Category Matt Waldman

Nathan Miller: Robert Griffin III – First Ballot Inductee? Not so Fast…

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Contributing writer Nathan Miller believes Robert Griffin is an excellent prospect about to meet a brick wall. Miller thinks Griffin’s deficiencies have been masked by his gaudy box score totals and defenses that didn’t get to scout his tendencies. Photo by Mike Davis.

By Nathan Miller 

Nathan Miller is a guest contributor as a part of an invitation to readers and writers to submit material. You can find his other post on Darren McFadden here. 

First-ballot Hall of Famer. Sounds ridiculous? Well it should. Griffin has ridden a wave of excitement into the league and expectations are stratospheric thanks to the deafening sound of RG3 Groupies.

Some argued that he was the better choice than Andrew Luck in the NFL Draft. Others felt he was trying too hard to earn this No.1 overall pick and questioned his true intentions. They talk about Griffin’s football intelligence, his athletic prowess, and game-changing ability. Although Griffin has rewarded many fantasy owners who drafted him in the mid-rounds of their summer drafts, there is more to a quarterback’s game than great athleticism. Ask Michael Vick, Vince Young, Cam Newton, Steve Young, John Elway, and Terry Bradshaw.

It would be arrogant to not recognize his gifts as an athlete, and an inspiring captain of his offense. Robert Griffin has demonstrated that he is capable of playing at the highest level. He is an accurate passer, an intelligent player, and a super-human athlete. He will likely graduate into the company of elite players in the future, but only after honing his skills at the highest level and upon closer evaluation, this might take longer than many think.

The reason for the longer time frame is a two-fold question where the answers might prove troublesome: Can Griffin stay healthy long enough to realize his potential and can he correct a tendency to tip his hand to the defense? Continue reading →

Sunday Fantasy Mailbag 10/14/2012

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A.J. Green and Matt Stafford for Jimmy Graham and Michael Vick? Are you really going to ask a UGA employee this question? See below. Photo by Football Schedule.

The weekend mailbag is back! I’m also going to field Twitter questions. I think “new” technology like Twitter is fantastic and fantastically comical because as people we’re always behind the curve with how to use new tools. So I’m probably going to make fun of the questions I get on Twitter. If I rag on you or your question, I will provide a serious answer. Continue reading →

On The Couch With Sigmund Bloom Podcast

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A little mood imagery for On The Couch listening.

This Week’s On The Couch with Sigmund Bloom stars OFBG (original Footballguy) Jason Wood and yours truly as we have a quality football hang:

  • Alfred Morris and Washington’s RB situation
  • Chris Johnson’s trade value
  • Robert Griffin’s fantasy value
  • Wes Welker moving forward
  • Joe Flacco
  • What’s under the cushions of Sigmund’s couch
  • Michael Vick

Quarterback Development: When Practice Reports Are Useless

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Tom Brady succeeds because he doesn’t avoid risking failure every day. It’s how great decision-making is developed and refined in the NFL. Photo by Jeffrey Beall.

 

“A lot of times you learn from your mistakes. You know, you gotta make the mistakes to learn from them,” he said. “And you never know how tight a window is until you throw it, and it was too tight. You try to force a ball into certain areas and then you learn from it, you say, ‘I can’t do that.’ You install new plays and you try to run them over and over and you try to identify all the problems where they come up and then really make good decisions.

“We’re out here running a ton of plays every day, 75, 80 plays a day,” he continued. “Believe me, they’re not all perfect, there’s a lot of learning every day in a lot of the situational stuff that we do. All of it is a good learning experience, whether Ryan or Brian are in there taking the snap, I’m paying attention to see what I would do if I was in there and vice versa. And that’s the only way to play football, you can’t sit here and only concentrate when you’re in. You gotta learn from every day on the field, every rep in practice, mentally and then physically when you get a chance to go out and do it, you gotta try to execute it as best you can.”

–Tom Brady talking about the value of taking risks and making mistakes in practice. 

This quote from Field Yates’ piece posted yesterday on ESPN’s New England Patriots Report is a perfect example of why readers have to be careful about what beat reporters and analysts observe at practice. Continue reading →

Boxscore Bottom Dwellers to Watch

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In a different era of football not so long ago, Chris Owusu would have been a third or fourth-round pick. Find out why he’s a Box Score Bottom Dweller to watch. Photo by Michael Li.

The most prevalent question with the most divergent opinions during preseason football is, of course, How much should pay attention to the games? If you play fantasy football in a dynasty league the answer is quite a bit. The production that these end of the roster players earn shouldn’t be weighted heavily, but watching how they get their yardage and touchdowns is worth a look. Here’s a list of players I’m watching this year. They’re battling for roster spots, much less any significant playing time. However, this is where players like Victor Cruz Continue reading →

Separating The Dark From The Dark: QB Tyler Wilson, Victim or Perpetrator?

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Prologue: M. Degas Teaches Art & Science At Durfee Intermediate School by Phillip Levine

Even 2.9 seconds of football can generate an hour of analysis. Photo by Erik Daniel Drost.

I love the phrase “separating the dark from the dark.” It signifies that we never have certainty about anything despite the fact that we often want to manufacture a world filled with absolutes. Life is rarely black and white. Pulitzer Prize winning writer Phillip Levine, a former factory worker who often writes about work-class life in Detroit, draws a great portrait Continue reading →

Coming of Age: Young Vets to Watch

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Randall Cobb? I love this guy. I want to see the Packers use him like Percy Harvin and Wes Welker wrapped up in an electric package. Photo by Elvis Kennedy

Something I emphasize when it comes to fan expectations of young players transitioning from college to the NFL is to account for the Great Emotional Divide. College football is an insulated world where university athletic programs fill its players’ time with a full slate of activities so there is little idle time. Moreover, these programs often employ staff to monitor participation in each of these activities.

The NFL is not as tightly managed because the players are too old to be treated as anything less than men. Colleges and universities exist in that gray area where 95 percent of its students are still socially young men, or even boys, transitioning into manhood. College football programs can use this gray area to its advantage by protecting its investment with rules that minimize the potential for law-breaking behavior.

That’s a topic for another time. Another consequence of these “live your life by the numbers” schedules imposed on college football players is that they are not use to the freedom that comes when they leave NCAA programs and enter the real world. Despite the fact that football players make unreal money as professionals, the looser schedules and expectation for players to train and study on their own is as real as it gets.

These new freedoms combined with significantly tougher competition, more complex mental components of the game, and vastly higher expectations can lead to something that these young athletes aren’t use to doing on the football field that can hold them back: thinking. When an athlete starts thinking on the field of play he hesitates. When he hesitates, he’s a step slower. And when he’s a step slower, he’s behind. And when he’s behind, he makes mistakes or misses opportunities he should have exploited.

Remember this last paragraph as you spend this summer reading Continue reading →