ProFootballWeekly.com
asks personnel expert Joel Buchsbaum for his thoughts on the hottest topics in
football.
The inexact science of scouting quarterbacks
Pro scouts visit schools, watch endless hours of film and spend a full year evaluating
talent, all in hopes of improving their rosters and helping their teams advance to the
Super Bowl. However, many great players often slip through the cracks while other highly
touted prospects never realize their full potential. PFW personnel expert Joel Buchsbaum
examines the scouting process by taking a look at three quarterbacks destined for stardom.
Buchsbaum: When pro teams draft, it is basically half guessing and half science. You
can measure certain things about an athlete, but you can never really measure how an
athlete will be affected by playing against better players, getting tremendous sums of
money and being put in a new situation. You don’t know all of the scars he has had as
a youngster and how he will handle the pressure. Thus, the NFL draft becomes somewhat of a
crapshoot. However, evaluating and recruiting college players is an almost impossible
task. Unfortunately, we take these evaluations way too much to heart. With no Combines
really to speak of, with very little film and with so many players spread out all over the
country at such a young age when athletes are just maturing, trying to rate high school
players is less than a crapshoot. Sadly, when recruiters start putting five-star grades on
players, all of a sudden, if they don’t pan out to be stars in college, they are
considered disappointments and busts.
Case in point — Ron Powlus. When Ron Powlus came out of high school before he
attended Notre Dame, he was supposed to be Joe Montana and Johnny Unitas rolled into one.
The reality of the situation was that he was a very ordinary athlete who lacked foot speed
and quickness, had a decent but not exceptional arm and did not have great timing, touch,
anticipation or footwork.
Another case, though a much more high-talented case, is Phil Simms’ son, Chris
Simms. When Chris Simms came out, he was supposed to be the left-handed John Elway. The
truth of the matter is he is an above-average to good college quarterback who worked very
hard to make himself better and as a result will probably end up playing in the NFL.
However, he is not an exceptional talent. Chris Simms lacks mobility as a scrambler, has a
pretty good to good arm but not a great arm and really does not have good natural vision
on the field. He works hard at his reads, studies a lot of film and does all the extras,
but in game action, he just doesn’t see and sense the defense as well as some other
players instinctively do.
The third case is Ronald Curry, who went to North Carolina and was supposed to be the
best quarterback in the country, not Michael Vick. Curry was a very good athlete with a
strong but very erratic arm. But that’s the bottom line — he never could develop
the accuracy, timing and touch to be a top-level college quarterback and, like Simms,
never developed a really good feel for seeing the field. While Curry is much more mobile
and athletic than Simms and has a strong arm, he didn’t have the solid fundamental
background that Simms had and is not nearly as accurate throwing the ball. The bottom line
in this year’s draft, if Chris Simms is a third-round pick, you have to tip your hat
to him because he worked very hard to get there. But if people expect him to be up there
at the top of the list, like John Elway, they are just making a mistake and putting unfair
pressure on Simms.
Does Belichick stack up against Shula, Lombardi?
Patriots head coach Bill Belichick took a team that no one expected to finish above
.500 to the Super Bowl. While the Patriots had nowhere near the caliber of talent the Rams
did, Belichick proved that strategy outweighs raw talent. Buchsbaum takes a look at how
Belichick stacks up against two of the greatest coaches in NFL history — former
Dolphins head coach Don Shula and legendary Packers head coach Vince Lombardi.
Buchsbaum: The reason most experts say Bill Belichick did the greatest coaching job
ever with the Patriots last year is simple. Ninety-nine percent of the time, when a coach
turns a team around dramatically like Belichick did, there is a reason. That reason is
called talent.
When Don Shula came to the Dolphins, everyone said they were a 4-10 team, this, that
and the other thing. Or they were a 3-11 team, etc. But there was a great deal of talent
there that just wasn’t being utilized. The Dolphins already had players like Larry
Csonka, Bob Griese, Jim Kiick, Mercury Morris, Larry Little, Bob Kuechenberg and Jim
Langer in place. They had the makings of a great ball-control offense, but they just
weren’t utilizing it correctly. Yes, Shula added a number of pieces on defense, but
if not for having that great offensive base to build upon, there is no way he could have
turned the Dolphins around so quickly.
Vince Lombardi is given so, so much credit for turning the Packers around. However,
when he came to Green Bay, they already had Jim Taylor. They already had Paul Hornung.
They already had Bart Starr. They already had many of their defensive standouts that made
them such a great team, like Ray Nitschke. Yes, Lombardi made some very good personnel
moves, especially early on, drafting Herb Adderley and moving him to defense and moves
like that. But in the long run, the reason the Packers ended up collapsing was that many
of the players Lombardi picked to succeed starters Hornung and Taylor — Jim
Grabowski, Donny Anderson, Don Horn — never really panned out. As a result, his
successor Phil Bengtson was taking over an over-the-hill team that didn’t have
replacements in place.
I’m not saying Lombardi failed when he did, but in winning the second Super Bowl,
Lombardi probably did his greatest coaching ever, getting one more last good year out of
the stars and players like that and working around and not having a top back and using a
bunch of journeymen and running-back-by-committee in the backfield. |
