02-04-2022, 12:20 AM
(02-03-2022, 11:24 PM)Shake n Blake Wrote: The Bucs went 7-9 in 2019...so that team was trash till Brady showed up, right? Well, not exactly. They had the 3rd ranked offense in both points and yards. Defense showed potential being 15th in yards, but were 29th in points allowed.
That probably had something to Winston throwing 30 picks. You swap that out for an elite QB? Pretty easy to see how they won a SB. Offense was already amazing without Brady, and the D showed it's true colors when they weren't having to deal with a QB turning it over 2-3 times every week.
Same story with Peyton in Denver. Tim Tebow won a playoff game with that roster. Add in elite QB? Super Bowl.
Of course teams are way better with an elite QB. You almost need one to be in the championship conversation. But you also need a boatload of talent. Brady and Peyton weren't stupid. They picked Tampa and Denver for a reason.
Similar story here. Burrow showed serious potential last year...but the defense was abysmal and on top of a porous o-line, we had no big play explosive players. We went 2-7-1 in his starts. Not because Joey wasn't ready. I think he was.
The team just wasn't there yet. All those players I listed got started this year, pretty much.
TL/DR: I agree an elite QB inspires an entire team and has a tremendous impact on pretty much every aspect of the team. But I also say an elite QB isn't going to lift a cast of scrubs or even mediocre players to anything really. You need an elite QB and a great roster to be where we are.
Yeah, we can go back and forth on the chicken or the egg. It's tough to say which is which and I believe it's some combination. Obviously if the team is garbage there's no hope regardless. I'm not really talking about those cases. More the seismic impact that a generational player can have on your team to enable them form a whole greater than the sum of the parts.
I wouldn't get too close to those examples, either, they were just the first ones that came to mind. The fact is that Denver and Tampa took enormous leaps with those players. Not from ground zero, but enormous leaps nonetheless. It works the other way too. It's no different than New Orleans dropping from 12-4 to 9-8 their first season without Brees, Pats from 12-4 to 7-9 without Brady, SF from 12-4 to 4-12 without Young, Denver from 14-2 to 6-10 without Elway, etc. Quarterback is clearly a position that has an exponential effect across the board, which makes it difficult to isolate why and how other positions/departments are performing how they are. You can't grade any of them in a vacuum, at least not to the same extent.
A good quote is one I heard from Hubbard just now in the interview in the other thread:
"I think the thing you see with our team is that the defense plays so hard at all times because we have full faith that whenever Joe gets the ball, he can get us back into the game. So we literally never quit or question that if we keep getting stops, Joe can bring us back in the game."
In other words, they never quit for reasons that have nothing to do with talent, drafting or coaching. In fact for reasons that have nothing even to do with them. Just Joe Burrow. Now whether he's exaggerating or not, we can't say for sure. But it's still pretty powerful.
