Baghdad Bob was the hype man we all deserve. Yelling about how there are no Americans in Baghdad next to a split screen of American tanks rolling down the streets of Baghdad takes some serious dedication, yo.
Oh right, the topic.
Put me down for this as a lukewarm take. Love had an excellent half of a season. Could he be the best in the division next year? Maybe, but Jared Goff has been playing at a high level for years. Defenses know how to attack him and he has continued to put up numbers and, more importantly, win big games. That’s the measure of a good QB.
The narrative on Jared Goff is cemented in stone. He is a pro going into his 9th year and Love is going into his second season as a starter. The national media is going to daydream and project endless possibilities on LOVE until proven otherwise and Goff is the QB who needs to be salvaged by first McVay and then Brad, Dan and Ben. It is what it is. Maybe Love will be the better QB long term. Perhaps he is the more physically gifted qb. At the end of the day, Goff will win a lot in Detroit and hopefully a few super bowls. Where he ranks amongst his peers and behind the top 5 or so qbs in the NFL should not be an issue.
My biggest problem with the “data” driven analysis of football is that much of the “data” is based on the subjective grading of plays.
It reminds me of the wine industry a few decades ago when producers would produce product geared towards the palates of a few select highly influential critics in order to achieve a higher numeric grade. In the end you have number that can be used to rank things but it’s still based on opinions. Useful for separating the good from the truly awful but not much else.
I’m far, far from the biggest Goff fan, but I don’t get the hype with Love.
My take on Love was and remains to be that I was more impressed with their play designs and the coaching than Love himself. Every time I watched GB games he was often times throwing to WRs that were running wide open and when he was forced to play from in the pocket, make quick decisions, or throw WRs open he was just another guy.
Now with another year of film, it’ll be interesting to see if coaches are able to counter those designs and make Love make the play rather than the play call making the play.
I am pretty good at numbers and understanding what they really mean. It gives me a chuckle when people put too much stock into a fake number and say things like “but its better than nothing!” They claim to be data driven but clearly they lack something upstairs. Because some of the crap they are hanging their hat on is literally worse than having nothing.
In basketball its common for someone to throw up a long bomb to end the quarter/half. Some NBA players admit to releasing the ball a split second too late so it doesn’t count against their shooting percentage. I have noticed some NFL QBs do the same thing with end of half hail mary plays, or end of game hail mary plays that won’t win them the game. The accidentally throw the ball out of bounds instead of what its catchable for an interception.
