finknottle

Lol, that fun fact cought me by surprise. Kinda funny in a tragic sort of way...

I have to agree, having followed him before Gates was there. There was a reason the Chargers felt compelled to draft a quarterback. For that reason I'd feel very uncomfortable giving up what the writer proposed. I wouldn't even feel good about a low first round, though probably that's a fair price.

The Poles aren't too fond of them right now either.

A POS stinks no matter how you slice it.

Well, let me temper this by saying I put very little weight on the credentials of anybody high up... being an ambassador or head of an agency doesn't mean you necessarily know squat what you are running. But having said that, Wilson was on the National Security Council during the 90's, and was the Charge D'Affairs to Iraq in 1990. He is presumably as aquainted with proliferation issues as any other NCS staffer. My understanding was that this was a meeting with officials to investigate concrete allegations, not a roll-up-your-sleeves FBI type investigation of other possible activities, so it sounds to me that he was a perfect choice to visit. (In the grand scheme of things this is an irrelevent point except to those who want to argue that there was something particularly nefarious about choosing him.)

And whoever is the odd man out can try his hand at left tackle...

Just curious - why absolutely the wrong guy? (political hindsight aside...) By all accounts he had a strong personal relationship with Niger's president from his Foreign Service stint there, and had served in both Iraq and elsewhere in Africa. In terms of credentials, shouldn't he have been perfect for working with this friendly government to get to the bottom of the affair?

I think you do. But you don't neccessarily dump JP; you play the guy most ready, and continue to develop the other guy. Most first round quarterbacks do not work out. Having two means one ought to be good enough to lead the team long-term; that's worth two picks right there. And maybe we can get trade value for the other ala Rob Johnson

Yes, but no dumber than those who say after 4 games that he's going to be good and only needs time starting. We can't tell either way. So the question is: how much time do we give him? A season and a half starting seems reasonable to me. But suppose he turns out not to be the answer - what do we do then? If we want to prepare ourselves in case he does not work out, then we either draft a contingency qb in '06 to sit while JP plays next year, or we go after a veteren in '07. So basically, I'm asking how long a trial period, and what the contingency plan ought to be.

No, but at what cost? Why is it acceptable to enter an unknown period of years in which we toil at 3-7 wins a season, playing a succession of newly drafted quarterbacks until we find one that sticks? Why do we have to sacrifice being competitive for this search, when we can sit a guy on the bench and see how he develops in practice? While we are at it, why don't we make similar arguments about every other position on the field? Why aren't we starting Preston? Teague isn't the answer at center. And what about starting King over Clements? After all, we're not going to the playoffs and Clements will be gone at the end of the season... The same goofy logic extends to starting Parrish over Moulds, and even - gasp - Gates over WM, since by the time our QB is polished enough to lead us to the Superbowl WM will probably have priced himself out of town. Ok, those examples are ludicrous, but they reveal an underlying assumption: that we are looking at drafted quarterbacks differently, or more accurately we are looking at first round picks differently. For me that's an argument against using a first round pick on a quarterback. If a first round runningback or lineman or whatever is a bust, you limit their playing time and move on. You don't doggedly start him for two years if he stinks. But we here seem to be making the argument that you have to do that with a QB in order to find out if he can play, and that's a pretty steep price for any team to pay. So you don't give up trying to find the perfect quarterback, but you have to keep a competative product on the field. And IMO that means not starting a guy until you are confident based on what you see in practice that what you'll see in a game isn't too far of a drop-off.

Manning is an odd example because he seems to be the bad gamble that is paying off. If it were me, I would have stayed with Warner. Say whatever you want about his being finished, the fact is that he had them in the playoff hunt. Suppose Manning had not beaten the odds, and looked more like Kyle Boller. Would dumping Warner while still in contention to develop a draft pick still seem like a good move for the franchise? Especially if they were as bad or worse this year? And the whole point of looking at the QB's over the last 13 years is to realize that on average, Joe "1st round" Draftpick WILL wind up looking more like Boller than Manning.

lol, no. He argued the opposite point. The way to reconcile the two set of facts is to realize that he's saying (1) good quarterbacks were drafted high, while I'm saying (2) most high qb draft picks don't pan out. The two are compatible, with the conclusion being that if you want to wind up with a good quarterback, draft early and draft often. My corollary is that you shouldn't bank the teams fortunes on who you draft because he probably won't be the one that ultimately works out for you.

Here's a hypothetical question: suppose JP, like most first rounders, turns out not to be a starting caliber qb. Suppose he is a Heath Schuler. We won't know that by the end of the season, even if he plays the remainder (or at least we won't be prepared to admit it to ourselves - remember how long it took to turn the page on Bledsoe). So in next years draft we do not draft a qb. Then next year we stink again. So in '07 we draft a new qb. He doesn't start playing until '07 or '08. So even if this one is good, and we start nosing to 8-8 in '07 and '08, we don't get real productivity out of the position until '09. That is an eternity as far as the rest of the team is concerned. Almost all of the talent we have accumulated will be gone by then. Will all those years of bad-to-mediocracy and not contending for anything be an acceptable price to pay in order to grow our own starter? So in my mind we field the most competative team we can. When JP looks close to KH in practice, you start playing him. As for you comment about getting a top ten pick, with todays salary system I would argue that that is actually something to be avoided. The last thing we need are yet more MW-type contracts for unproven players eating into our cap.

I don't disagree - while I am disappointed in what I've seen out of JP so far, I didn't expect much more given the situation, and his productivity is irrelevent to my intended point. The question I am focusing on is whether it is worth it for a team to step back (competatively) in order to accelerate their young guys development. My contention is that if most first rounders panned out after a few years the answer would probably be yes. But since only a third turn out to be the long-term starter, degrading the teams performance while you try out unproven quarterbacks is a recipe for being a consistently bad franchise. (No offense intended towards the fine cities of cincy, chicago and detroit).

I agree. The reason I didn't do it that way here was that it quickly began to get very subjective, and I didn't want to muddle the basic question (what are the odds that my first rounder will be a long-term fixture at qb for my team) with peripherial debates about whether Vick is elite, etc. There is one very good reason to make that distinction, however. It may be that your team philosophy say's it is worth it to tank a season to accelerate the development of an elite Manning, but not for a merely competant Pennington, in which case you're probably looking at about 3 elite qb's out of 28, or a 10% chance. A painfull year for the fans is a pretty steep price to pay if those are the odds that it pays off, IMO.

I'm not a Holcomb dreamer. He is adequate. I'm just saying I did not see any flashes from JP that made me say "Wow, this guy is going to be great.' Part of it was the play calling I'm sure, but the bottom line is that I didn't see any remarkable plays that I expect to see on occasion from young quarterbacks, both good and bad.

This is in response to the chorus of fans who seem to assume that (1) by virtue of being a first round choice JP will likely be a good qb, and (2) it is worth stepping back a year to develop him on the field and find out more quickly. To the second, let me point out that teams that commit to starting a first round QB who doesn't ultimately pan out frequently spend 2 or more years in limbo before they cut their losses and try again. As to the first, let's look at the numbers. I took all 28 quarterbacks drafted in the first round from 1990 to 2003, and sorted them into three groups: Good (10), Journeyman (4), and Bust (14). (A player with a ?- means it's a little too early to to be sure...) --- GOOD Drew Bledsoe (1, 1993) Steve McNair (3, 1995) Kerry Collins (5, 1995) Peyton Manning (1, 1998) Donovan McNabb (2, 1999) Daunte Culpepper (11, 1999) ? Chad Pennington (18, 2000) Michael Vick (1, 2001) ? Carson Palmer (1, 2003) ? Byron Leftwich (7, 2003) --- JOURNEYMAN Jeff George (1, 1990) Tommy Maddox (25, 1992) Trent Dilfer (6, 1994) ? David Carr (1, 2002) --- BUST Andre Ware (7, 1990) Todd Marinovich (24, 1991) David Klingler (6, 1992) Rick Mirer (2, 1993) Heath Shuler (3, 1994) Jim Druckenmiller (26, 1997) Ryan Leaf (2, 1998) Tim Couch (1, 1999) Akili Smith (3, 1999) Cade McNown (12, 1999) ? Joey Harrington (3, 2002) ? Patrick Ramsey (32, 2002) ? Kyle Boller (19, 2003) ? Rex Grossman (22, 2003) So - if history is any guide we have a 50-50 chance that JP will be a bust. The question is: is it worth stepping back a year - going 4-12 say, and maybe 4-12 again the following year - to find out for sure the value of a player who is unlikely to be the starter in 2 years? He is more likely to be another Cade McNown than a Peyton Manning. Or maybe he is merely better than average - would Tommy Maddox have been worth stepping back a few years? And even if he is in the top tier, would it be worth it to develop a Chad Pennington, Steve McNair, or - gasp! - a Drew Bledsoe? Alternatively, given those odds, is it better to assess while he's on the bench?

Funny, but you didn't answer his question: you say that anyone can see he has a ton of talent. Where did you see it? I didn't see so much as a momentary flash of anything better than average during the four games, and that was a huge disappointment.

That step-up is why KH is in there!

nah, I think he's reading the board and hearing that maybe you should throw long on teams whose secondary's were flipping burgers two weeks ago...

ouch! Pretty surprising that they are only down 14-7...

The first time I remember seeing Brady play was the last play at halftime some game where the Pats decided to throw a hail mary, so they brought in Brady for Bledsoe for that one throw... it might even have been his first regular season play.

What is that philosophy? What is his proto-type OL guy? (I'm not knocking him, I just don't see a pattern yet in who he's bringing in, unless you consider it to be run blocking at the expense of pass protection...)

Here's a radical approach that will never happen: If you are stuck with a cap-busting top 5 pick, just keep passing 10 slots or so... you eventually get a lesser player, but you can save enough in cap space to seriously upgrade the quality of your FA's who, btw, will likely start and perform at a high level immediately!

It's amazing how this thread is an excuse the bash other fans, the media, etc. Was a simple and reasonable question, answered right on the head in the 6th post. 'Nuff said.