The ideal prospect for the Miami Dolphins is Jerry Jeudy, not Tua

[Pachyderm_Wave]

Melvin Gordon - 1st round
Travis Frederick - 1st round
Kevin Zeitler - 1st round
Peter Konz - 2nd round
Montee Ball - 2nd round
Rob Havenstein - 2nd round
James White - 4th round
Nick Toon - 4th round
Jared Abbrederis - 5th round
Ricky Wagner - 5th round



This was some of Russell Wilson's offensive talent at his disposal at Wisconsin in 2011.

That offensive line is worth $34.4 million in the NFL now

 

[Rowdy1972]

Melvin Gordon - 1st round
Travis Frederick - 1st round
Kevin Zeitler - 1st round
Peter Konz - 2nd round
Montee Ball - 2nd round
Rob Havenstein - 2nd round
James White - 4th round
Nick Toon - 4th round
Jared Abbrederis - 5th round
Ricky Wagner - 5th round



This was some of Russell Wilson's offensive talent at his disposal at Wisconsin in 2011.

That offensive line is worth $34.4 million in the NFL now

Yikes. He's only won a Super Bowl. Keep digging.

 

[BigNastyFish]

For Miami to pluck a WR at the top of the draft is beyond nonsense!

The dominantly brilliant personnel staff Mister Grier has assembled

can find talent in R7 or UDFA no prob! I mean don't you remember

Jake Long over Matty Ice? Now there's a QB who was literally

surrounded by future ALL PRO N F L talent at every position!

One thing you gotta say about this Tua kid -- he's gettin' er done

despite the glaringly obvious trash he's surrounded by!

 

[hoops]

Talents talent. I think those bama WRs would still go in the first round regardless of tua or franks even. Maybe not kellen mond.

But that doesn’t change anything when it comes to tuas own merits as an nfl prospect qb.

 

[Blake the great]

as mentioned previously on this board by several people, you dont start a franchise rebuild with a WR.

Unless you're the Jets and draft Keyshawn Johnson #1 lol.

Drafting a WR that high is beyond stupidity. I don't care if the WR is Jerry Rice. The stud WR 1's don't win superbowls.

 

[EJay]

I mean if this is the case you'd certainly think it provides a bleak outlook for Christian Wilkins also - playing with all those 1st round picks along side of him.

And bleak outlooks for Dexter Lawrence and Clelin Ferrell since they too played alongside good players

 

[EJay]

I don't care if the WR is Jerry Rice. The stud WR 1's don't win superbowls.

Eh, I'm gonna go ahead and sort of disagree with you on this one example. While I agree with your premise of WR's normally not being worthy of a top pick, Jerry Rice is certainly a notable exception based upon his longevity and massive production.

Not only did the guy score over 200 TD's in his career, he was part of 3 Superbowl winning teams while playing with 2 different QB's and won MVP of one of those games. He also has a league MVP on his resume (how many WR's accomplished that!) and is widely considered one of the top 2 greatest football players of all-time along with Jim Brown.

If you isolate Rice's 10 most productive seasons of his career from 1986 through 1995 where he scored 151 TD's in 156 games, I believe only Jim Brown averaged more TD's per game over a similar time frame (9 seasons).

Let's also not forget that he scored all those TD's and amassed all his other eye-popping statistics before the offensive-friendly rule changes that have drastically changed the landscape of game.

If Rice entered the league today and GM's knew what his career would become, he'd go #1 in a ton of drafts despite being a WR. In fact, teams would be hard pressed to take all that many QB's over him or Jim Brown.

 

[Blake the great]

Eh, I'm gonna go ahead and sort of disagree with you on this one example. While I agree with your premise of WR's normally not being worthy of a top pick, Jerry Rice is certainly a notable exception based upon his longevity and massive production.

Not only did the guy score over 200 TD's in his career, he was part of 3 Superbowl winning teams while playing with 2 different QB's and won MVP of one of those games. He also has a league MVP on his resume (how many WR's accomplished that!) and is widely considered one of the top 2 greatest football players of all-time along with Jim Brown.

If you isolate Rice's 10 most productive seasons of his career from 1986 through 1995 where he scored 151 TD's in 156 games, I believe only Jim Brown averaged more TD's per game over a similar time frame (9 seasons).

Let's also not forget that he scored all those TD's and amassed all his other eye-popping statistics before the offensive-friendly rule changes that have drastically changed the landscape of game.

If Rice entered the league today and GM's knew what his career would become, he'd go #1 in a ton of drafts despite being a WR. In fact, teams would be hard pressed to take all that many QB's over him or Jim Brown.

Let me clarify then, stud WRs 1's don't win super bowls in Today's game.

 

[ckparrothead]

I don’t watch college ball. But here’s the thing about WRs and their ability to make a QB look good. I think it’s a false premise. It’s the other way around. Hear me out. If you have a crappy QB, they don’t throw the ball when it’s supposed to be delivered. Thus, you could give the rapist Antonio Brown to Josh Weeden and Weeden’s stats wouldn’t be helped that much. Now you can take a guy like Lamar Thomas and give him to Dan Marino and he looks like a serviceable starter when he really had no business being one. Make sense?

I think you're sort of getting at a really good point here.

At the NFL level, good wide receivers have a TON of difficulty making a quarterback look good. The complexity of offense vs. defense is just too much, and there's too much on a quarterback's plate. The sort of routes where a wide receiver can make it easy for a quarterback (those 50/50 balls) are too few and far between, and too low percentage even for the BEST of the wide receivers.

I'm not sure I can think of more than one or two wide receivers in modern NFL history that had the sort of ability to dramatically impact how his quarterback looked and was regarded.

As you say, it works the other way around. It takes a good quarterback to show what a good wide receiver can do, because the ball has to be there to create the opportunity.

 

[Pachyderm_Wave]

Thing is, few NFL teams are having young quarterbacks analyze too much information pre-snap or adjust at the LOS anymore. It's just not the way it used to be.

Young quarterbacks like Dak, Lamar Jackson, Baker Mayfield, Mahomes, Trubisky, DeShaun Watson, Robert Griffin, etc. wouldn't have had so much success so early in their careers if they did.

I'd guess that less than half the teams in the NFL run a traditional pro style offense these days - and most of the ones that do have a quarterback over 30 years old (Matt Ryan, Rodgers, Brady, Brees, Rivers, Stafford, Roethlisberger). Maybe an NFL guy like CK can double check me on this but I'm probably pretty close. Andrew Luck is probably the only young quarterback in recent times that was able to be tasked with that.


I think Miami is trying to run that type of Tom Brady offense with Rosen, and it's why he's still overwhelmed - and it's why I think Miami will be into a kid like Fromm. He's the pre-snap and adjust at the line of scrimmage king.

 

[Stoobz]

Fromm will be damn good in the right situation, just not sure Miami is it.

I make no bones about it, I would love to see Jeudy in a Dolphins uniform and I'm usually a wait until the 4th round or so kinda guy when it comes to WRs and RBs.

 

[royalshank]

I think you're sort of getting at a really good point here.

At the NFL level, good wide receivers have a TON of difficulty making a quarterback look good. The complexity of offense vs. defense is just too much, and there's too much on a quarterback's plate. The sort of routes where a wide receiver can make it easy for a quarterback (those 50/50 balls) are too few and far between, and too low percentage even for the BEST of the wide receivers.

I'm not sure I can think of more than one or two wide receivers in modern NFL history that had the sort of ability to dramatically impact how his quarterback looked and was regarded.

As you say, it works the other way around. It takes a good quarterback to show what a good wide receiver can do, because the ball has to be there to create the opportunity.

Nice explanation. At the risk of getting some people upset, I am not sure Duper nor Clayton would be in any other team’s honor roll. Yes, we loved them, but I always maintained that Marino “made” them. In ‘82 w Woodley, Duper couldn’t get on the field. In ‘83 w Marino he’s suddenly catching bombs left and right.

 

[ckparrothead]

Thing is, few NFL teams are having young quarterbacks analyze too much information pre-snap or adjust at the LOS anymore. It's just not the way it used to be.

Young quarterbacks like Dak, Lamar Jackson, Baker Mayfield, Mahomes, Trubisky, DeShaun Watson, Robert Griffin, etc. wouldn't have had so much success so early in their careers if they did.

I'd guess that less than half the teams in the NFL run a traditional pro style offense these days - and most of the ones that do have a quarterback over 30 years old (Matt Ryan, Rodgers, Brady, Brees, Rivers, Stafford, Roethlisberger). Maybe an NFL guy like CK can double check me on this but I'm probably pretty close. Andrew Luck is probably the only young quarterback in recent times that was able to be tasked with that.


I think Miami is trying to run that type of Tom Brady offense with Rosen, and it's why he's still overwhelmed - and it's why I think Miami will be into a kid like Fromm. He's the pre-snap and adjust at the line of scrimmage king.

It's a good thought. While I'm not sure I would agree with going so far as to characterize it as a plurality or majority of pro teams not running a pro style system at all, it's clear there's a spectrum at play and that Miami particularly with respect to the protection calls is asking their quarterbacks to do a lot, at least in that respect.

It's really hard to characterize broadly because you have teams that are "college-izing" in different respects, but maintaining these massive playbooks, which is very not college. Some teams don't ask the QB to make the protection calls, leaving it to the OL instead. Some teams (Shanahan branch in particular) like to be in the QB's ear right up to the point of the comm cut-off, which is sort of similar to what you see in college with the Malzahn innovations in pre-snap communication that go hand in hand with the HUNH. Some teams are running more RPOs than other teams. Some teams are running more screens than others.

Schematically, New England has actually been at the forefront of "college-izing" their offense over the years, taking a lot of innovations and even some simplification of the college method and incorporating it into their system. If I'm not mistaken the entire Erhardt-Perkins method (which I think of as a method more than an offense per se) is focused around the simplification of communication and concepts, and that's an area where college has really innovated, by necessity. But the net effect is you look at some of the Mike Leach branch offenses and there are a bunch of New England staple concepts that those QBs are running that could port right over to New England, which is part of why Jordan Love is attractive to Miami.

But anyway to get back to your point, Miami asks the QB to do a lot between huddle communication, line communication, audibles, and protection calls. And I don't think Miami has their QBs running up to the line to kodak the defense and then have the OC buzzing in the QB's ear right before the comm cut-off. So there's a lot on the QB and that would make me tend to agree with your observation about Jake Fromm and his fit.

The weird thing is Miami haven't paid a ton of attention to Jake Fromm, and I don't get the feeling that's a smoke screen. For whatever reason.

 

[Pachyderm_Wave]

It's a good thought. While I'm not sure I would agree with going so far as to characterize it as a plurality or majority of pro teams not running a pro style system at all, it's clear there's a spectrum at play and that Miami particularly with respect to the protection calls is asking their quarterbacks to do a lot, at least in that respect.

It's really hard to characterize broadly because you have teams that are "college-izing" in different respects, but maintaining these massive playbooks, which is very not college. Some teams don't ask the QB to make the protection calls, leaving it to the OL instead. Some teams (Shanahan branch in particular) like to be in the QB's ear right up to the point of the comm cut-off, which is sort of similar to what you see in college with the Malzahn innovations in pre-snap communication that go hand in hand with the HUNH. Some teams are running more RPOs than other teams. Some teams are running more screens than others.

Schematically, New England has actually been at the forefront of "college-izing" their offense over the years, taking a lot of innovations and even some simplification of the college method and incorporating it into their system. If I'm not mistaken the entire Erhardt-Perkins method (which I think of as a method more than an offense per se) is focused around the simplification of communication and concepts, and that's an area where college has really innovated, by necessity. But the net effect is you look at some of the Mike Leach branch offenses and there are a bunch of New England staple concepts that those QBs are running that could port right over to New England, which is part of why Jordan Love is attractive to Miami.

But anyway to get back to your point, Miami asks the QB to do a lot between huddle communication, line communication, audibles, and protection calls. And I don't think Miami has their QBs running up to the line to kodak the defense and then have the OC buzzing in the QB's ear right before the comm cut-off. So there's a lot on the QB and that would make me tend to agree with your observation about Jake Fromm and his fit.

The weird thing is Miami haven't paid a ton of attention to Jake Fromm, and I don't get the feeling that's a smoke screen. For whatever reason.

Yeah there's been a lot of college-izing NFL offenses, which was really my point. It's why so many young quarterbacks are able to come in and be successful in the league now. At least successful in terms of getting their team up and down the field.

I suppose one example would be Bama's offense - we don't even use the terms 12, 11, or 10, etc. for our personnel packages. Our personnel packages are color coded. Terminology in terms of calling plays is essentially archaic. The size of the playbook differences just corresponds to the difference in practice and study time between college and the NFL.

Most offenses in college are getting the play call and personnel in from the sidelines by staffers holding up signs with pictures. You never used to see that in the NFL - now I can't hardly flip through an NFL game for a brief moment without seeing it.

I don't think it's so much concepts that are the point, but more in the way things are communicated. The NFL has made changes to allow quarterbacks to succeed coming out of their college systems. They kinda had to.

Miami I think is one of the few fits in the NFL for a guy like Fromm to go high. It may not be a smokescreen in regards to Fromm, but I tend to remain awful suspicious of Miami and their potential interest in him. I'm just kinda viewing it from a different angle. I think a lot of their work with Fromm was already done in terms of what they needed to know about how he runs the offense. He just kinda stands alone in that respect.

 

[ckparrothead]

I agree about Fromm that way for sure. I was having this discussion with one of my co-hosts, where I thought he had the wrong read on a Jake Fromm throw against Notre Dame. Not to throw him under the bus or anything.

You can find the play right here (timestamp 1:57:47).



I'll summarize my co-host's interpretation of this play, which he thought turned out to be a bad pre-snap read. He assumes Jake Fromm was thinking the field side route combination would be unattractive because of the linebacker threatening to drop into the flat. But the linebacker was showing a Nano Blitz pre-snap, which means there was indeed favorable spacing and numbers on the field side. Instead Fromm threw to Cager vs. man on the boundary, even though (in my co-host's eyes) the safety was starting to get a bead on this tendency.

But I just don't see it that way. They'd just scored a big play, clock was running, and they hurried to the line to run another play quickly. Fromm read the man coverage, as he'd read several times before, and knew the Safety was going to have to pick up his TE Woerner in man. That leaves Cager (who had just made the big play) manned up on the boundary with no safety help to put the ball in danger if you throw the Bang-8.

The actual threat there was the Mike linebacker running out to rob the passing lane and that's where I thought my co-host made an interesting observation but kind of failed to connect the dots. He saw that Fromm signaled something to Woerner before the play. I think Fromm was setting the pick, which he seems to do a lot of in that Georgia offense (part of why Fromm is so compatible with Miami's/New England's approach). Woerner didn't just run his route against the safety, he intentionally picked off the Mike.

I actually thought, given the slide protection on the play to protect against that Nano Blitz, it would've actually been a bit more dangerous for Fromm to try and work the field side. I thought he chose the easier pitch and catch. He finished with a high throw, which reduced risk.

Overall I thought the play was good communication and execution on Fromm's part, considering they'd just had a big play and were hurrying up with the clock ticking. Unfortunately Georgia had an issue on the play with their alignment and Cager was technically not eligible to catch the football.