[IndyNorm]

I never said a QB could succeed in a vacuum, but like I was saying in my last post, is the QB making the talent or is the talent making the QB? Burrow made his WR room, Hurts and Tua were bought theirs.

That's a absolutely ricockulous statement. Tyler Boyd had 2 1,000 yard receiving seasons w/ Andy Dalton throwing him the ball. The fact that he's now WR3 for the Bungles shows how good Chase and Higgins are.

It's year 2, there's no way to definitively tell who is right or wrong. All we can do is continue to watch. Sure, you can point to his stats this season, and they look convincing, but his statline isn't telling the whole story. Example, he was 27/42 for 318 yards, 4 TDs and 1 INTs vs. the Cowboys in a comeback victory. According to many articles, this was Trevor Lawrence's "coming out party", and he'd "arrived as a star". It actually concerned me that he did so well in a win against a good team, so I went and watched the game, and saw the same old Trevor Lawrence. His TDs came half on broken plays where he used his athleticism to buy time for his #2 WR Zay Jones to burn Dallas's #2 CB, who is terrible, and half on short fields courtesy of turnovers forced by the defense where most of the work was done by the running game and Lawrence got a cheap TD on a half field read. He also had an INT, a fumble that would've cost them the game against any other team, and a huge amount of luck on the final drive of regulation to get the game to OT when he threw a pass that nfl.com saw fit to put as a highlight titled "Lawrence's pass unbelievably goes through defender's hands on crucial completion", which was the ball he threw to Zay Jones to get them into FG range to go to OT. By the way, did he and the offense close that game out in OT? Nope! Rayshawn Jenkins had a 52 yard pick six to deliver the win. You know you're a fraud when you're "coming out party" is basically your defense dominating Dak Prescott and you're just lucky to have not cost your team the game with 2 turnovers on your final 2 drives.

So in other words despite having a damn good 2nd year, Lawrence still has plenty of room to improve upon. That's a scary thought for the other teams in the AFC South.

I did like Zach Wilson a lot, and I graded him in a vacuum that did not include interviews with him, and not knowing his landing spot. With Wilson, I've concluded that the New York Jets is where QB talent goes to die. I also thought that Wilson was a QB who needed a team that would sit him for a year, like the Chiefs did with Mahomes, and really needed to be developed in a similar manner to Mahomes, which of course the Jets didn't do.

Yeah, blame the Jets. I suppose you think it's the Chargers fault that Ryan Leaf didn't pan out and the Raiders fault that JeMarcus Russell didn't work out either

My point was every QB who isn't a 1 year wonder has detractors that see some "major red flag" that may or may not be there. Even Andrew Luck, who was the best QB prospect since sliced bread (or John Elway), had detractors that said RG3 was better. I had Luck as slightly better than that Wisconsin QB that had transferred from NC State that year.

Don't disagree there.

Lamar Jackson 2019: 66.1% completion rate 3,127 passing yards 36 TDs 6 INTs

That's good, but MVP good? Why did he win MVP? OH, THAT'S RIGHT, just like 2022 Fields above, we forgot to add on the rushing stats

Lamar Jackson 2019: 66.1% completion rate 3,127 passing yards 36 pass TDs 6 INT 176 carries 1,206 rushing yards 7 rush TDs

Now it makes a lot more sense why Lamar won MVP in 2019. Let's look at 2022 Justin Fields in that context:

Justin Fields 2022: 60.4% completion rate 2,242 yards 17 pass TDs 11 INT 160 carries 1143 rushing yards 8 rush TDs

Fields, out of necessity due to having one of the worst offensive lines in the league and no real supporting cast to speak of, became a Lamar Jackson style QB last year, and was very good at it. I look forward to seeing what he can do with not the worst offensive unit in the NFL around him.

I did post Fields' rushing stats, but I stated his '21 rushing stats instead of his '22. Sorry, was multi-tasking and misread the chart. That is a very impressive rushing stat. Of course so are Hurts' rushing stats: 784 yds and 10 TDs in '21 and 760 yds and 13 TDs in '22. Not sure why you don't think so, but I'm guessing it's b/c it doesn't fit your agenda.

As for Lawrence vs. Fields, would've taken Fields at the time, still would take Fields.

You're smoking crack and probably the only person on the planet who would make that decision.

Do I? Haskins is really more of the last Urban Meyer QB, he clearly preferred to take athletes and stick them at QB, they only halfway successful NFL QB he ever had was Alex Smith. That was why Burrow transferred, he was buried on the depth chart due to Urban Meyer's preferences. I shudder to think what Ryan Day could've done with him.

Maybe not. Would have thought Day had a lot to do with Haskins development and the decision, but I suppose it could have been all on Meyer. Also, not important to our discussion, but I think the case with Burrow was more that the light turned on big time between his junior and senior years at LSU. His stats as a junior at LSU at least support this.

It's a data point, like anything else. It's not going to make the evaluation, probably not going to break the evaluation. It seems to be what the people who say "(insert school here) doesn't produce good QBs" are trying to capture. That said, if Urban Meyer came back to College Football and suddenly had a QB who was being touted as a potential top draft pick, the fact that Meyer has had 1 marginally successful NFL QB in almost 20 years would give me a lot of cause to look closely at that player's film.

That's fair. I can't disagree with anything you state here.

You agreed that his point was valid while saying mine wasn't. That was the confusing part.

You guys said different things. I'm not sure why you can't understand that.

He may be that high this year, but I still think with normal injury luck instead of lottery winning level injury luck, Hurts would be in the 15-20 range of starting QBs in the NFL. It wouldn't take much regression to the mean to see that result.

I don't think the Eagles could plug anyone in at QB an get MVP level performance, but I do think that there will be at least 10 and probably more like 15 better NFL QBs than Jalen Hurts in 2023.

I suppose we'll have to see. I'm having a really hard time seeing 10 QBs who I would put money on having a better year than Hurts next year much less 15. I'd be interested in seeing your list of who you predict will be.