I was a Henne hater to start the season. When Pennington went down I thought we were done. Henne has proven to be a decent QB. Now I have not called for him to be benched since the NYJ game. He showed me he is now our best option at QB. However, some of the praise he is getting is just as ridiculous as the criticism. To say he is the answer and the future and whatever people are saying is just as dumb as the people saying we need to start Pat White. The problem IMO is not that people criticize Henne. It's that they go way overboard with the criticism.
I hope Henne can develop some touch and become our next great QB, but I am not 100% sold right now. He has played great for stretches and he has played below average in stretches.
There is nothing wrong with people expressing their concerns about Henne as long as they don't go overboard.
It kills me to have to write this after Henne played his best game of the season BTW.
I think there is validity in this post. However to be able to play against a team like NE, regardless of their woes this year, and come out on top speaks volumes of his ability. Does he need to work on some things like not rushing his throws and putting more touch on the underneath stuff? Yup. However he did a great job in looking all over the field yesterday and going to 2nd and 3rd looks before getting rid of the ball. He aired it out deep too which was a great thing to see. The pick to meriweather was a bad throw but then again those are going to happen to any qb that is pressing to get the ball deep. I think the gameplan was pretty good yesterday and allowed us to see what he can do.
Another facet of his game that I am critical on is his pocket "awareness" and this has come up more than a few times leading to himself being sacked and there was nothing that Jake Long could do to protect him. Sometimes, Henne will side-step himself out of the pocket and ouside of Long's block on his defender, allowing the d-end pretty much open access to sack him. He did that again yesterday and has done that probably 4-6 more times this year. Instead of stepping UP in the pocket he steps OUTSIDE of it. Dumb. That is why we have qb coaches and hopefully we can break him of that "habit".
Once Henne gets really comfortable in the pocket, and that is what all young qb's struggle with, along with a bonafide number one wideout, he is going to be a gamer. However, my beef with the criticisms were mostly because his head was called for after being thrust into the SD game, unprepared. Simply put, Henne was never given a "proper" chance by some of the fanbase before they were calling him the next ryan leaf. Instead of sucking it up, they are going to be posting in Henne praise threads which to me, is pretty damn disrespectful, not only to Henne but to themselves.
I don't know about you guys but I have lost those "jitters" and a few weeks ago at that, about the guy dropping back and throwing the rock. I haven't felt like that since Marino was back there. He isn't even a 1/10 of the qb Marino was, don't get me wrong. However it sure is nice to have a guy that maybe we can rely on. Time will tell.
