The Weird, Wacky and Awesome World of the NFL - General Banter thread V3

Are Osi and Jason Bell just doing one show a week this season? Used to like their Tuesday night show on BBC, seems to be just a Saturday night thing now that it's moved to ITV/Virgin. Bad time for highlight show to air, far too late after the games happen.

TNF is often like this, because of the rule that every team must be shown once and once only (excluding the opening game & Thanksgiving).

There are some other doozies on the way - pick your fav. Commanders Bears maybe. Or Jets Jags the Thursday before Christmas.

Thursday Night Football schedule for 2022 NFL season - College Football HQ (si.com)

In fairness Steelers and Browns is always going to be a bit chippy so it will have a nice edge to it anyway. And as a Bears fan who really wants Trubisky to succeed, I'll be watching and hoping he shows he can get it done when he's not being coached by an incompetent fool whose main skill is passing the blame onto others.

I was about to turn it on and remembered tnf is only on Amazon prime. I actually have prime but haha no thanks, no way I'm supporting that move.

Unfortunately from what I saw last night, there's nothing new about how he's playing. He tends to throw long passes way too high, he isn't particularly good at seeing his receivers, and yeah, he's very jumpy in the pocket (maybe he's just not used to having good pass protection, but the oline wasn't always bad in Chicago either).

Regarding the playbook, in Chicago they famously upped the complexity of the playbook in his second year, and he wasn't able to deal with it, and they dialed it back. Nagy completely overcomplicated things, and certainly my inclination was to blame the coach, but if they are doing it again in Pittsburgh, it's a sign that he just can't handle it.

Unfortunate, but he is what we thought he was I guess. A backup.

Mitch's failures have nothing to do with confidence. He still can't read a defense in his 6th year and he is consistently inaccurate throwing beyond 15 yards. Even in his 3rd season in Chicago when he got half decent pass protection and had weapons he would get baited by DBs into making rookie mistakes because both his pre and post snap reading of the game never improved.

Blaming Nagy for everything is a cop out. They are both bad at their jobs.

His college tape isn't really relevant. The NFL is a different beast and he hasn't been able to make the step up. That happens all the time.

Nice guy, but he's not an NFL starter and never will be because of his own limitations. If you want to watch relevant tape go back and watch the Falcons game from 2020, his 4th year, when he got benched in the 2nd half for Foles. The final bit of hope I had in Mitch died that game.

I mean sometimes players look good in college and look bad in the NFL. He wouldn't be the first.

I'm not going to pretend I watched every (or any) North Carolina games but having had a look at a few pre-draft profiles of him, the consensus seems to be he struggled with recognising blitzes and had poor field vision. I see nothing in his NFL career so far that suggests these takes were incorrect.

I'd be sceptical how much responsibility he had at diagnosing and changing plays pre-snap as a one year starter too, and he doesn't seem to be too adept at it in the NFL either.

I think Mitch has post snap issues reading the field. He doesn't know what he is looking at when they are making too many adjustments. If he knows what he is looking at he is a great top tier QB. Can't remember exactly how good Georgia were his year but the end result is a college defense won't be able to hide things and run as many variations as an NFL defense.

In college if they had busted protection or he was unsure on a play it is easier to be sensible. Get rid of it, take the sack and move onto the next play which should be better. In the NFL you can't do that if you are unsure on nearly every play. To make it worse even if there are only a few things you have issues reading you will see them on nearly every single play in the NFL. If you can't deal with something you will see it repeatedly until you can't deal with it. Mitch is panicking not because he is more panicky than he was in college but he felt comfortable in college on most plays, he didn't have to think about his options because he knew them, now he is uncomfortable most of the time which leads to mistakes.

Nagy did manage a weird offense to limit the issues and simply make the reads irrelevant, Steelers are doing the same - count how many times they are running the same play. However the NFL will figure that out as well, hence why it only worked for a period in Chicago and isn't working great in Pittsburgh. No idea if he can learn to run more complex offenses and deal with everything the NFL throws at him.

Most reads are done pre snap but a QB should be checking for confirmation post snap. If the safety structure changes unexpectedly the QB will have issues seeing a safety sprinting somewhere unexpected. That means a possible interception instead of a check down as the QB won't see it without checking the safety is where expected. Many plays change the order of how routes are read depending on the safety structure or Man/Zone. A QB should be able to switch the ordering of reads post snap if needs be. The defense may show a look that gives them more rushers than there are blockers. The play will have a route that takes advantage of the space vacated by the extra rusher, or the QB will check into it. If that rusher comes he has to throw that route, if he backs off the QB should read the play as per normal. I would also argue an RPO is also a post snap read usually.

You could argue that all of the above is part of a first read, I would argue not since the QB is not checking if the player is getting open with the rest of the defense yet but I might also argue that the difference is semantics.

A QB won't be able to read a lot post snap due to time constraints so they will likely just have one person to check to confirm what is happening before running through reads, they don't need to do all of the above on every play as they are just different examples. Which person will depend from play to play and defensive play to defensive play. It will generally be a potentially free rusher or a safety. Not every play will need this either. This can also be incorporated into the rest of the play, so if a QB is trying to look off a Cover 1 safety then they will see if the safety is sprinting out to a Cover 2 position.

The difference in between NFL and college is also volume and an every week thing. Georgia will run NFL concepts, in fact the Alabama defense have run things that were only taken up by the NFL afterwards. However the players don't have the same experience running these concepts and you also have less defenders to go off script a little.

Edit: I should add that I have no idea if Mitch could have made it at a different team and I feel like a lot of "busts" are coaching busts as opposed to scouting.

They still can't throw it before the first read is meant to get open. Checking the safety is headed in the expected direction is a fraction of a second and they should have enough time to check their first read before the route can get open. The post snap read should be a quicker step than checking if the WR will get open. This isn't about buying time. It is fitted into the timing of a play with the timing of the QB's drop and when each of the reads is designed to get open.

I should be clear by post snap I don't mean that they are re reading the entire defense as I might be unclear on this. They will know what they think the defense is, they will know their first read is and they will know what adjustments might cause issues and they will just have an indicator for that.

For instance you might not want to throw a post to the center of the field if it is Cover 1. If they have 1 safety deep but you think they will rotate to Cover 2 then that post might be your first read. The order might be take the snap, check the safety is starting to run away, check the receiver is winning or is winning enough that you trust them, hit the back of the drop and throw. If you immediately start looking at the receiver after the snap you will end up staring them down and not know if the safety is holding in Cover 1 or not because they are in a completely different place to where you are looking (which is at your read).

In quick game this doesn't happen since you really don't have time but the point of that is that the defense shouldn't have time to adjust anyway.

Yep agreed. I think we are talking about the same thing but using different language. I agree pre snap reads will be far more involved and detailed than anything post snap. That read might not be right and that indeed is the issue with Mitch. It is a split second check which is really, really hard and defenses are good are disguising their coverages. Mitch seems like he has everything but that which is unfortunate but you just can't have a lever opposing teams can take advantage of in the NFL

The only Cowboys QB that I remember people laughing at you about was when you claimed Mike White was potentially a better QB than Dak Prescott if he was just given a proper chance. That opinion was and continues to be laughable.