've not seen it yet but it's good to note we don't have much tape on him so who knows. But Orton had streakiness where he could go stretches of 20 throws where you wouldn't want to touch the guy with a 20 foot pole. He was significantly more streaky than I'm used to seeing in quarterbacks. The other thing was Orton's consistent weakness in handling pressure and throwing/running well when he has some pressure coming in on him. I said at the time, this guy has almost zero improvisation ability. I say 'almost' just because every now and then he finds it in him to flip the ball to a back that happens to be a few feet away from him, and that could be a big gain every now and then...but that was the extent of it. The rest of the time, forget about it. You get the pressure in there, the play's over. No quarterback likes pressure and none of them look awesome when forced to deal with it all the time, but Orton consistently showed almost zero ability with it.
Matt Flynn doesn't have that weakness and I think that's a real key difference in the NFL. People forget that Flynn is around a 4.7x type of runner. He always moved well, even in college. He always showed the ability to scramble. He still shows that. He can roll right or left and still throw the ball very accurately. He can convert first downs when the defense gives him a certain look and leaves the running lanes wide open. He can scramble away from pressure and outrun some of the heavier defensive linemen as they come screaming in at him.
I don't see where people come up with these arm strength complaints, to be honest. He spins a great ball, truth be told. I've only ever seen one throw in all the tape I've seen come off his hands and I'm like whoa, what was that? I just see a guy that accurately throws the ball, runs the offense, reads the defense, throws with anticipation, spins the ball well and places it well, scrambles and handles reasonable amounts of pressure, and makes pretty impressive decisions after the snap about where, when and HOW to throw the football in order to achieve the best outcome. Add on top of that the competitiveness that he showed in college which led him to win a National Championship, and to win that Detroit game in 2011, despite several teammates that had mentally checked out during the game, facing against a Detroit team that wanted to win that game very badly so they could face Atlanta instead of New Orleans...I think you really have something.
I like Brandon Weeden. I waffle on whether Weeden or Flynn are the best options. I think Ryan Tannehill runs 3rd place behind those two. But if Matt Flynn comes here I think that's a good get. I see a pretty impressive quarterback prospect. I don't see anywhere close to a Kyle Orton or a Kevin Kolb. You could see either of those guys coming a mile away.