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What's your assessment of JP to date

Fake-Fat Sunny

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Fake-Fat Sunny Veteran

Fake-Fat Sunny

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In my minf he has the opportunity to win the starters job if he shows enough upside in minicamp and in the pre-season. I don't think he needs to be perfect of produce great stats to earn this job. For me he will earn it if he shows enough upside for learning the game and minimizes him losing games for us by mostly learning from making game-costing mistakes. He has shown me enough in his brief appearances that I think he can do this and only should be swept aside by the back-up (be it Bledsoe or whomever) if the back-up plays lights out in minicamp and pre-season (a feat which I don't think Bledsoe can pull off even if he takes a paycut and stays).

 

There has been a lot of talk on TSW for folks calling for JP, but i think much of this has been motivated by people's dismay or even hatred of Bledsoe rather than their strong belief in JP. I'm curious what folks think about JP rather than the side issue of what they think of Bledsoe. My cut is:

 

JP Losman- Highly regarded college prospect who generally was worth a first round choice in the 2004 draft. Generally rated as the 4th best QB prospect in that draft behind Manning, Rivers and RoboQB and he appeared to be a cut below these three because Manning is clearly bigtime, Rivers shows more polish than all the others but throws sidearm and is not your prototype QB. RoboQB showed perhaps the greatest poise and production of the 3 but did so against weaker competition. Losman has the equal or greater athleticism than any of these three but had to run for his life in a Tulane program and exhibited some mechanical issues from his great freelance success which lodged him a cut below as a prospect, Given that playing for a bad team and for stupid offensive genius HC sidetracked Manning, given contract issues sidetracked Rivers and given the phenomenal success RoboQB had until the team was forced to depend on him being great because they ran into a more cohesive team clearly all bets are off for demanding a particular speed and style of developing Losman which is not molded to his indidivudal needs and situation.

 

Overall, the pick looks like an outstanding job by the Bills and TD as though they were more interested in having a QB for the present thay defintiely needed a QB for the future because it was unclear whether Bledsoe would produce at all. By picking an immediately productive player with is first pick of Evans and then using his 2005 first as the main meat in a trade to get Losman, TD managed to pick his QB for the future in 2004 for the 2005 choice when there is no QB propsect of near Losman's caliber in the 2005 draft. The trade and pick makes even more sense as Losman pretty clearly needed to be looked at and actually needed somework before he could be given the reins anyway.

 

The particulars of his 2004 work are these as I see them:

 

He showed the talent and athleticism which got him drafted in the first scrimmage against Cleveland and in his pre-season appearances. He is a solid improvisor and shows no fear of putting his dead down and getting hit or giving punishment. On several plays in the scrimmage and onward he demonstrated his ability to take the snap and roll-out looking to produce. He has shown a nice touch in making passes accurately on the run.

 

However, his big problem in 2004 was gettng a fracture in practice which limited his ability to practice and play. It is a concern that the injury may in part may have occured because Losman was taking advantage of the fact that players were prohibited from takling QBs in practice and he has used the "tutu" to makes some runs when the D was covering passes in practices and he ended up getting shoved a little harder than he had planned by Troy Vincent and suffered a fracture. It is still far too early to call him injury prone because of this fracture, but if the team's reaction was to the negative of him taking advantage of the practice rules he may need to moderate his cockiness to be most concerned about leading his teamates than racking up scores in practice.

 

The injury ironically may actuallty speed Losman's development. Its not a good thing at all because it cost him repetitious practice time he needs if an essential part of his development is ironing out his mechanics (in the highlights of his college days he could often be seen throwing off-balance successfully as he ran for his life, however, if he were to depend on the same free-lancing in the over-complicated pro offenses he will find it harder to develop chemistry with his pro receivers who will depend upon him to throw it the same way everytime, Also, one can get away with weakthrows in college but unless he is throwing as wlell and as fast as he can he will get picked off by pro athletes if he is too loose in his play.

 

The injury however may speed Losman's development if he used the enforced downtime to surgically attach his ear to Wyche's mouth and dowload knowledge from this former HC and better learn NFL offensive rational and defensive tendencies in the booth during this past season. It may not hurt his getting to know the boys better by yucking it up during games, but a more critical part of his development would seem to be the mental side of the game. I'm pretty not worried about his ability to lead.

 

His play during the season was interesting:

 

Appearance 1: He got thrown into a game against NE. He did not do well here as he threw an INT and also fumbled the ball as he looked unprepared. This was not a fair test and his post game comments seem to indicate that he had received an appropriate message from this episode in that he committed himself to being more prepared the next time. This is good but raises the question as why he was not prepared this time.

 

Second appearance: Its not hard to improve over his bad initial outing but this was a good showing in that he did the most important thing for building his confidence in himself and among his teaamates he succeeded. Some may whine because they wanted to see him throw passes, but I think it means much more that he successfully moved the team in a mop-up after we blew them out even if it was "just| by handing the ball to WM. He has thrown the ball before but he has never led an NFL team to a TD before so I saw this as a great outing.

 

He also demonstrated in this outing that he has a lot to learn as he entered the game, failed to command the hudddle and transfer instructions quickly enouh and we took a delay of game. Still this was a good outing because we scored under JPs guidance.

 

Third Appearance: Much much better. A somewhat ignominious start as he had to call a TO when the goal was to keep the clock rolling during mop-up time but this at least was better than taking a bad penalty because he still had a rookie's command of the huddle.

 

The actual play was good because this was such a laugher he got even more time and there was enough time left that first downs were needed to burn clock so he ran a more diversified offense. He not only drove the team to a score, but completed a nice pass on the move to advance the ball and also pulled the ball down when passes were covered on 3rd down and picked up the yardage on the run to move the flags. The effort was not perfect though as he put his head down and took an unnnecsary hit to gain a couple of extra yards after he already had the 1st down on the run. it was fun to see him lay some wood on an opponent but it was stupid also because it was unecessary.

 

Stll overall I was pleased.

 

At anyrate, much remains to be seen, He pretty clearly was not ready as seen by his lack of command of the huddle and a little bit of the panic which has him run a bit too quickly in my view even if it moved the sticks.

 

There will be three keys for his development which see:

 

1. Has he learned NFL offenses and defenses well enough yet to be more of a vet than a rookie.

2. Has he ironed out any mechanical issues or still allows himself too much variation to develop good chemistry with Evans, WM and the O.

4, Is he able to maintain the cockiness usefull for evoking confidence while also having a calmness about him that makes for great leadership and making great choices. Two of my favorite QB stories are told about Joe Montana and about the good friend of many on TSW (not) Doug Flutie, Near the end of one championship game SF got the ball and needed to drive for a TD to win. The team took the field and looked to Montana for orders and inspirtation. He brought the team together and asked folks to look in the stands near the opposing endzone. He asked, "Isn't that John Candy sitting there in the 6th row, I loved him in so and so movie. The team cracked up that he was so calm he could scan the stands for stars and talk about cmedy movies. This was calm and the team marched down the field and scored.

 

Though many hate Flutie I was impressed with a story of him getting thrown into a game as a freshman fourth string QB. They were not going to win, but he marched the team down the field, through some nice sideline throws, ran the ball effectively on third down and eventually through a TD pass. The coach called the team over to discuss whether to go for two and amidst the debate Flutie winked and smiled at the HC. Regardless of what was going on, the bottomline was that playing football well was fun.

 

If JP shows the moxie to be calm, I think he will go far.

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Alaska Darin Hall of Famer

Alaska Darin

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Posted
In my minf he has the opportunity to win the starters job if he shows enough upside in minicamp and in the pre-season.  I don't think he needs to be perfect of produce great stats to earn this job.  For me he will earn it if he shows enough upside for learning the game and minimizes him losing games for  us by mostly learning from making game-costing mistakes.  He has shown me enough in his brief appearances that I think he can do this and only should be swept aside by the back-up (be it Bledsoe or whomever) if the back-up plays lights out in minicamp and pre-season (a feat which I don't think Bledsoe can pull off even if he takes a paycut and stays).

 

There has been a lot of talk on TSW for folks calling for JP, but i think much of this has been motivated by people's dismay or even hatred of Bledsoe rather than their strong belief in JP.  I'm curious what folks think about JP rather than the side issue of what they think of Bledsoe.  My cut is:

 

JP Losman- Highly regarded college prospect who generally was worth a first round choice in the 2004 draft.  Generally rated as the 4th best QB prospect in that draft behind Manning, Rivers and RoboQB and he appeared to be a cut below these three because Manning is clearly bigtime, Rivers shows more polish than all the others but throws sidearm and is not your prototype QB.  RoboQB showed perhaps the greatest poise and production of the 3 but did so against weaker competition.  Losman has the equal or greater athleticism than any of these three but had to run for his life in a Tulane program and exhibited some mechanical issues from his great freelance success which lodged him a cut below as a prospect,  Given that playing for a bad team and for stupid offensive genius HC sidetracked Manning, given contract issues sidetracked Rivers and given the phenomenal success RoboQB had until the team was forced to depend on him being great because they ran into a more cohesive team clearly all bets are off for demanding a particular speed and style of developing Losman which is not molded to his indidivudal needs and situation.

 

Overall, the pick looks like an outstanding job by the Bills and TD as though they were more interested in having a QB for the present thay defintiely needed a QB for the future because it was unclear whether Bledsoe would produce at all.  By picking an immediately productive player with is first pick of Evans and then using his 2005 first as the main meat in a trade to get Losman, TD managed to pick his QB for the future in 2004 for the 2005 choice when there is no QB propsect of near Losman's caliber in the 2005 draft.  The trade and pick makes even more sense as Losman pretty clearly needed to be looked at and actually needed somework before he could be given the reins anyway.

 

The particulars of his 2004 work are these as I see them:

 

He showed the talent and athleticism which got him drafted in the first scrimmage against Cleveland and in his pre-season appearances.  He is a solid improvisor and shows no fear of putting his dead down and getting hit or giving punishment. On several plays in the scrimmage and onward he demonstrated his ability to take the snap and roll-out looking to produce.  He has shown a nice touch in making passes accurately on the run.

 

However, his big problem in 2004 was gettng a fracture in practice which limited his ability to practice and play.  It is a concern that the injury may in part may have occured because Losman was taking advantage of the fact that players were prohibited from takling QBs in practice and he has used the "tutu" to makes some runs when the D was covering passes in practices and he ended up getting shoved a little harder than he had planned by Troy Vincent and suffered a fracture.  It is still far too early to call him injury prone because of this fracture, but if the team's reaction was to the negative of him taking advantage of the practice rules he may need to moderate his cockiness to be most concerned about leading his teamates than racking up scores in practice.

 

The injury ironically may actuallty speed Losman's development.  Its not a good thing at all because it cost him repetitious practice time he needs if an essential part of his development is ironing out his mechanics (in the highlights of his college days he could often be seen throwing off-balance successfully as he ran for his life, however, if he were to depend on the same free-lancing in the over-complicated pro offenses he will find it harder to develop chemistry with his pro receivers who will depend upon him to throw it the same way everytime,  Also, one can get away with weakthrows in college but unless he is throwing as wlell and as fast as he can he will get picked off by pro athletes if he is too loose in his play.

 

The injury however may speed Losman's development if he used the enforced downtime to surgically attach his ear to Wyche's mouth and dowload knowledge from this former HC and better learn NFL offensive rational and defensive tendencies in the booth during this past season.  It may not hurt his getting to know the boys better by yucking it up during games, but a more critical part of his development would seem to be the mental side of the game.  I'm pretty not worried about his ability to lead.

 

His play during the season was interesting:

 

Appearance 1:  He got thrown into a game against NE.  He did not do well here as he threw an INT and also fumbled the ball as he looked unprepared.  This was not  a fair test and his post game comments seem to indicate that he had received an appropriate message from this episode in that he committed himself to being more prepared the next time.  This is good but raises the question as why he was not prepared this time.

 

Second appearance: Its not hard to improve over his bad initial outing but this was a good showing in that he did the most important thing for building his confidence in himself and among his teaamates he succeeded.  Some may whine because they wanted to see him throw passes, but I think it means much more that he successfully moved the team in a mop-up after we blew them out even if it was "just| by handing the ball to WM.  He has thrown the ball before but he has never led an NFL team to a TD before so I saw this as a great outing.

 

He also demonstrated in this outing that he has a lot to learn as he entered the game, failed to command the hudddle and transfer instructions quickly enouh and we took a delay of game.  Still this was a good outing because we scored under JPs guidance.

 

Third Appearance: Much much better.  A somewhat ignominious start as he had to call a TO when the goal was to keep the clock rolling during mop-up time but this at least was better than taking a bad penalty because he still had a rookie's command of the huddle.

 

The actual play was good because this was such a laugher he got even more time and there was enough time left that first downs were needed to burn clock so he ran a more diversified offense.  He not only drove the team to a score, but completed a nice pass on the move to advance the ball and also pulled the ball down when passes were covered on 3rd down and picked up the yardage on the run to move the flags.  The effort was not perfect though as he put his head down and took an unnnecsary hit to gain a couple of extra yards after he already had the 1st down on the run.  it was fun to see him lay some wood on an opponent but it was stupid also because it was unecessary.

 

Stll overall I was pleased.

 

At anyrate, much remains to be seen,  He pretty clearly was not ready as seen by his lack of command of the huddle and a little bit of the panic which has him run a bit too quickly in my view even if it moved the sticks.

 

There will be three keys for his development which see:

 

1. Has he learned NFL offenses and defenses well enough yet to be more of a vet than a rookie.

2. Has he ironed out any mechanical issues or still allows himself too much variation to develop good chemistry with Evans, WM and the O.

4, Is he able to maintain the cockiness usefull for evoking confidence while also having a calmness about him that makes for great leadership and making great choices.  Two of my favorite QB stories are told about Joe Montana and about the good friend of many on TSW (not) Doug Flutie,  Near the end of one championship game SF got the ball and needed to drive for a TD to win.  The team took the field and looked to Montana for orders and inspirtation.  He brought the team together and asked folks to look in the stands near the opposing endzone.  He asked, "Isn't that John Candy sitting there in the 6th row, I loved him in so and so movie.  The team cracked up that he was so calm he could scan the stands for stars and talk about cmedy movies.  This was calm and the team marched down the field and scored.

 

Though many hate Flutie I was impressed with a story of him getting thrown into a game as a freshman fourth string QB.  They were not going to win, but he marched the team down the field, through some nice sideline throws, ran the ball effectively on third down and eventually through a TD pass.  The coach called the team over to discuss whether to go for two and amidst the debate Flutie winked and smiled at the HC. Regardless of what was going on, the bottomline was that playing football well was fun.

 

If JP shows the moxie to be calm, I think he will go far.

218587[/snapback]

From now on I'm only reading your posts up to the first typo. In my minf? :P

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ganesh All Pro

ganesh

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Posted

My choice would be,

 

o Give a full training camp for JP and start him for the season.

o Spend all the money to upgrade the OL, so that we don't put the

game on the kids shoulder. We need a road-grader LG and a

smart LT.

 

The steelers did exactly that...Their OL was built to run the ball abnd

play smashmouth and let the rookie make the 1 or 2 plays in the game

that was needed.

 

IF TD hinges his career on JP he better get a more solid OL.

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JP-era RFA

JP-era

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Posted

If JP shows the moxie to be calm, I think he will go far.

218587[/snapback]

 

 

Well, heres my take.

 

Im not sure that watching JP in mop up duty showed us much of anything. Id like to see some specific things from him that this would not have shown.

 

Lets say for a second that some of the more tangibles and measurables are not in question, which in actuality may be a false assumption but Im feeling pretty good about TD and company as far as talent evaluation goes.

 

I would consider the tanglibles to be arm strength, and accuracy. I would consider, in JP's case, his scrambling to be a tangible. Ill expound and say that making "all" the throws means that he has the arm strength and vision to get the ball where it should be, both long and short. Now there are some more subtle semantics that go into making all the throws that include ball placement. Lets assume that he can simply make the throws. I think in RJ's case he had the tangibles but suffered terribly from not having any intangibles. This is where the game play comes in.

 

1) Pocket presence- Tom Brady is the master of this IMO. This is how he makes his living as a QB. To me, pocket presence means the ability to feel the pressure and deliver the ball, throw it away, or run for positive yards without becoming rattled and making mistakes. Every QB makes mistakes sometimes, the good or great ones have good presence and stear clear of mistakes most of the time. Furthermore, Sam and company tried to teach an old dog new tricks and gave Drew a internal clock that says get rid of the ball before you get to 3. It worked some of the time, lets hope it can become a habit for JP. Since JP hasnt really thrown the ball in a game yet, you dont have any clue about this with him yet. Youngsters often try to force things or eat it instead of running or throwing it away. Really this category shows the clear difference between Eli and Roth this year. Roth stood in there unrattled and delivered the ball, mostly because he had time and a great supporting cast including the best line in the league. But, rather than blame or not blame the other players, lets stick to the QB talk here. Drew had horrible presence all year. If he wasnt eating the ball when he could have thrown it away, he was taking hits, coughing it up and in several critical cases the fumbles went for TD's. Drew did manage to show some great play fakes which lead to yardage. Thats also an important pocket presence factor. We must have a guy who will have better presence, because an all world team wont prevent mistakes that lose games from your QB, ask Pitt.

 

2) Decision making- This is a fairly broad category to me. Id say though that a good or great QB needs to be able to hit the best target not just the number 1 target. There should be a check down process and a QB should go through his progressions fairly quickly. He also should try not to telegraph his throws too much although this is very hard to learn. Again, JP didnt throw much in real games, so we dont know if he can do it well. Drew on the other hand chose to lock on to a target and then try to force throws, leading int's. Often he did this when other guys were wide open. Or, he would lock on to a guy, not check down, and when he wasnt open take a sack. We need a QB who can see the whole field, who can see coverage mismatches, and read and react to blitzes. We need our QB to be able to find the open targets quickly, or if they arent there, dump it down to a TE or RB, or run. This aspect leads teams to be productive even against the best D's. It is a critical factor to going deep into the playoffs. If you can spread the ball around, and/or scramble you force them to play everyone and that inevitably leads to mismatches/yards gained/1st downs/ and overall offensive production.

 

3) Leadership/attitude- This can be shown in many ways as you suggest. Some truly are "quiet" leaders. Thats great and on most teams its probably all you need. On this team however, I feel very strongly that you need hard minded guys who will yell and scream to get his team motivated. Havent seen it from JP, except in one pass play dropped by Jason Peters late in a game. I think we have to have a QB who has a never say die attitude and then leads his team, even verbally when needed, to have a winners mind. Drews clueless look and lackluster nonchalant attitude against Steelers in that last game told the whole story about why we need this. Drew acted like he could care less about that game and we could have and should have won. He had a ten thousand miles of dirt road stare when this was a must win game. Im sure I dont even need to tell you that this is simply NOT good enough.

 

4) Game management- probably folds into decision making but has more to do with keeping the big picture. A good/great QB will march down the field methodically when the game is on the line or when the half is running out. He wont waste time on the line getting set or in the huddle. Drew has been decent as far as this goes, so no real upgrade needed there. JP hasnt had games on the line or needed points with little time left yet. We will have to wait and see.

 

Overall, we need to see JP in games before we can draw conclusions abotu whether he will cut the mustard or not.

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pm73 Practice Squad

pm73

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Posted

wow, i wish i could stick with some of you posters but sometimes it's just too much. trim it down man. i can't tell you how many times i just quit on some of these posts. it's too bad cuz soimewhere in there, there is usually some really good knowledge or opinions. just way too many words.

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CajunBillsBacker Veteran

CajunBillsBacker

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JP obviously has all the tools to become an excellent NFL QB, strong arm, mobility, he's smart, and has a positive cockiness in his attitude.

I think his biggest bridge to climb will be showing patience in the pocket and trusting his blockers(something he couldn't do at Tulane) instead of hitting the panic button and thinking run everytime the defense shows a blitz.

If McGahee can take this offense on his shoulders and be the 1500 yard rusher he is capable of, then I see JP developing quickly and having a very strong second half of next season.

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CajunBillsBacker Veteran

CajunBillsBacker

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What exactly leads you to that conclusion?

218746[/snapback]

 

I've watched him at Tulane his whole career. His grades were great, and he scored one of the highest scores on the wonderlic. The fact that he played on such a horrible team and still established himself as one of the top QB's in the country says a whole lot.

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