Week Four’s games are almost upon us, as Hurricane Joaquin meanders in the Bahamas for yet another day before deciding what direction to head in and acting as a metaphor for a number of NFL teams. In Dallas, we are being treated to a very special treat. By all accounts, Brandon Weeden is in possession of an impressive set of physical tools that have allowed him to pursue careers in professional sports, first as a Baseball Pitcher and presently as an NFL Quarterback. Not as young as you might expect for a guy in only his fourth NFL season, at over 31 years old, Weeden went back to school after hitting his ceiling in Baseball and became Cleveland’s first round draft pick in 2012. Weeden is presently the Quarterback of the Dallas Cowboys, who’s regular first string Quarterback Tony Romo is out with a broken collarbone and who acquired Matt Cassel as insurance last week.
In Brandon Weeden, Dallas has a Quarterback with tremendous arm strength and accuracy. On the practice field. Matt Cassel was also a Baseball Pitcher, albeit for a much shorter stretch with only one season completed for USC. The fact that Cassel ever threw an NFL pass is surprising in that he was a back-up his entire time at USC, first behind Carson Palmer, which is perhaps understandable, but his final two seasons behind Matt Leinart are much less easy to understand. Seahawk’s coach (Uncle) Pete Carroll was running the Trojan’s football program at the time and it is a testament to just how much better USC was than everyone else that they won a National Championship with the much better Quarterback (Cassel) sitting on the bench. Bill Belichick took over the Patriots after Carrol was let go in 1999 And it is hard to imagine the Patriots drafting Cassel, albeit it 25th last at 230th overall yet still Ryan 20 places ahead of current Jets Quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick, without Carroll touting Cassel bigtime.*
Weeden and Cassel have come to the Cowboys by vastly different roads. As a seventh round pick, nothing much was expected of Cassel so the 2008 season had to be a pleasant surprise for Belichick. It was pretty clear what he had by Week Ten when Cassel, down 24-6 to Brett Farve and the Jets when the Patriots got the ball back on their own 32 with under two minutes to go in the first half Cassel mounted a furious comeback which saw him cap off the first half two-minute drill with a 19 yard TD strike to Gaffney, finish off the second half two-minute drill with an absolutely perfect pass to Randy Moss in exactly the right spot to send it into overtime and throw about a beautiful 60 yard bomb to Gaffney in the third quarter that hit him right on his hands that he booted. Gaffney catches that ball and there is no overtime, the Patriots win the game, make the playoffs where, with the team going 18-0 up to the Super Bowl the previous year, they likely would have won it all.
Weeden on the other hand has been nothing but a disappointment on the other hand. It only took Cassel eight (8) weeks/starts to win as many games as Weeden has won over his entire four (4) year career. Weeden has not won a game since December of 2012 while losing 7 starts over parts of four seasons. Cassel broke multiple bones in his throwing hand in Kansas City in 2011 after taking the Chiefs to the playoffs and going to the Pro Bowl the previous year. Things didn’t go much better for Cassel in 2012 as he struggled to re-learn how to throw with his “new” hand however he was the lone bright spot in a dismal Minnesota Viking Quarterback’s room where he either started and won, or came in off the bench and rallied from behind, in all five (5) of the Viking’s 2013 victories.
Cassel only had two (2) bad games all year in 2013, a stinker in Carolina the week that Adrian Peterson’s baby boy was murdered and blowout loss to the Bengals in a game where the entire team played horrible. In his only other game he played well enough to win in Baltimore but for some reason the officials literally gave the game to the Ravens on a non-catch (Brown was bobbling the ball as he went out of the back of the end zone) which kept the Ravens in the playoff picture for an extra week or two before the Patriots demolished them in Week Sixteen 41-7 to exact a bit of revenge for the Ravens beating them in the AFC Championship the previous season enroute to Baltimore’s Super Bowl victory that year.
Brandon Weeden has been with Dallas since Kyle Orton retired (and then un-retired to start for the Bills) prior to the 2014 season, which has given Dallas owner Jerrah Jones ample opportunity to drool over the way Weeden can sling the ball all over the field in practice. Physical talent, or lack thereof, is not the problem. When one looks at all of Weeden’s starts going back to his very first year, the win probablitlity graph looks exactly the same. In the game, and usually winning, as the second quarter ends and then, straight south. Usually zero points in the second half, with the exception of defensive or special team scores, however, on occasion, an eighty or ninety yard kick return has set up Weeden in the Red Zone and he has converted. When Weedon was with Cleveland, there was one game where Josh Gordon to a bubble screen deep into the Red Zone. One game. It is not like the Browns won but they did score points in the fourth quarter solely due to the offence. Once.
Last week, Weeden started for Dallas and the Cowboys were up 28-17 at halftime. As usual, Weeden generated zero points in the second half with only three Dallas first downs as the Cowboys went three and out often enough to limit themselves to 19 offensive plays while there longest drive of 29 yards did not even get them past mid-field. The Falcons are playing better defence under Dan Quinn to be sure but against the Eagles, where Sam Bradford’s struggles have been well documented, the Falcons gave up three (3) touchdowns including drives of 95 and 80 yards whereas against the Giants, a team that has struggled mightily in the second half this season, Atlanta still gave up ten (10) points after drives of 69 and 30 yards not to mention the Giants 57 yard drive that ended with a fumble. Both teams had single drives in the second half which accounted for more offence than the Cowboy’s total for the second half.
What Weeden has shown, and will continue to show, is that in order for a quarterback to succeed in the NFL there is a degree of mental toughness which, if it is not there, cannot be made up for regardless of the Quarterback’s athletic ability. Weeden is merely a perfect example of this but it can be seen to a lesser degree across the league. In San Francisco, Colin Kaepernick’s descent can be partially explained by defences adjusting to take away some of his strengths however the way he has fallen off a cliff this season cannot be explained by that. Same goes for Russell Wilson. The same thing happened with EJ Manuel, has happened with Geno Smith. Cam Newton has had losing streaks of five (5) games or more two of the last three seasons. The reason that it stands out with these guys may be because their overall athletic ability absolutely towers over guys like Brady, Manning and Rivers etc. Brandon Weeden is merely the perfect example.
Andy Dalton appears to have the same problem however his is limited to the playoffs. While every Quarterback has bad games, not every Quarterback can achieve a passer rating of two (as in 2). Even with his four (4) interceptions last week Kaepernick’s passer rating was 16.7, which is more than eight times (8x) what Dalton achieved in the Browns disaster last season. Alex Smith is another Quarterback incapable of scaling the wall past mediocrity. Ditto for Matt Stafford and Jay Cutler. Peyton Manning keeps Andy Dalton company when it comes to the playoffs, being one and done his first three tries and 9 of 13 lifetime.
• Cassel has gone on the earn over $59 million (and counting) as an NFL Quarterback, more than triple what Leinart made over his NFL career, however Carson Palmer has earned more than triple that at over $180 million showing that, while there is some justice after all, it is impossible to feel sorry for any of these guys
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