Confession of a Dalton Defender

[*PhilHos*]

(05-26-2015, 10:10 AM)djs7685 Wrote: Most good QBs don't have the second worse passer rating of their career in their 4th year starting while maintaining a career 85.

It happened to Peyton Manning. His 4th year starting was his 2nd worse passer rating of his career up 'til that point. Manning's career passer rating after his 4th season? 85.1

Was Peyton not a good QB after his 4th year?

(05-26-2015, 10:10 AM)djs7685 Wrote: I know, injuries happened, understandable, but throwing 17 INT in a reduced role is just unacceptable.

His role was not reduced. The Bengals went with a different philosophy (they wanted to run more), but that doesn't mean Dalton's role was reduced. He still had to read defenses and was still tasked with changing the play if the defense matched up too well with what the play was called.

Plus, according to NFL.com, the Bengals called 507 passing plays and 492 rushing plays. So, even if you want to equate Dalton throwing less passes as a reduced role, he still was called to pass more than the running backs were called to run (remember some of those runs were Dalton runs).

With that said, 17 INTs is inexcusable, in my mind, no matter the role of the QB. DON'T TURN THE BALL OVER!

(05-26-2015, 10:10 AM)djs7685 Wrote: I think that most good QBs also don't have a career 57.8 rating in the playoffs with less than 900 yards and a 1-6 TD/INT ratio in 4 games. I'm sure there are exceptions to this, but in general I don't think most QBs that end up having a great career usually look this mediocre.

And has been demonstrated time and again, many QBs have started off with poor (and poorer than Dalton's) playoff stats and yet have won a Super Bowl. Flacco is the first that comes to mind.

(05-26-2015, 10:10 AM)djs7685 Wrote: I will promise you that more people would cut Andy slack if he was a consensus top 5 or top 10 QB in the regular season, even if he had some blunders in the playoffs. I know that he would still have plenty of critics, but I guarantee that he would be given a break by a lot of the "haters" if he was more than ol' Average Andy from September - January every year.

I can agree with this, plus add that if Andy was also like your "prototypical QB." If Andy had the cannon arm and was super athletic and was drafted in the 1st round, then I would think he'd also be given more latitude.

(05-26-2015, 10:10 AM)djs7685 Wrote: With that said, I believe in Andy in 2015. I don't agree with the people saying that as long as Andy is here that there's no way this team can succeed. If he gets hot at the right time, this team could be very dangerous. The only problem is that Andy hasn't shown much to make any of us think he can go on a streak like October 2013 when it really counts. People bring up that month a lot on here, but he never did anything like that beforehand and he still has yet to replicate it since. I'm sure I can find some crappy QBs of the past that had 1 hot month of their career, and I doubt many of the uber-Andy-homers would be propping those guys up because of it. I don't want to downplay what Andy did because it was definitely impressive, but how impressive is it if it doesn't happen again? Joe Flacco gets respect around the league because of the way he's learned to turn his game up in the playoffs. I don't think many people would be so impressed with him had he gone on his streaks in October instead.

Let's not forget, that the first 6 games last year, Andy was pretty consistent (his other big criticism). He wasn't flashy, but he was getting the job done. That's one of the reasons I have hope that Andy can turn around his playoff performances.