Breaking News: Tua Tagovailoa and Lamar Jackson play the quarterback position differently to try and accomplish the same goal. I hope you were sitting down for
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Tua Tagovailoa and Lamar Jackson play the quarterback position differently to try and accomplish the same goal.
I hope you were sitting down for that expert observation of Tua and Lamar Jackson. It takes a keen eye to notice that Tua and Lamar play quarterback in different ways to each other.
And the thing is, regardless of how many talking heads get in line to say that that the way Lamar Jackson and others who play like him are the only way you can win in this league anymore, history especially recent history shows that being a quarterback that just about only throws from the pocket can win Lombardi trophies which is the ultimate goal in case you forgot.
This isn't to say that the style of Lamar Jackson, and Josh Allen can't win enough games in a row to win a Super Bowl. They absolutely can. I'm just saying that being a pocket passer shouldn't be deemed as a knock on a guy.
Matt Stafford, Tom Brady, Drew Brees, Ben Roethlisberger, and others have won Super Bowls over the last 15 years or so and those guys didn't leave the pocket at all except for Roethlisberger here and there.
Patrick Mahomes and Aaron Rodgers are the rare exceptions of guys that can run when everything breaks down but they also can pick you apart, surgically, from the pocket all day long if needed.
And it's that phrase "When the play breaks down or off-script" that is in the running for football phrase of the year. Pass winners of that award are RPO, and zero blitz. It seems that you can only be considered an elite QB if you're great at when everything crumbles around you and you can still make a productive play.
I'm not going to lie, I wish Tua had more of an ability to get flushed outside the pocket, keep a play alive with his legs, and hit a guy down the sideline for 45 yards in stride like Josh Allen did to Gabe Davis against the Chargers. Tua isn't likely to ever pull that off and that's okay.
It's okay because I don't think Josh Allen or Lamar Jackson, for an entire game, be able to hit those in-breaking routes over and over again. Sure, they physically can make those throws. No one argues that. I'm saying, can they do it all game long and only miss about two of them because that's what Tua is asked to do every game and typically he does just that.
We've seen games where he does miss a few more than usual and that's usually when the Dolphins struggle. But I've also seen games where Jackson relies too much on his running ability where he doesn't execute the play that was called which we find was executed well only to leave yards and plays on the field.