Quote:
Originally Posted by OneWinningDrive
Do you watch film on Lamar? And even if you do, what qualifications do you have to appraise what you're looking at? If you ask literally any professional analyst, they'll tell you that Lamar does know how to read a defense. So why should I take your word for it if you don't watch film on him and even if you do you don't know what you're looking at?
Just purely based on logic, if Lamar didn't know how to read a defense, he wouldn't be in the NFL. If all it took to play quarterback was being a supremely gifted athlete and throwing a slant/flant, there would be far more athletic players at the position than a guy who is 6'2", 216 lbs., and runs a 4.4. That's not an athletic marvel. Which is where the whole "savant" thing comes in as much as people here want to laugh at it.
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There are certain guys i like to watch, whom i trust when it comes to analyzing QBs. JT O'Sullivan and Kurt Warner have YT channels where they break games down, after the fact, in a purely Xs and Os way. Positive and negative. That kind of "film" is more beneficial for the average fan than anything anyone says in a pregame show or a segment format show, like GMF or NFL Live. Most of those shows and especially the networks want viewers to stay tuned so they're going to pimp the lesser team/player for viewership/ads reasons. But even with guys like JT and Kurt, i don't take what they say and run with it. Yes, i do watch a lot of Bengals game All 22s and if there's a game like an AFCCG coming up, i'll watch specific things simply so i'm educated on what i'm saying. I've been an NFL fan for 46 years now so i've seen a lot of ball. I've seen guys to it right and i've seen guys do it wrong. While some may agree or disagree, i consider myself a student of the game because i do more than just watch what happens. I look for why it happened.
Reading a defense is much more nuanced than your average fan understands, so when i say he can't read a defense it's mostly because if i type a lot of words like i am now, most people are going to gloss over it. He wouldn't be an NFL QB if he 'couldn't read a defense'. To be more specific, if compared to guys like Mahomes, Burrow, Purdy (a lot of people aren't gonna like that one), Manning, Brees, etc., Jackson doesn't do it like they do it. He doesn't read the defense pre-snap, then based on his keys post-snap, safeties rotating, linebacker dropping, corner's coming up to press, throw to a spot that's been vacated, based on what he believes will be the case. He doesn't use his eyes to hold or manipulate a defender. Now...when i say he doesn't, i don't mean he never has. He just does it very rarely. You can find a lot of average QBs who are the same, but they don't have his athletic ability so they end up being looked at as average pocket QBs. When you combine his numbers with his TTT, you can easily see that it's a product of him simply having the time to wait for an NFL WR to find an open spot in a defense.
Lamar has a very specific skill set and he uses that to his and his team's advantage, so it's very fair to say he's a "top QB" because top QBs are guys that win games. What divides the top QBs and the elite QBs are when they win under the most pressure. That's always prime time, late season for playoff spots and the playoffs/SB. When guys succeed in those areas consistently, they're considered elite. It's irrefutable that lamar has come up short in the playoffs.
tl;dr Lamar will get you a lot of wins but he will continue to come up short in the post season because he's very athletically gifted but the teams you meet in the playoffs are always the best teams that are left. There have been plenty of athletically gifted guys play QB but none of them were/are as elusive and as strong as Lamar to avoid sacks and being tackled in the open field.