EJ Manuel: What went wrong after year 1?

[JOE IN HAMPTON ROADS]

13 hours ago, LeGOATski said:

Among other things, there was definitely a confidence issue. I remember the media trashing on EJ so hard, even as a rookie. After one PC, as EJ was leaving the room, a reporter asked something along the lines of 'Should the Bills draft another QB right away??' Like, some went out of their way to trash him. It was pathetic.

good thing theres nothing like that going on now.

[bmur66]

This

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AK-KSaRl2i4

[Bing Bong]

2 hours ago, LSHMEAB said:

Exactly what the poster alluding to his "throwing motion" was driving at.

 

Whether it was confidence or advise from too many directions, he really started aiming the ball and that resulted in even poorer accuracy.(Yips if you will)

 

I'm of the OPINION that the Bills didn't ruin Manuel and that no QB is ever truly "ruined" by circumstance. If Manuel had the fortitude to be a high quality NFL QB, he'd have been able to to block out all the external noise and just play football. It takes a special breed to play the most demanding position in sports and EJ wasn't one of the few.

Teams don't ruin Quarterbacks. Quarterbacks let themselves get ruined.

 

Poor coaching? Bad line? Bad receivers? Play well enough for your team to want to invest in you. JA has done as much IMO, and Whaley tried his damndest for EJ as well after some promising games (or at least high caliber instances when throwing) lest we forget that.

 

EJ could have game managed a very good 2014 Bills team to great heights.. we didn't need much in the way of offense. And speak up if you're coach is confusing you EJ. Play your best football, nobody to blame but you in this business

Edited December 27, 2018 by BarkleyForGOATBackupPT5P

[LSHMEAB]

5 minutes ago, BarkleyForGOATBackupPT5P said:

Teams don't ruin Quarterbacks. Quarterbacks let themselves get ruined.

 

Poor coaching? Bad line? Bad receivers? Play well enough for your team to want to invest in you. JA has done as much IMO, and Whaley tried his damndest for EJ as well after some promising games lest we forget that.

Yep. Coaches may give you poor instruction/advice, etc. and that can put you at a psychological disadvantage. What a guy who's going to be a top NFL QB does with that instruction is chuck it out the window when the real bullets start flying. Just make plays the way you know how to make plays because nobody is going to argue with results. The X's and O's of football are extremely complex but some things are rather simple.

 

In Manuel's case, it seems like "coachable" was a detriment. He tried too hard to play exactly the way he was told to play. That never works. You gotta do you.

Edited December 27, 2018 by LSHMEAB

[QB Bills]

Nothing went wrong. He always sucked. 

 

Still have nightmares of him doing that stupid backwards spin at the first hint of pressure (imagined or not).

[buffaloaggie]

Bills QB scouting is awful. Except for Jim Kelly, they have not been able to draft a good QB. They need to go with drafting a QB almost every year until they find one. Putting the eggs all in one basket is their latest mistake. Definitely the case with Manuel. I still cringe when Cyrus Kouandjio's name was announced with Garoppolo available in the 2nd round. This year is not the year for QBs coming out of college, but we need to get one again in the 2020 draft. Manuel and Losman were wastes. I love Allen's heart. Manuel was never a leader. I think Allen is, but we desperately need a QB guru to work with him.

[Trogdor]

8 hours ago, Troll Toll said:

I remember EJ hanging all his receivers out to dry. He had real accuracy issues. Telegraphed his throws. No pocket presence. Surprisingly weak arm. Couldn’t keep the deep ball in bounds. Didn’t see defenders in the area he would throw to. Checked down all the time on third down. Could not complete passes to wide open receivers. I remember Whaley basically saying they drafted him because he physically looked like a quarterback.

 

For people comparing him to Josh, I’d be real interested to see the comparison of air yards per attempt. It’s like people don’t realize it is a lot harder to complete 20 yard throws in stride than 2 yard throws to stationary targets. It’s easy to see the difference in Josh Allen to past QBs just by the way the other team plays. Defenses are finally not crowding the line of scrimmage to stuff runs and short passes. So long offenses of Trent, EJ, Tyrod, and Fitz.

He doesn't get a pass because he tries to throw everything downfield. Passing up the correct shorter throw for a longer one is a poor excuse. 

[_Underscore_]

Maybe it would not have made a difference, but I think the circumstances scuttled EJ Manual more than any rookie quarterback I can recall.  Please correct me if I am incorrect in some of the details.

 

EJ had physical gifts, but needed help above the neck.  EJ’s weak suit, reading defenses and making fast decisions, was Fitzs’s strong suit.  What’s more, Fitz had all the personal characteristics to make a good mentor.  Then, presumably with the plan to select EJ but before the actual draft, our senile GM gets punk’d by DJs in Tampa, and to save face, the planned mentor and bridge QB is unceremonially cut. 

 

Kolb is signed to start while they develop EJ, and he gets taken out by a mat (seriously, who could even write this stuff?).  EJ gets hurt and misses some of the preseason, but just makes it healthy to get stuffed into the lineup by opening day.

 

So, a QB who was drafted as a project becomes a starter on day one.  The first-time OC decides that his developmental, slow-eyed rookie should start in an up-tempo, no huddle, option offense (!?!?).  An offense that is based on a QB making fast decisions at the line of scrimmage AND no opportunity to work it out in the huddle.  Awesome.

 

After a few weeks of mixed results (including some successful scrambling), EJ gets hurt in Cleveland.  When he gets back, it appears (at least to me) that the Napoleonic coach instructs him NOT TO RUN, but keeps playing the QB option offense.

 

This abominations of an offense carries over into the next year, where half-way through the coaching staff very visibly and publically turns their back on the kid and the ball is taken from his hands.  By the end of the season, the former first round pick is saying "If I ever get back in, I'm just going to rip it".  At this point, it seems to me that it wasn't the opponents that were in EJ's head, but his own coaches.

 

Then, the staff turns over, and the team is taken over by a buffoon who is so butt-sore over Sanchez that he says “Screw-em!!!  I’ll design an offense that doesn’t NEED a quarterback who can throw the ball!!!”  Thus, the EJ Manual development project ends with an offense that is the (it makes me feel dirty even saying this) “brain-child” of Rex Ryan and “the QB who shall remain nameless”.

 

I’m not saying that EJ was going to be the second coming of anyone special, but I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that his failure was facilitated in a great degree by some monumental pinheadery by others in the organization.  Every time I read someone say that rookie's can't learn from the bench, I think of EJ.  Had they kept Fitz and let EJ work on his footwork and watch tape for a year, it might have been different.

 

 

[Trogdor]

5 hours ago, Hapless Bills Fan said:

 

I think we forget what the OP linked: he showed flashes.  During his rookie year, overall his performance was not atypical of rookie "teething pains".

 

I personally think EJM got something akin to the "Yips" between conflicting advice, no QB coach and an inexperienced OC his rookie season, and possibly conflicting coaching advice,  but that's just my theory.

 

 

None of that helped, but he had his fair share of issues in college too. He really under performed at both levels and I think we discount that too often here. I can't think of a QB who wasn't a proven winner just developing into one in the NFL. 

[corta765]

8 hours ago, Capco said:

WhGranted, Josh has made some awful throws this year (the two INTs last week come to mind), but I still think the guy just has "it", whatever the hell "it" even is.  I never got that feeling with EJ in every game he played in the same way that I do with Allen. 

 

 

The only game I remember kinda thinking EJ had the "IT" was that Carolina game and now looking in retrospect I think it was more luck specifically that dropped INT and flag at the end. With Josh the Miami and MIN games I left saying holy crap this guy can be real good.

 

What sucked with EJ who I was in the bandwagon big time for is he should not have started week 1. He was the definition of a project QB you needed to let sit and take it all in. He was a guy I think who just needed time and coaching if he were to ever figure it out. The problem was the defense was good enough to win with and Marrone seemed to be non surprisingly very conservative with his handling of EJ after his knee injury. My dad and I remarked at points that they drafted him to be a bit mobile from time to time yet after the injury he and the team seemed gun shy of him doing so taking away one of his best strengths.

 

EJ was the opposite of Allen passing wise always being nervous and willing to check down whereas Josh I think goes big too much and always thinks he can make the play when he should take whats given. But his arm strength and ability to throw where he wants is one of his best traits. EJ vs. Josh in a throwoff wouldn't be close, Josh needs time just to refine himself but he can make every throw with EJ I never got that vibe.

Edited December 27, 2018 by corta765

[without a drought]

Let's just hope that there isn't a future Allen thread like this in the coming years.

[Boatdrinks]

EJ threw the ball like he was playing darts in a bar. He just didn’t have an NFL throwing motion. His instincts in the pocket were poor, and he wasn’t a great runner when outside of it. A backup caliber QB at best. The NFL has a way of exposing you after year one and an offseason of D coordinators studying film. If your game has fatal flaws, they will be revealed. 

[LSHMEAB]

Looked it up and EJ ran a faster 40 than Allen! Crazy. I'm an analytics/numbers guy, but that's a huge win for the old school types who say testing doesn't matter. Rarely agree with them on much of anything, but they win this one.

 

EJ looked slow as hell on the field. Everything he did was slow as a matter of fact. I like to see QB's doing things with some pace.

[John from Riverside]

What I remember of him is he simply would not pull the trigger as far as throwing the football......then he had this same spin move he would do to escape pass rusher's in the pocket.....once defenses tuned into that he was spinning right into sacks.

 

 

[blacklabel]

I always go back to this article the Bills website posted just prior to the 2014 season. It went really in-depth on Manuel's history, upbringing and development in football. The thing that was mentioned that stood out to me is that EJ actually needed a fair amount of tutoring all through middle and high school. Not that that's a bad thing or whatever, but my takeaway from that was that EJ was probably always gonna have trouble with the mental aspect of playing QB. You have to know what all ten of your fellow teammates are doing or need to do on any given play. You need to assess defensive looks both pre and post-snap. You have to be able to check out of plays, you have to recognize if the defense is giving a specific look that you know you have a play in the playbook that can beat that look (kinda like how Allen checked into the go-route to Foster on the "the sun was in mah eyes!" play from Sunday), etc. etc. There's just so much to the position mentally that it's easy to see how young QBs get overwhelmed very easily. And despite the fact that EJ's work ethic is off the charts, there are some things in the game that are a "you either got it or you don't" type of situation and I think his post-snap decisions showed how difficult it was for him to properly adjust to what the defense was throwing at him. His internal clock always seemed a tick slow and his brain seemed to default to "no one's open, don't hang around and wait for something to develop, just run!" most of the time.

 

I also recall a scouting report I read on him which made a good point: the person EJ trusts the most to make a play is himself. He still locks onto his first read at times and if it isn't there, he takes off, clean pocket or not. He has a hesitancy to toss one up in a 50/50 situation and give his guys a chance to make a play. It certainly didn't help that Marrone and Hackett both wanted to run the ball forever and coached him to bail and run if his immediate reads weren't open. That's pisspoor coaching. EJ had his own flaws for sure but the coaching around him in Buffalo was hot garbage. Marrone is a moody weirdo, Hackett always looked like he was in over his head, and the QB coach was Todd Downing, who, at the time, had a resume of being basically an assistant to other assistant coaches up until 2011 when he was hired to coach QBs in Detroit. He did really well with Derek Carr from 2015 to 2016 and was even promoted to OC for 2017 where he promptly drove that entire side of the ball into the ground all the way to China and was fired as soon as the season ended. 

 

You could even say that EJ had a fairly decent supporting cast having Woods, Watkins, Goodwin and Hogan. He had Glenn and Wood in their prime up front, had Fred Jackson and CJ Spiller, but things just didn't pan out.

 

I also don't think Marrone liked the kid from day one, honestly. He wanted to roll with Kolb until he was viciously attacked by a floor-mat, leaving them no choice to start Manuel, who had missed most of the pre-season that year due to injury but was rushed back for week one. EJ takes his lumps in 2013, heads into 2014 thinking he's the unquestioned starter... but then... what was it... ten days before the regular season started and here comes Kyle Orton and there goes EJ's confidence. Now he has a decent veteran to learn from, maybe that's what he was told, but four games in he gets sent to the bench and has been a backup ever since. And there was all that friction between Marrone and Whaley who were at polar opposites when it came to the QB position. Marrone kicked and screamed for a vet QB until he got his way all while Whaley was like, "play the kid!" No cohesion up top makes things difficult. 

 

I dunno, a lot goes into it. He definitely shouldn't have been a first round pick, him being taken 16th overall created pressure from a good part of the fan-base who sees "first round pick EJ Manuel, oh, he must be awesome to go in the first, he better not suck!!" and they call for his benching the minute he throws one crappy pass. I think at best, EJ could've been a high quality game manager. Rely on the run, play it safe most times, protect the ball, eat up the clock and every now and then let him take some shots. With better coaching and understanding he could've been a guy like that. But, his flaws combined with a poor coaching setup in Buffalo pretty much doomed his career by the end of his rookie season.

Edited December 27, 2018 by blacklabel

[Bill_with_it]

A better question is what went right......

[Big Turk]

He couldn't get the plays down no matter how they kept trying to simplify the playbook for him. That was coming from a former teammate who said the coaches just were constantly frustrated by him.

[SinceThe70s]

Who are Buffalo Bills 1st round QB picks Alex?

[OldTimeAFLGuy]

16 minutes ago, SinceThe70s said:

Who are Buffalo Bills 1st round QB picks Alex?

 

ALEX: "we've invalidated THAT category out of sympathy. Please select ANOTHER category"..............

Edited December 27, 2018 by OldTimeAFLGuy

[LABILLBACKER]

Is this nostalgia EJ week?