Orton's Arm

Tampa Bob: > You spelled loses wrong Not according to dictionary.com. Singular = loss. Plural = losses. Enlightener: > thanks for stealing my joke. i know you saw this in the other thread about ej...admit it please. I didn't read the other thread. No way I could get through three pages of that without ripping out my hair. If you and I thought of the same joke, it's a sign great minds think alike.

If the Bills lose this week to the Dolphins, is it too soon to start talking about inserting Alex van Pelt into the starting lineup? Van Pelt has 11 career starts. He's still essentially a rookie. Van Pelt last got meaningful time as a starter back in 2001. He was plagued by accuracy issues. But he's had eight years on the bench since then. Eight years to develop. Eight years to become a far more accurate passer than he'd been in college or in the early years of his NFL career. How many more games do the Bills need to lose before it's time to put van Pelt back out there?

Great thread! Anyone who hasn't yet taken the time to look at the numbers Bangarang posted should do so. It won't take long. If the level of player talent had declined, the decline in offensive production could be blamed on that. Bearing that in mind, let's look at the talent each coach was given: Quarterback: Orton is better than Fitzpatrick. But Fitzpatrick is better than Manuel, Lewis, or Tuel. Marrone and Hackett get a mulligan for their first year, but much less so for year two. RB: Very similar. Fred Jackson is older than he was with Gailey, but still plays well when healthy. Bryce Brown and Boobie Dixon help offset Jackson's aging. Offensive line: The offensive linemen we have now are fairly similar to those we had with Gailey. TE: See offensive line. WRs: Under Gailey, the Bills' #1 WR was Stevie Johnson, with no clear-cut #2. Johnson was traded away for a 4th round pick, IIRC. Now, we have Sammy Watkins, Robert Woods, and plenty of good specialist type WRs. Hogan for underneath stuff, Goodwin as a deep burner, etc. There is no comparison between this year's WR corps and any that Gailey had. Overall: When you hire an uncreative, unimaginative head coach and offensive coordinator, you should expect uninspiring results. That's precisely what the Bills have received from Marrone and Hackett. A guy like Chip Kelly would be having a field day with talent like this!

> In every stat I can find, he is marginally better. I can help solve that problem. > completion percentage The problem with completion percentage is that it can easily be inflated by dumping the ball off short. Trent Edwards has a career completion percentage of over 60%. > KO is a few percentage points above EJ. Orton is much better than Manuel, at least as measured by air yards per attempt. Over 80% of Manuel's passes have been to targets less than 10 yards away. Not 10 yards away from the line of scrimmage. 10 yards away from EJ personally. And it's not like he was throwing to guys running horizontal crossing routes or anything. The overwhelming majority of those passes were to stationary targets. If you get a random group of guys together and start throwing the football around, and if the guys are reasonably decent at throwing, it will soon be discovered that throwing 10 yard passes to stationary targets is boring. Too easy. But that's the only thing Manuel has been doing, except for a few throws here and there. Those few throws here and there are inaccurate far more often than not. Orton attempts a far higher percentage of difficult throws than Manuel attempts. Orton isn't accurate 100% of the time. But his accuracy is worlds ahead of Manuel's. For the 2014 season, Manuel's air yards per attempt was 2.13. That was the worst average of any starting quarterback. The second-worst was Geno Smith, at 2.63. Even after his uninspiring showing against the Chiefs and their #1 pass defense, Orton's air yards per attempt is still 3.63--much better than Manuel's 2.13. Why do many of Manuel's other stats look somewhat comparable to Orton's? Most statistical measures of a quarterback's performance lump air yards together with yards after the catch (YAC). This benefits Manuel the most. Two thirds of Manuel's total passing yardage came from YAC. That's a higher percentage than any other starting quarterback in 2014. It's not like Manuel was doing a spectacular job of hitting guys in perfect stride; setting them up for excellent YAC. No. He was making easy, boring throws to stationary targets less than 10 yards away, then watching as guys like Watkins or Fred Jackson generated YAC on their own. As a pure passer, EJ Manuel was the least productive starting quarterback in the NFL. And it wasn't even close. He had some positive attributes which helped offset that. He didn't turn the ball over a lot or take many sacks. That's one of the benefits to almost always going with your dump-off option. Nevertheless, Manuel has a long way to go before he can be considered a credible backup quarterback. He has not attained, and probably never will attain, the level of Trent Edwards or JP Losman--neither of whom are on NFL rosters.

Regardless of why he wants Marrone fired, he's right. The Bills' offense is unimaginative. Players aren't being put in the best position to succeed. The Bills aren't adapting to opponents' strengths and weaknesses. Take the last two games for example. Against the Jets, the Bills were averaging seven times as many yards per pass play as they did on running plays. Hackett therefore dialed up twice as many running plays as pass plays! On the other hand, the Chiefs have the league's best pass defense, but a suspect running defense. The Bills' running game was working against the Chiefs. Hackett called up twice as many pass plays as running plays. Hackett's tendency to gravitate toward the stuff that doesn't work is inexplicable. Given that Marrone comes from an offensive background himself, the weakness of the offensive coaching is on him.

How would you explain that to the players? These guys make enormous physical sacrifices. They play through pain. Watkins' playing through broken ribs is a good example of that. They're told the reason for all this sacrifice is because winning matters above all else. Suppose that a few weeks from now, Marrone walks into the locker room and announces that Manuel is now the starter. The receivers will know--at least intuitively--that Manuel is much less likely to throw them the ball downfield. They'll realize that except on very rare occasions, they'll be getting the ball on dump-offs only. Or, if the ball is thrown downfield, there's an excellent chance it will be a widow maker type pass. This implies that the coaches would be requiring an even greater level of sacrifice from our WRs, while at the same time deliberately reducing the team's chance of winning. The effect this would have on morale would be less than stellar, especially among the Bills' WR corps. Maybe you care about morale in the locker room, and maybe you don't. But a number of excellent Bills' players are nearing the ends of their contracts. Players like Hughes. The more head-scratching moves the front office or coaching staff make, the harder it becomes to retain players like that.

> EJ is almost as good as Orton right now. This is not true. In 2014, Manuel averaged 2.13 air yards per attempt. Orton's average for the year is 4.51--over double Manuel's. During his four starts, Manuel threw a lot of short, very easy passes. Some of which resulted in great yards after the catch (YAC). In 2014, 2/3 of Manuel's total passing yardage came from YAC; with the other third from air yards. Conversely, over 60% of Orton's total passing yardage has been from air yards. With Orton, the Bills have a real QB. Not a top-10 QB, perhaps, but still a credible starter. "Credible starter" is not a phrase I'd use to describe E.J. Manuel, either now or in the future. > After playing only a handful of games. EJ's the kind of guy that the more reps he gets, the better he gets. If that's the case, why was he no better in the first four games of this season than he was last season?

> The bigger questions might be...when the O line is doing well, and the run game is working so well to > the tune of averaging 5.0 yards per carry why run only 22 times, and pass 48 times? An excellent question. Against the Jets, the Bills' offense averaged 2.0 yards per carry, and 14 yards per pass attempt. Hackett, being the genius that he is, chose to run it two plays for every one passing play. This time around he went up against a team with a great pass defense but a lousy run defense. The Bills' best WR was playing hurt. So why not call two pass plays for every running play? On another matter, it's possible that Watkins' injury interfered with the timing between himself and Orton. Both because of running differently due to the injury itself, and because of the missed practices.

> The book is written on Orton, its still yet to be written on EJ. The first few chapters of EJ's book have been written. He lacks throwing accuracy (a poor man's Fitzpatrick), almost always looks for the check-down (Trent Edwards), can't process information quickly (Losman), and lacks pocket awareness (a hint of Rob Johnson). You could say, give him time to develop, maybe he'll improve. Except that he didn't display strength in any of those areas back in college. The idea that he'll drastically improve is based on a triumph of hope over disciplined thinking.

Are you suggesting that Orton started out accurate, but became progressively less accurate as the game progressed and his arm tired?

If EJ isn't throwing the ball accurately in practice--and by all accounts he hasn't been, at last as of a few weeks ago--what do you hope to discover by playing him in games? It's not as though he's going to start lighting things up when it matters if he can't get it done in practice. On the other hand, maybe you'd like to see him out there in hopes of accelerating his development. My counterexample to that is Carson Palmer. When Palmer was a rookie, Marvin Lewis decided to make him the third string quarterback. Jon Kitna--a reasonably good veteran QB--was the starter. At the beginning of his rookie year, Palmer made lots of inaccurate throws in practice. As the year progressed, he became steadily better. By the end of his rookie year, he was starting to show serious signs of being better than Kitna. EJ Manuel has been given every opportunity Palmer had as a rookie. In addition, he's also been given the opportunities that come with being the starter for training camp and the offseason--for two years running. The Bills gain nothing by showering him with yet more snaps not earned by his college play or NFL play.

Fixed. There is nothing more the Bills need to learn about EJ Manuel.

I don't know (or care) what Orton or his agent will cite. I do care about the quality of his performance. Air yards per attempt is one way of measuring that. Given the quality of the Bills' receiving corps, it's easy for yards per attempt to get inflated with a lot of YAC yards. Last I checked, Orton's yards per attempt for the season is hovering around 8.0. That's higher than the career average of either Manning or Brady. I don't think that anyone is arguing that Orton is playing above the level you'd usually expect from Manning or Brady. But yards per attempt makes it look that way, because guys like Watkins are very good at generating yards after the catch. Thus far this season, Orton has the 10th best air yards per attempt stat. That means that the strong performance indicated by his yards per attempt stat isn't just a mirage, created by his receivers' excellent ability to generate YAC. It means the guy has legitimately been producing yards through the air.

Fitz was never particularly accurate when throwing the ball. When Fitz appeared to be playing "well," it was because Gailey had devised an offense to mask his lack of accuracy. Gailey's offense relied on Fitz to make very good reads both pre- and post-snap--something at which Fitz was good. The throws themselves were generally fairly easy. The Bengals were the first team to catch up with Gailey's offense. (That happened before Fitz signed his monster extension.) They demonstrated the correct way to beat Fitz. The Bills must have seen that game as an exception to the norm. (Or else they wouldn't have given him that big contract extension.) After Fitz signed that big extension, other teams followed the Bengals' example. That was no different than when teams learned that the correct way to defend Losman is to double cover Lee Evans, and put eight in the box to take away the run. Or when they learned the solution to Drew Bledsoe was pressure up the middle. The fact teams figured out a solution to Fitz doesn't mean he stopped trying hard. It means that Fitz was never going to be a great quarterback, no matter how hard he tried. He just didn't have the ability to play well after defenses figured him out. In contrast to the above, I don't see anything particularly brilliant or gimmicky that Hackett is doing to make Orton look better than he really is. Orton is reading the field well, making good decisions, and throwing the ball accurately. Granted, he's not elite in any of those areas. But he's a significant upgrade over what we're used to, and is a better quarterback than Fitz.

> his performance is about on par with what he is making. I disagree. This season, Orton is producing the NFL's 10th-best air yards per attempt. His pay is not consistent with a performance like that. > Ortons body of work is mediocre at best Over the last five years, there was only one time when Orton averaged less than 7 yards per attempt. (The Denver half of his 2011 season.) Fitz's usual average with the Bills was 6.8 yards per attempt. Trent Edwards' career average is 6.5 yards per attempt; Tom Brady's is 7.5. > Even with 4TDs, we had NINE 3 and outs. Hackett deserves most of the blame for that. He called run, run, pass about 2/3 of the time he had an opportunity to do so. On a day when the running game was averaging 2 yards a carry--and the passing attack was averaging 14 yards per attempt--run, run, pass is the sort of play calling you'd expect from someone perfectly content to go three and out. > Until Orton proves it on the field and gets us to the playoffs we will still need to find a QB of the future. There is nothing which would even remotely suggest Whaley is good at evaluating QB talent. For better or worse, Kyle Orton is almost certainly the very best quarterback Whaley will acquire for a very long time. The Bills' two choices are to either build around Orton, or replace Whaley with a GM capable of choosing better quarterbacks than Kolb or Manuel.