Matt Hasselbeck sure looked good in the 989 QB Challenge!

[ckparrothead]

A QB with an arm like Jay can get away with it if he has very good anticipatory skills in knowing where the WR will be open and when and getting the ball to a spot early for the WR to catch it. As for the Hasselback fiasco, what I remember is that Rick had the deal in place and he had to get DWs approval, and Daves cell phone was off..hence the time lag that gave the hawks a window of opportunity which they took advantage of. In my mind it wasnt meant to be and I think Feeley will be the guy.

I would be interested in finding out the real story, because it seems really interesting that all this detailed story stuff is coming out from the fans now, while Hasselbeck is looking good, when before, while most of the media questioned the validity of trading a 1st rounder for Hasselbeck, and when the Phins lost out, the whole matter was hushed up and hardly talked about except a few blurbs about how Spielman is PO'd at the Packers front office people for renegging on their deal.

I could probably ask one of the reporters...Ethan Skolnick would probably tell me.

 

[Dol-Fan Dupree]

I would be interested in finding out the real story, because it seems really interesting that all this detailed story stuff is coming out from the fans now, while Hasselbeck is looking good, when before, while most of the media questioned the validity of trading a 1st rounder for Hasselbeck, and when the Phins lost out, the whole matter was hushed up and hardly talked about except a few blurbs about how Spielman is PO'd at the Packers front office people for renegging on their deal.

I could probably ask one of the reporters...Ethan Skolnick would probably tell me.

Where were you? I remember a lot of conversations about this during the time. Some where happy, some were mad.

 

[rafael]

Thats false. For a lot of other QBs in this league completion percentage for throwing long often is hindered by the fact that the WR isn't all that open or can't come down with it. Miami has had guys who could come down with it and/or get that open...they just have not had a QB that could hit a long throw to save his life. Seriously if you did a survey of 10 longballs that needed to be thrown in stride over the shoulder to be a completion, Fiedler would have completed maybe one of them.

Wow, so now Miami has great wrs compared to the rest of the league. I guess I imagined Gadsen getting zero separation or the ball going through Mcknight's hands. :shakeno:

 

[rafael]

Fiedler's completion % for the long ball had to do with a few things, guys like chambers and gadsen making incredible catches on bad throws.
how many times was chambers wide open only to have to stop and come back for the ball and quickly be tackled. Had it been a decent pass it would be a td. Fiedler does alot of things good, but his deep ball acuracy is horible.
How many times in practice does he over throw guys with no defense at all?

I've seen many drops as well. It all balances out. When I flip around on the Sunday ticket, I see other QBs miss too. When people posted the stats provided by Stats Inc., JF was middle of the pack on long throw completion %. The NFL average was about 2 out of 10. JF was about 2 out of 10. Sure Miami wrs have made some highlight reel catches, but you'd have a hard time convincing anyone that our wrs the last 4 years should rank anywhere near the top of the league. So if you factor in below avg. wrs and below avg. protection and come out with avg. production it's hard to say JF was worse than the other QBs.

 

[ckparrothead]

I've seen many drops as well. It all balances out.

I've seen many drops too, but that doesn't mean it all balances out. Fiedler can't throw an accurate deep ball, period. His deep ball is less accurate than most every starting QB in this league, period. Combine the inaccuracy with the fact that his deep ball takes more time to get there than most every starting QB in this league (ie lack of armstrength) and you have a recipe for disaster when/if you're trying to establish the deep passing game as a viable threat in order to get the CBs not to sit on the short routes, and trying to get the safeties not to sit in the box waiting for Ricky.

Its not impossible to establish Ricky without making the deep passing a viable threat, but its not easy either. In 2002 our OL could make plays for Ricky and Ricky could make deep plays himself breaking off huge gains. That alone will back people off, the homerun threat at RB. In 2003 our OL was incapable of making those plays, and Ricky ran far too much like he was Barry Sanders when he's nowhere even close.

AJ will establish the kind of passing game we need, you just watch. The real question after that will be, can our jumbled up offensive coordinator position come through for us, and will AJ be under enough pressure that he suffers fumblitis (something he is prone to if you watch the tapes), and as always...where's the unexpected weakness going to come from? Seems like every offseason the front office goes into it looking to plug holes and then when the season comes new ones open up. We were horrible on the road in 2002 so in 2003 we work on it and go 6-2...but also go only 4-4 at home.

 

[ckparrothead]

Where were you? I remember a lot of conversations about this during the time. Some where happy, some were mad.

I was around, but I'm not mainly talking about message board stuff I'm talking about media stuff and articles. I remember kind of a paucity of articles coming out about the incident.

 

[rafael]

I've seen many drops too, but that doesn't mean it all balances out. Fiedler can't throw an accurate deep ball, period. His deep ball is less accurate than most every starting QB in this league, period. Combine the inaccuracy with the fact that his deep ball takes more time to get there than most every starting QB in this league (ie lack of armstrength) and you have a recipe for disaster when/if you're trying to establish the deep passing game as a viable threat in order to get the CBs not to sit on the short routes, and trying to get the safeties not to sit in the box waiting for Ricky.

Its not impossible to establish Ricky without making the deep passing a viable threat, but its not easy either. In 2002 our OL could make plays for Ricky and Ricky could make deep plays himself breaking off huge gains. That alone will back people off, the homerun threat at RB. In 2003 our OL was incapable of making those plays, and Ricky ran far too much like he was Barry Sanders when he's nowhere even close.

AJ will establish the kind of passing game we need, you just watch. The real question after that will be, can our jumbled up offensive coordinator position come through for us, and will AJ be under enough pressure that he suffers fumblitis (something he is prone to if you watch the tapes), and as always...where's the unexpected weakness going to come from? Seems like every offseason the front office goes into it looking to plug holes and then when the season comes new ones open up. We were horrible on the road in 2002 so in 2003 we work on it and go 6-2...but also go only 4-4 at home.

I agree that AJ will improve the long passing game. He just seems more accurate than JF on the long passes. My point is that statistically and factually JF's long ball completion percentage (as bad as you may think it is) is avg. for the league. The only argument against those facts would be if the other factors involved in the long pass (OL and WR) are above avg. Since most people agree that those other factors were below avg., that argument fails.

 

[ckparrothead]

My point is that statistically and factually JF's long ball completion percentage (as bad as you may think it is) is avg. for the league. The only argument against those facts would be if the other factors involved in the long pass (OL and WR) are above avg. Since most people agree that those other factors were below avg., that argument fails.

That last part is not true. We have had WRs who could go up and grab badly thrown long passes more often than a lot of WRs in this league. Gadsden and Chambers in particular, since 2001 have been coming down with impossible catches. Also keep in mind that a 25+ yard pass, does not necessarily mean Jay Fiedler threw it 25 yards. Yards after the catch must be accounted for, and Chris Chambers in 2003, as well as James McKnight during his tenure with the Dolphins, were both particularly adept at making yards after the catch.

I would like to see the percentages myself if you say they are not below average, but even so, there are clearly other factors at play, and four years of watching Jay Fiedler has shown me very clearly that he is unable to hit the open man in the deep quarters of the field, yet I see other QBs on other teams doing it a fair amount of time.

I have nothing against qualified statistics. But the statistics that you are likely using in your comparison of Jay's deep passing to the rest of the league, are likely to be dirtier than backwoods cesspool. That is where film evaluation comes in, seeing the plays themselves to make sure that they qualify as something you could say "ok in this case Jay Fiedler threw the ball long and it was thrown inaccurately leading to an incompletion." or the other way around or whatever. Since few of us have that kind of time, I will rely on my personal recollection of the last 4 years of Jay Fiedler's play, as I will also rely on the collective memory of that time, and as it happens, during that time, Jay Fiedler has shown a particular inability to throw the ball accurately long. Other quarterbacks' abilities to succeed throwing long accurately simply leap out at you when you view them next to Jay.