V3 said:
What I'm looking for in Bradford is improvement of certain aspects of his game. They haven't improved. On the other board, I was labeled a Bradford apologist because of how much I defended him. I feel like he should be showing progress in specific areas by now. That's all.
Brady doesn't have to prove anything to me because he's already proven it. And no, I'm not looking for 5000 yds with 50 TDs. How about being able to consistently go through his reads, look off defenders, find the open WR? Or perhaps, not stare down your WR to the point that everyone on the D-line knows when you're going to throw it and where which explains why he has so many balls batted down at the line? Maybe try a pump fake every now and then to combat that or even to open up his WR's down field? He's shown some improvement in the pocket awareness department but it's still not good enough. How about better touch on those corner fade routes? He even has issues with hitting wide open WR's on occasion.
He's well into his fourth year and people are still wondering if he's a legit NFL QB- at least the unbiased people are. It's a legit question. If you want to wait to have the debate until after the season is over, that's fine with me. I even said as much in my original post.
Well, let's look at it objectively.
Everyone believed Bradford progressed nicely from 2011 to 2012, right? And to start the season he had a decent game. No problem with his improvement so far. Decent game against Atlanta with another 4th quarter surge when good QBs are supposed to take advantage of those situations. Right? No problem with his improvement really. Then all of a sudden *BAM* two crappy games in a row for whatever reason anyone wants to assign. Just crappy games, period. Now everyone is jumping ship. Because there were very few concerns about Bradford after the 2nd half of 2012 up until the Dallas game. Normal concerns, yes. He missed that throw, threw that one too hard, didn't lay that screen pass in, missed that open guy, etc. Those are just normal everyday problems that fans of about 28 teams have with their QB.
All that other stuff in the middle ... I've done just a ton of "tape study" on Bradford over the past couple of years, and I don't see it as quite that bad. Two games, sure. That's not who he is though since Fisher got here and started to stabilize stuff around him. Twice, yeah. But again ... that's not who he is, and every QB on those 28 teams I mentioned earlier makes the same mistakes.
I'd also be interested in knowing how a casual observer such as you or myself could possibly know what Bradford sees or doesn't see. Your argument suggests that Bradford doesn't see the field very well, but an inverse argument could also be made that he sees the field fine, but the receivers aren't getting to where these timing passes need to go. Or maybe a throwing lane is clogged and he didn't see the guy the aerial shot showed running free. Or maybe he feels the pressure and wants to delay sack number 119 in favor of hitting his first progression. Or maybe underneath routes really are an extension of our running game (as per Schottenheimer) and this is the majority of what we'll be running this year (yay).
The team's got a lot of youth on it right now and that's what I see as the problem. Execution across the board is CLEARLY lacking, and despite what others will say, that's not a reflection of coaching. They run this same shyte non-stop during practices, constantly work on technique, constantly work on responsibilities, and constantly go over this stuff in film study. They're just not playing as a team, and that includes all 53 of them; including, but not limited to, Bradford. When they finally get there, and it will be this year, then everyone's individual performances will continue to improve. This isn't Jackson, Amendola, Gibson and Givens and Kendricks. This is (insert RB here [2nd yr, 2nd yr, rookie]), Austin (rookie), Pettis (yr 3), Givens (yr 2) and Cook. Average time (aka familiarity) with this offense ... 1.2 yrs.
Anyway. Just throwing some other shyte out there.
