Originally posted by jonnydel:
Originally posted by dj43:
Originally posted by thl408:
Originally posted by dj43:
The upcoming Seahawks game will go a long way to telling us what the season may be like. The "learning on the fly" narrative will only last so long. The weather cannot be used as an excuse for the poor first-half performance. Nor can we take solace in the fact he had some good runs. He was drafted to play QB better than Jimmy G, not to be another Cam Newton. The rest of the Super Bowl-ready roster will not be very happy if that learning experience extends into the Settle game and beyond. Not only will Lance lose favor with the roster, but Shanahan will lose favor as well if he stays with an ineffective QB at the expense of losing a potential home-field advantage in the playoffs.
OTOH, we can be encouraged if Lance can eliminate the most glaring mistakes like the Kroft overthrow. There was no excuse for that one. As Steve Young said, success will be measured in week-to-week improvement. As of now, Lance has plenty of room to improve. He needs to get to the point where he plays the game naturally rather than appearing to be playing like a robot at times.
Improvement will be incremental with dips along the way, so the path of development won't be linear. I do think his lack of experience in college throwing the ball will have an effect in how he looks to start this year. He needs to stop staring down his first read.
I certainly agree. As to how that works with the team we won't know until it happens. I think this is a 14-3 team if he can play at roughly the same level as a healthy JG. I picked 10-7 before Deebo resigned. 11-6 after. I'm still at the same point.
I finished watching the tape this morning. There's definitely some weird takes out there, especially on twitter and from people who, "watched the tape". Saw one guy, who I was actually on his podcast last year, say Lance had, "zero bad decisions". Well, he definitely had some bad decisions. It's going to be a lot of swinging back and forth as he figures out the NFL. For example, and I'll show it in my video later today. Early on he missed a 3rd down conversion throw to Deebo on a sucker concept vs Tampa2. Just didn't anticipate it and took the short throw for a 4th down. Later, against a soft C2 he tried to hit Deebo on the DIG on another sucker concept but this time the defense was playing a lot softer and he nearly threw a pick.
That shows he's seeing the mistake from earlier, trying to correct it but not identifying how the defense is playing differently.
Bear in mind, this is tough stuff to process all the data they're seeing in less than 3 seconds and react. I like that he's seeing it on the sideline and trying to correct. But he's going to be learning a lot this way. Mistake, react, mistake, react. Work it in until he's seen it and experienced it a lot. That's why I always chuckle at the, "Jimmy is an 8 year vet making these mistakes" but then saying Lance not playing last year did nothing. Well, which is it, do years not playing count and help or don't they? It was always going to be a process for Lance.
What I like right now is that he's gotten over the hurdle of knowing and being comfortable with the nomenclature, the playbook and the "book" knowledge. So, now it's time to go learn how to read and react.
If you can, show how using his eyes to move the underneath defenders could have helped. I know that takes polish and Lance isn't there yet, but if teams zone up against him, he'll need to quickly get accustomed to doing this.