Posts tagged Andrew Luck

Creating Bad Luck

0 Comments read Players, Quarterback
Even the best prospects make mistakes. Sometimes it's the type of mistakes they make that elevate them from the pack. Photo by Michael Li.

Note: The posts of 2012 Draft Prospects this month are brief examples of plays that highlight specific skills and/or deficiencies of a player. They are not meant to draw overall conclusions of that player’s pro potential. For a thorough analysis of these prospects – and over 150 others – purchase the 2012 Rookie Scouting Portfolio, available through a link at this site on April, 1.

Yesterday, I featured a play where Robert Griffin III reacts poorly to pressure. Today, Andrew Luck gets the same treatment. However, I believe there’s a difference between the types of mistakes that I showed with Griffin and the two I’ll show today with Luck. Griffin’s opponent tipped its hand before the snap and the Baylor quarterback missed a relatively easy read. In contrast, Luck’s opponent uses a more complex scheme and hides it before the snap like a stone-faced killer. Luck still makes mistakes, but the errors are against a more advanced concept with stronger execution. Continue reading →

Reads Listens Views 2/17/2012

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Here’s What A Once In A Lifetime Player Looks Like

[youtube=http://youtu.be/H0GCixb2QjI]

Lather, rinse, repeat . . .

Thank You And More Comin’

NFL Draft Season is clearly underway and there’s a lot of great information available online. For those of you just getting acquainted with the Rookie Scouting Portfolio, thank you for visiting – and thank you for the massive (at least for me) immediate following on my RSP Facebook page. Check it out and like it if you haven’t (I gave away 8 free copies of past RSPs there yesterday). If you’re a long-time listener be a first-time caller and leave me a post about the RSP on the wall.

Best of all, Continue reading →

A Bait and Switch Fiesta: How Oklahoma State’s defense revealed chinks in Andrew Luck’s armor.

0 Comments read Players, Quarterback
Apple pie, (Chevrolet), con men, and football. Its all America unfiltered. Photo by Bucklava

I’ve always loved movies about con men. I think con men are as American as apple pie.

-Bill Paxton, American actor and director.

Good football is about successfully perpetrating a con. Almost every element of the game is designed to persuade the opponent to fall for a bait and switch. The most basic techniques of head fakes, dead legs, spin moves, and swim moves are used to execute strategies like play action passes, trap blocks, shotgun draws, and fire zone blitzes to trick opponents into a vulnerable position and ultimately earn a team an advantage.

One of the best football games I saw last week was a seesaw affair in the Fiesta Bowl where Oklahoma State edged Stanford 41-38 in overtime. The most fascinating moments of the game came when OSU’s defense faced Stanford’s offense. Both units excel at the art of the bait and switch and the game’s first quarter was a display of strategic and technical savvy that makes football a riveting contest of trickery thinly disguised as a battle of brute force.

If the Cardinals offense is a road gang of con men, Continue reading →

Reads, Listens, Views 11/4

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[youtube=http://youtu.be/Q5M37PYqJ1M]

“Welcome aboard the S.S. Campbell. This is your captain, Cecil Lammey!”

I couldn’t resist…

It’s that time of the week where I like to take a moment to thank all of you for making it a habit to read the Rookie Scouting Portfolio blog. Hopefully you find the content as enjoyable to read as it is to write. While I enjoy the comments on the blog and email messages a great deal – keep ’em coming – if you wish to show your appreciation and get a gift that keeps on giving order the 2011 Rookie Scouting Portfolio. It’s currently sold at what I call a “Lockout Jitters price” of $9.95. Get it while the aftershocks of those jitters is still in effect. Previous issues are available by emailing me (mattwaldmanrsp@gmail.com).

On behalf of the Footballguys staff and all of you who read his work, I’d like to wish Footballguy extraordinaire and RSP blog contributor Dr. Jene Bramel a speedy recovery. The good doctor did the fantasy football broadcast equivalent of “playing hurt,” by phoning in his segment on Thursday night’s Audible podcast from a hospital bed.

Continue reading →

Logic (Newton) or Chance (Luck)?

0 Comments read Players, Quarterback, Reads Listens Views
By rookie QB standards Cam Newton has been incredible. In fact, he's been terrific by any standard. Photo by PDA.Photo

If you were in charge of player-personnel decisions for the NFL team that had the opportunity to choose between Cam Newton or Andrew Luck, which quarterback would you take? I think this is probably one of the most compelling questions I’ve seen all season. There are so many layers of analysis to explore with this type of question.

While Newton was considered a fine quarterback prospect, only a few really nailed him as a player capable of making a Peyton Manning/Carson Palmer impact early in his career. And even fewer did as good of a job debunking the “running quarterback” myth with Newton than Chris Kouffman and Simon Clancy. Their analysis of Cam Newton was dead-on this winter. I highly recommend you make this your lunchtime read. I think the work they did was most impressive and something to learn from.

But then there’s Luck, who is considered the best prospect in the last 20 years. Unlike Newton, Luck is a three-year starter in a pro-style offense that uses West Coast concepts. Luck also has freedom to change plays at the line of scrimmage with the authority of veteran pro quarterbacks while Newton played in what is conceptually recognized as a highly simplified offense by comparison at Auburn. Furthermore, Luck is an athletic quarterback who is more physically mobile along the lines of Ben Roethlisberger or Tarvaris Jackson than Peyton Manning or Tom Brady.

So what do you do, take arguably the “best quarterback prospect in the past 20 years” or take arguably “the best performing rookie quarterback in the past 20 years?” Continue reading →

Best of the Q&A Mail Bag

0 Comments read Matt Waldman
Time to answer some mail (although mine arrived on a screen). Photo by Kris Krug

Questions came this morning on Twitter and the names in parenthesis are Twitter accounts.

Q (Dave Larkin): Is this the day Mark Ingram breaks out?

A: I think this five-week stretch with Carolina, Tampa (twice), Indianapolis, and Saint Louis is the time that Mark Ingram is going to either build steam or become a wait-til-next year guy. Either way, I don’t think Mark Ingram has shown anything counter to his standing as a top-tier draft prospect at his position. Carolina has the best chance to maintain a points pace with the Saints offense, but the next four opponents will struggle offensively and I think Ingram will then see more game-sealing opportunities.

Q(Haydn239): How close are Landry Jones and Andrew Luck in talent?

A: I think it’s Luck and not even close. Cam Newton might have a better statistical year this year than Luck next year because Newton has the great athleticism combined with smarts and an offensive system that really has been tailored well for him, but I think Luck’s demonstration of how to change plays at the line of scrimmage and manage a game is rare.

Luck runs a west coast offense that is very close to what we see in the NFL and his ability to manipulate a defense before the snap is very much like Manning or Brady. I just watched him against UCLA last week on a 99-yard drive where he consistently moved around his personnel to the optimal run or pass play after getting the defense to reveal its base shell. This isn’t something that we see very often with college football quarterbacks and it is not that noticeably impressive to the casual fan because it doesn’t involve athleticism.

Landry Jones is a nice physical talent with the type of skills to have been a top-tier guy in other drafts. He still is a top-tier QB prospect. However, Luck is in another realm because he is given the conceptual keys to the offense that few quarterbacks his age are.

Q(Baxinpin): Thoughts on Jahvid Best the rest of the way?

A: Best is a terrific receiver from the backfield and I think the Lions are a smart enough group to make offensive adjustments to exploit defensive weaknesses that will generate big plays in the next 6-8 weeks. However, I don’t think the Lions have enough evidence to change their minds about Best and use him as a 15-20 carry back.

I think it will take injuries to other offensive pieces in the passing game and Best to show he can handle a higher workload to prove to the Lions that he can be more of a Marshall Faulk or a Tiki Barber in terms of role. It might evolve for Best over a course of years. However, I don’t think we’ll see it this year. Maybe some big runs this year, but the Lions are a pass-first team and the addition of Mikel LeShoure in the draft was an attempt to develop a power running game that they lack.

 

Dan Shonka Part IV: Prospects Past and Present

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Joey Harrington's NFL story was a sad one according to former NFL Scout Dan Shonka. Photo by Dharmabumx.

I think it’s accurate to describe Ourlads’ Dan Shonka as one of the ultimate practitioners of football evaluation. Shonka has 39 years of football experience as a player, college recruiter, college coach, and a combined 16 years as a NFL scout for National Scouting Service, the Philadelphia Eagles, the Washington Redskins, and the Kansas City Chiefs.

Last week, Shonka agreed to speak with me about scouting, players, and the NFL. The scheduled 60 minutes became two hours of football talk that flew by. Dan was afraid I got more than I bargained for, but I told him that I got exactly what I wanted – just more than I could have expected.

In this segment of the conversation, Shonka talks about pro prospects from the past and present, including two players he thought would be great who didn’t pan out, a sneaky-good runner he and Wes Bunting both like, and his take on Andrew Luck. Continue reading →

Conversation with Wes Bunting-Part IV

0 Comments read Matt Waldman
Why is QB Matt Leinart an example of the "Four-Car Garage Theory?" National Football Post Director of College Scouting Wes Bunting explains in this conversation with Matt Waldman. Photo by TheBrit_2.

Waldman: Let’s talk about college football since the draft is your baby at the National Football Post. Tell me about some skill players that are not headliners, but they are prospects that those of us who follow the NFL Draft should become acquainted with.

Bunting: Running back Doug Martin from Boise State. Continue reading →