Post by Big L on Aug 31, 2018 4:51:42 GMT -5
The Bridgewater Trade Showed That the Jets’ QB Strategy Worked
Even before drafting Sam Darnold, the Jets wanted to build a QB room that would foster a rookie’s development and give the team plenty of options. Now, it looks like Sam Darnold is set to take over, with a strong mentor and backup in Josh McCown, and New York gets value for having brought Teddy Bridgewater through an entire offseason of strong work.
By ALBERT BREER August 30, 2018
Todd Bowles doesn’t hold back in calling his defense against the Jets’ first-team offense during training camp. So it was that, at one point a few weeks ago, the coach sent the house after Sam Darnold, who quickly threw the ball to a receiver running a crossing route in heavy traffic.
Darnold was picked off. But the cool part for the Jets was what happened after that.
The next time offensive coordinator Jeremy Bates called the play, Bowles sent a similar tough-love blitz Darnold’s way. The rookie QB checked it at the line, took the snap, went to his next read and got the ball elsewhere. It’s a subtle thing, of course, unnoticeable to anyone without a play sheet and a whistle. But it was important, and another pretty solid clue during a summer full of them into who Darnold is.
“He learns from his mistakes, that’s the biggest thing,” Bowles said from his office earlier this week. “He learns from his mistakes and he rarely makes the same mistake twice. Any rookie can only get better by playing, so we’re pleased with the progress he’s making week-by-week. That’s been exciting.”
That’s good, because by the looks of it, Darnold’s going to be playing plenty.
The Jets dealt Teddy Bridgewater and a 2019 sixth-round pick to the Saints on Wednesday afternoon for a 2019 third-round pick. It meant, of course, getting a really good return for their March dice roll on the former Vikings’ first-round pick. More important than that, it meant Darnold’s path to starting at Ford Field on Sept. 10 had officially been cleared.
When I asked Bowles on Monday night whether he’d made a decision at quarterback yet, he answered, “No, we have not. … We just haven’t talked about it, and we won’t until after the last preseason game. We’ll sit down as a staff and we’ll go over every position, including that one, and we’ll come out with our guys.”
But at this point it’d be an epic upset if Darnold isn’t starting in two Mondays, and his ability learn on the fly as he did in the case above is just one reason why.
We’re starting with Bowles and the Jets, and why the quarterback dance that the team’s brass engaged in over the last six months couldn’t have gone much better than it has.
The background, of course, is pretty simple. The Jets take a chance on Bridgewater, returning from a gruesome September 2016 knee injury, with no assurance he’d ever get all the way back to his form of 2015, when started all 16 games for the Vikings and led them to an 11-5 record and the playoffs. The Jets bring back Josh McCown as a depth piece/mentor. They trade up three spots in the draft, from 6 to 3, then get lucky enough to see the top quarterback on their board fall into their laps.
The idea was, first and foremost, and obviously, to get the long-term answer at the position that the team has been missing since Brett Favre displaced Chad Pennington on the campus of Hofstra a decade ago. And the rest hasn’t exactly been by accident, which Bowles detailed as we talked the other night.
First, they wanted to create the right environment for whoever they’d draft, which is why McCown, basically a coach at this point, and Bridgewater, who’s got a high football IQ and is a prince of a guy, were the right fits. When they pieced it together, that infrastructure could just as well have been set up for Baker Mayfield or Josh Rosen. It just so happened that the chips fell in a way to bring Darnold to Jersey.
With this set-up, the Jets were in essence giving Darnold a couple older brothers. The benefit? Think of your coach as your dad. There are certain things you’d go and ask your older brother, that you wouldn’t ask you dad. Same idea here, with the quarterbacks becoming blunt sounding boards for one another.
“It’s automatic,” Bowles said. “Whether it’s Sam seeing it with Josh, or Teddy seeing it with Sam, or Josh seeing it with Sam, or Josh seeing it with Teddy, soon as they see something, they’re quick to help each other. It’s almost every couple plays that it happens. It feels like every other play, ‘You should’ve done this’ or ‘I saw that’ or ‘This read’ or ‘that read’ is there.
“That’s just good to see, because Jeremy and bacon [Lombardi] coach them, and that’s great, but they’re also getting on-field, in-game analysis from other quarterbacks.”
Second, they needed Bridgewater to play well to reap the benefits of what they put together. He has.
But the risk, in Bowles’ view, wasn’t about that. It was simply about Bridgewater’s health. If he was right physically, the coach didn’t have much doubt—so the Jets felt they knew, to a reasonable degree, what they’d get if he could beat the odds injury-wise.
“The fact that he’s been healthy, I knew he could play,” Bowles told me, before the trade. “He’s gone out and shown that. He’s done everything. Teddy brings such exuberance to practice. He does everything with a smile on his face. He’s just a joy to be around.”
Third, in having three guys fighting for snaps, the rookie would be held to a higher standard. Again, at the time that the quarterback room was being assembled, they didn’t know it’d be Darnold joining the other two, but they did know that there’d be upside to having an old pro and a young veteran competing with a draft pick.
That’s how it played out. When I asked Bowles what has stuck out about Darnold’s progress, he didn’t point to one thing. It’s a little bit of everything. Maybe that would have happened anyway, based on Darnold’s makeup. But having to work for playing time usually doesn’t hurt.
“It’s not a big leap, it’s just a progression every day with a rookie,” Bowles said. “You learn and you try to progress every day, every week. You don’t make it in one place, you have to make it all over, whether it’s mechanics, whether it’s reads, whether it’s feel in the pocket, running, it’s a constant progress. So I don’t see huge progress to say, ‘He got better at this exponentially.’ He just gets better every week.”
Add it up and you can see the dominoes falling. Darnold plays well, creates flexibility for the Jets to deal a quarterback. Bridgewater plays well, creates a market for his services. McCown stays healthy, and the team has a viable sounding board and backup option at the position.
It couldn’t have worked out much better. That leaves Bowles with one thing left to do, and he hasn’t done it yet. But listening to him the other day, he certainly didn’t seem far off from making the call that everyone is expecting.
“Rookies can only get better if they play,” he said. “The more they play, the more they see. And the more they see, the better they get. We’re pleased with his progress.”
Tuesday’s trade implicitly affirmed that, of course. What’s left now is to say it explicitly. So we’ll stay tuned for that.
Even before drafting Sam Darnold, the Jets wanted to build a QB room that would foster a rookie’s development and give the team plenty of options. Now, it looks like Sam Darnold is set to take over, with a strong mentor and backup in Josh McCown, and New York gets value for having brought Teddy Bridgewater through an entire offseason of strong work.
By ALBERT BREER August 30, 2018
Todd Bowles doesn’t hold back in calling his defense against the Jets’ first-team offense during training camp. So it was that, at one point a few weeks ago, the coach sent the house after Sam Darnold, who quickly threw the ball to a receiver running a crossing route in heavy traffic.
Darnold was picked off. But the cool part for the Jets was what happened after that.
The next time offensive coordinator Jeremy Bates called the play, Bowles sent a similar tough-love blitz Darnold’s way. The rookie QB checked it at the line, took the snap, went to his next read and got the ball elsewhere. It’s a subtle thing, of course, unnoticeable to anyone without a play sheet and a whistle. But it was important, and another pretty solid clue during a summer full of them into who Darnold is.
“He learns from his mistakes, that’s the biggest thing,” Bowles said from his office earlier this week. “He learns from his mistakes and he rarely makes the same mistake twice. Any rookie can only get better by playing, so we’re pleased with the progress he’s making week-by-week. That’s been exciting.”
That’s good, because by the looks of it, Darnold’s going to be playing plenty.
The Jets dealt Teddy Bridgewater and a 2019 sixth-round pick to the Saints on Wednesday afternoon for a 2019 third-round pick. It meant, of course, getting a really good return for their March dice roll on the former Vikings’ first-round pick. More important than that, it meant Darnold’s path to starting at Ford Field on Sept. 10 had officially been cleared.
When I asked Bowles on Monday night whether he’d made a decision at quarterback yet, he answered, “No, we have not. … We just haven’t talked about it, and we won’t until after the last preseason game. We’ll sit down as a staff and we’ll go over every position, including that one, and we’ll come out with our guys.”
But at this point it’d be an epic upset if Darnold isn’t starting in two Mondays, and his ability learn on the fly as he did in the case above is just one reason why.
We’re starting with Bowles and the Jets, and why the quarterback dance that the team’s brass engaged in over the last six months couldn’t have gone much better than it has.
The background, of course, is pretty simple. The Jets take a chance on Bridgewater, returning from a gruesome September 2016 knee injury, with no assurance he’d ever get all the way back to his form of 2015, when started all 16 games for the Vikings and led them to an 11-5 record and the playoffs. The Jets bring back Josh McCown as a depth piece/mentor. They trade up three spots in the draft, from 6 to 3, then get lucky enough to see the top quarterback on their board fall into their laps.
The idea was, first and foremost, and obviously, to get the long-term answer at the position that the team has been missing since Brett Favre displaced Chad Pennington on the campus of Hofstra a decade ago. And the rest hasn’t exactly been by accident, which Bowles detailed as we talked the other night.
First, they wanted to create the right environment for whoever they’d draft, which is why McCown, basically a coach at this point, and Bridgewater, who’s got a high football IQ and is a prince of a guy, were the right fits. When they pieced it together, that infrastructure could just as well have been set up for Baker Mayfield or Josh Rosen. It just so happened that the chips fell in a way to bring Darnold to Jersey.
With this set-up, the Jets were in essence giving Darnold a couple older brothers. The benefit? Think of your coach as your dad. There are certain things you’d go and ask your older brother, that you wouldn’t ask you dad. Same idea here, with the quarterbacks becoming blunt sounding boards for one another.
“It’s automatic,” Bowles said. “Whether it’s Sam seeing it with Josh, or Teddy seeing it with Sam, or Josh seeing it with Sam, or Josh seeing it with Teddy, soon as they see something, they’re quick to help each other. It’s almost every couple plays that it happens. It feels like every other play, ‘You should’ve done this’ or ‘I saw that’ or ‘This read’ or ‘that read’ is there.
“That’s just good to see, because Jeremy and bacon [Lombardi] coach them, and that’s great, but they’re also getting on-field, in-game analysis from other quarterbacks.”
Second, they needed Bridgewater to play well to reap the benefits of what they put together. He has.
But the risk, in Bowles’ view, wasn’t about that. It was simply about Bridgewater’s health. If he was right physically, the coach didn’t have much doubt—so the Jets felt they knew, to a reasonable degree, what they’d get if he could beat the odds injury-wise.
“The fact that he’s been healthy, I knew he could play,” Bowles told me, before the trade. “He’s gone out and shown that. He’s done everything. Teddy brings such exuberance to practice. He does everything with a smile on his face. He’s just a joy to be around.”
Third, in having three guys fighting for snaps, the rookie would be held to a higher standard. Again, at the time that the quarterback room was being assembled, they didn’t know it’d be Darnold joining the other two, but they did know that there’d be upside to having an old pro and a young veteran competing with a draft pick.
That’s how it played out. When I asked Bowles what has stuck out about Darnold’s progress, he didn’t point to one thing. It’s a little bit of everything. Maybe that would have happened anyway, based on Darnold’s makeup. But having to work for playing time usually doesn’t hurt.
“It’s not a big leap, it’s just a progression every day with a rookie,” Bowles said. “You learn and you try to progress every day, every week. You don’t make it in one place, you have to make it all over, whether it’s mechanics, whether it’s reads, whether it’s feel in the pocket, running, it’s a constant progress. So I don’t see huge progress to say, ‘He got better at this exponentially.’ He just gets better every week.”
Add it up and you can see the dominoes falling. Darnold plays well, creates flexibility for the Jets to deal a quarterback. Bridgewater plays well, creates a market for his services. McCown stays healthy, and the team has a viable sounding board and backup option at the position.
It couldn’t have worked out much better. That leaves Bowles with one thing left to do, and he hasn’t done it yet. But listening to him the other day, he certainly didn’t seem far off from making the call that everyone is expecting.
“Rookies can only get better if they play,” he said. “The more they play, the more they see. And the more they see, the better they get. We’re pleased with his progress.”
Tuesday’s trade implicitly affirmed that, of course. What’s left now is to say it explicitly. So we’ll stay tuned for that.