Most people have the top QBs in this Draft (excluding Weeden) as Andrew Luck, Robert Griffin, Ryan Tannehill, Landry Jones and Nick Foles. Brandon Weeden has now faced all five of them, BEATEN all five of them AND OUT-PRODUCED all five of them in each of the games played.
I'm sorry but that counts for something because when you get right down to it there's a strong correlation between passing efficiency differential (offense minus defense), and winning football games. The goal of getting a really good QB is aimed specifically at that, the fact that if you pass better than the other guy during a game, you probably win. They don't just hand Super Bowl trophies to whoever is the best QB, and even though Tom Brady is considered better than a Phil Rivers you shouldn't be all that surprised when a Phil Rivers out-produces a Tom Brady and wins the game because Phil Rivers is that caliber a passer, and that's what you're looking for.
Well, no matter how much you notch up the competition in this Draft, Brandon Weeden has out-dueled that guy and beat him. That's what you're looking for, a guy that can do that on Sunday. Would I take Andrew Luck? Absolutely. I've been an Andrew Luck guy for approximately 26 months. But the chances are PRET-TY slim on that.
People talk about Weeden under pressure and in the pocket, his feet, etc. I don't get the criticism. It's what I like about him best. Or near as much. I also really love the confidence and aggression in his arm, and of course the accuracy and quality of the ball at all distances is second to maybe one. But under pressure he's extremely fluid in the pocket, always shuffling his feet. He doesn't try to hit homeruns with his scrambling ability. He tries to hit a lot of singles.
There was a perfect example and it happened to be on the one sack he took during the game. Stanford ran a disguised front where they had a lot of guys standing up and moving around just before the snap, then sent A gap pressure up the middle. A blitzer came right through the right side A gap barely touched. Weeden NEVER took his eyes off the field, and yet somehow he sensed that guy coming through and stepped one step to his left side, eyes still on the field, putting his tailback blocker directly in between Weeden and the blitzer. That was unbelievable in how natural and EFFECTIVE it was. I say effective because Weeden wasn't trying to hit a homerun with his scrambling ability, doing some ridiculous bit of scrambling out of the pocket, buying 3 to 5 more seconds and trying to unleash something deep. All he wanted to buy was 1 more second because that's all he felt he needed to get the ball out to the man he wanted.
Now, as it happens, on the play, the man he wanted ended up tightly covered and re-routed, and so Weeden had to pull down the ball and take a sack. But what's remarkable about the play is, here you've got this disguised blitz, disguised front, A gap blitzers and a guy coming right through the A gap untouched...and the resulting sack was a COVERAGE SACK. That's right, it was a COVERAGE SACK...because Weeden made the subtlest little move that bought him all the time he would have needed to throw that ball if his receiver hadn't been so thoroughly blasted by the coverage.
Do you know how Marino-esque that is?
And color me confused with all this continued criticism that if you get Weeden to move his feet he can't throw. That's some straight horse poopey. Does he lose the edge on his ridiculous accuracy/ball placement at all distances when he's moving around? Absolutely. Does just about every single quarterback not named Aaron Rodgers also lose the edge on their accuracy/ball placement when forced to move around? You're damn right.
What I notice about Weeden when he's moving around is he's a heck of a lot better athlete than people give him credit for. Look at that TD run. That was no easy run. He had to break tackles and run like a Wildcat QB, like he's Tim Tebow or something...but he still willed it in. I think what he lacks in this department is just REPS. I think if you got him into an offense where you asked him to do this more, he'd get better and better with it and then before you know it, who knows maybe you DO have an Aaron Rodgers on your hands as far as not losing accuracy/ball placement on the run.
