Ahem, excuse me, can I something?
by MDbamafan on Oct 27, 2010 1:10 PM CDT
Email
Print
This is only my second post of any kind at RBR, but I felt roused to action because I’ve noticed a near lockstep derision of the abilities of Greg McElroy. The most common complaint is that he isn’t a “downfield passing threat.” Others are that he holds the ball too long and more generally that he can’t win a game on his own, he only has the ability not to lose and yadda, yadda, yadda…...
I’m not sure how many folks realize this, but this very quarterback of ours is eleventh in the nation in passing efficiency, beating out Terrelle Pryor, Andy Dalton, Andrew Luck, Jacori Harris and many other big names. He’s also eighth in the country in yards per attempt, again besting Terrelle Pryor, Andrew Luck, Matt Barkley, Jake Locker and many other names you’ve heard of. It’s true he’s one of the worst in the country when it comes to taking sacks, but he’s also consistently one of the best as far as not throwing picks, having thrown less ints than almost all the names I mentioned.
We Bama fans ought to know what not having a “downfield threat” looks like; in 2008, it wasn’t until the SEC championship that we had even one 40+ yard completion (look it up). In 1992, Jay Barker, a quarterback who has rightfully earned a place in our hearts, threw six touchdowns and nine interceptions during the regular season. Indeed, his numbers make Gmac look like Bart Starr.
Yes, I am aware Gmac has a great team around him, and perhaps that inflates the numbers a bit. But no matter how hard one tries to find ways to diminish these stats, it’s impossible to deny that Gmac is well above average. That means that when we complain about Gmac, we’re basically complaining that he’s merely good, and not a future NFL superstar. Do not misinterpret me as being against criticizing players or noting their weaknesses. I would just like to see it done based on facts, not based on kneejerk reactions to the t.v.
Just remember, it’s easy to spot open receivers when you can freeze your Tivo, but it’s difficult when you have 4 seconds or less before you are walloped by a giant. And while it may appear that McElroy leaves many plays on the field as you rewind game film over and over, that says more about the difficulty of quarterbacking than it does about Gmac, because Gmac (Gasp!) is actually doing a better job than most QBs.
FanPosts are just that; posts created by the fans. They are in no way indicative of the opinions of SBN and the authors of Roll Bama Roll.
41 comments
|
2 recs |
Do you like this story?
Comments
Yes, you can "I something" all you like
"There's a lot of blood, sweat, and guts between dreams and success." -Coach Bear Bryant
"Last year we were good but I think this year we can be better," Ingram said.
by Tokeisch on Oct 27, 2010 1:27 PM CDT via mobile reply actions 1 recs
ok. i know i'm a product of the 80s...
but please tell me someone else thought of this when they read the headline of this post.
Roll 'Bama Roll: The Champagne of 'Bama Blogs.
Uhmm, that's far out man....
Waiter, I’ll have what he’s having!
"There's a lot of blood, sweat, and guts between dreams and success." -Coach Bear Bryant
"Last year we were good but I think this year we can be better," Ingram said.
by Tokeisch on Oct 27, 2010 6:07 PM CDT via mobile up reply actions
Sorry Kleph, I musta missed that, group, person, thing, quest.
"Have a goal. And to reach that goal you better have a plan. Have a plan that you believe in so strongly that you'll never compromise." 'Bear'
by bamaskigirl2 on Oct 27, 2010 6:17 PM CDT up reply actions
I was think more Blazing Saddles
“Excuse me while I whip this out”
"Ching-King is inside right now. I tried to get an interview with him, but they said no, you can't do that, he's a live bear, he will literally rip your face off" Brian Fantana
Uhh...
Do not misinterpret me as being against criticizing players or noting their weaknesses. I would just like to see it done based on facts, not based on kneejerk reactions to the t.v.
Yea, kneejerk reactions are annoying, but most of the criticism thrown McElroy’s way is based on fact. Sure, there are the comments that are idiotic and juvenile, but most are warranted. I’m pretty positive that when OTS writes his analysis on a game, he writes them based on facts and not his “kneejerk reaction” to one specific bad play (or good play).
no matter how hard one tries to find ways to diminish these stats, it’s impossible to deny that Gmac is well above average.
I guess I might as well go ahead and attempt to diminish the stats. Sure they are great numbers, but check out our record book. John Parker Wilson (the quarterback during that 2008 season you said we lacked a down-field threat) currently holds the top spot for seven different records in Alabama’s record book….Uh…I don’t think anyone would argue that JPW was a good quarterback and I doubt you would have been running to his defense a few years ago.
"Sometimes the things we do don’t matter right now. Sometimes they matter, later. You have to care more about later sometimes, you know? I think that’s what separates us from the Stephen Spielbergs and George Lucases of the world."
-Stan Marsh
it’s impossible to deny that Gmac is well above average. That means that when we complain about Gmac, we’re basically complaining that he’s merely good, and not a future NFL superstar. Do not misinterpret me as being against criticizing players or noting their weaknesses. I would just like to see it done based on facts, not based on kneejerk reactions to the t.v.
McElroy is not playing with the ’92 team or against the 1992 schedule. Nor is he playing with the ’08 team or against that schedule. What other quarterbacks did in other seasons is totally irrelevant.
People who say that McElroy needs to be more of a downfield passing threat are not saying “A team cannot win without a downfield passing threat”, they’re saying “This team needs a downfield passing threat to be effective.”
Further, cliche though it might be, “better than average” isn’t exactly the goal at Alabama, so defending the quarterback as “better than average” is damn near an insult.
I'm wrong all the time.
by PeteHoliday on Oct 27, 2010 1:41 PM CDT reply actions 2 recs
Exactly,
One thing that has been incredibly clear this season is that our offensive line is not nearly as good as it was in 2008, or (presumably) in 1992. When the offensive line is less effective, it makes it more difficult to run the ball and, thus, a vertical passing game is necessary in order to force opposing defenses to not put seven or eight men in the box.
Also, look at the overall stats for the years he talked about:
1992: 576 rushes, 271 passes – 68% rush
2008: 558 rushes, 334 passes – 63% rush
2010: 281 rushes, 219 passes – 56% rush
When your offense is good enough to run the ball two-thirds of the time, you don’t need a vertical passing game because you can shove the ball down the opponent’s throats. With Alabama passing as often as it does (44 percent of the time) and none of those passes going more than 8-10 yards, we’ve effectively shrunk the field on ourselves. Defenses can put their entire defense within the first ten yards from the line of scrimmage and not worry about giving up anything big. That’s exactly what South Carolina did to us and it makes us significantly less effective as an offense.
If you think Gmac
is merely a good quarterback, and not a great one, and you wish you had a great one, I have no problem with anyone saying that; in fact, that is exactly my position. But we ought to at least mention that mcelroy is very good, and not pretend that quarterbacks as good as him are easy to come by. It does bother me that some commenters get on Gmac for dumping the ball off too much and don’t seem to realize that his yards per completion numbers are better than about 95% of college qbs. If you would rather he be one of the top 5 Qbs rather than top 20, say it, but don’t pretend Gmac isn’t any good, that’s all I’m sayin’.
I don't think anybody is arguing that GMac isn't good.
The issue is that what Greg is good at is not what Alabama’s offense needs its QB to be good at. McElroy is an effective game-manager/checkdown QB. In many years, that will be good enough for Alabama. Certainly, it was good enough in 1992 and 2008. Unfortunately, the 2010 Alabama offense is significantly different from those other two offenses and a game-manager just isn’t good enough to get the offense to perform at the levels it did in those years. What this offense needs is a QB who is able to take the pressure off of the running game by opening up the vertical passing game. It was OTS (I think), who wrote a during and after the USC game that a) we are now a team who passes to set up the run, and b) we don’t run particularly well out of obvious running formations. Our best runs typically come from shotgun and pistol formations when we spread the field and force teams to move men out of the box. So long as defenses don’t have to worry about the ball traveling more than 10 yards down the field, they can stack up to stop the run.
GMac is a good dink-and-dunk passer who protects the ball. Unfortunately, that’s just not what this offense needs.
Not disagreeing on too much
It’s true that Gmac’s biggest strengths are his ability to read coverages and his short-medium range accuracy, which is one reason why we run a west-coastish offense. However, what we do offensively, we do very effectively, and I don’t think very much needs to change, other than that they generally need to play better. If our offense has to score like Arky to win, we probably won’t win.
short range accuracy he's got...
medium range (10-15 yards i’m guessing) accuracy he does not have, he just doesn’t.
It was a woman who drove me to drink and I never got a chance to thank her.
I’m not sure we are doing anything on offense effectively with any sort of consistency, actually.
Flashes of brilliance, for sure, but we have a long, long way to go.
I'm wrong all the time.
...or on defense, for that matter...
…the most consistent aspect of the team, amazingly, has been on special teams….
"High standards come from passion within...." --Coach Nick Saban
by NiceLittleSaturday on Oct 27, 2010 9:42 PM CDT up reply actions
i think it is illuminating when you point out
where he stands statistically when compared to other QB’s. but we should also keep in mind the season aint over yet, and we’re only now about to face our toughest stretch of the schedule.
we’re going to need more of the Gmac who opened the second half of the tennessee, game and less of the gmac who showed up in columbia SC if we’re going to win out.
In an industrial society which confuses work and productivity, the necessity of producing has always been an enemy of the desire to create. - Raoul Vaneigem
take this job and shove it - Johnny Paycheck
I have been outspoken about GMAC...
Even with the stats when I watch him take 8 sacks in one game and still not throw the ball away I am going to complain. I watched the UT game and was very very suprised with the downfield attempts and completions. I haven’t complained about that game. He threw the ball away when it wasnt there and made attempts downfield. Yeah he was on his ass alot during that game but he still protected the game fairly well. Thats is football you play you learn you improve all of which he has done. Lets just hope it continues.
"Lets just hope it continues"
exactly. i’ll take 6 more performances like the one he gave us last Saturday…
In an industrial society which confuses work and productivity, the necessity of producing has always been an enemy of the desire to create. - Raoul Vaneigem
take this job and shove it - Johnny Paycheck
by tempebamafan on Oct 27, 2010 5:36 PM CDT up reply actions
See what you get you DARE try to compliment him.
This is a different year and everything is not going to just line up an go the way we all dreamed it.
Bama's Pluck and Grit have Writ Her Name in Crimson Flame
Fire meet gasoline...
It almost feels as if this post was put in here to strike up a few thousand comments during a slow week. So – OK I’ll bite!!!
OTS has done the analysis. Stats can be misleading: i.e. GMAC checks down to throw screen to Richardson and BOOM 70+ yds later TD. GMAC gets a lot of yards and a TD throw in his stats from a check down screen.
Now I’m not debating that he’s been clutch in certain games (see last year’s Auburn game and SECCG), but he has a tendency to hang on to the ball or miss WIDE OPEN receivers even when he has time to throw.
In closing, I don’t think you’ll get much debate that he’s good and he’s won some games for us, but I’ll echo Pete’s statement of us wanting a QB who’s more than a game manager and risk averse. Just because he didn’t throw a pick in the SC game and threw for a lot of yards doesn’t tell the whole story. GMAC could have and should have done better – if we’re holding him as well as the rest of the team to “The Standard.”
This is what I'm talking about...
“OTS has done the analysis. Stats can be misleading: i.e. GMAC checks down to throw screen to Richardson and BOOM 70+ yds later TD. GMAC gets a lot of yards and a TD throw in his stats from a check down screen.”
It’s true that play was almost all Richardson, but one would have to figure that most qbs of good teams are the beneficiaries of great plays by the skill players.
Could it be that maybe, just maybe, the reason we rarely see Gmac lob it over a defenders head for a 40+ yard touchdown is because it generally just doesn’t happen that often?
(And yeah, I figured now was the right time for a post like this).
LOL...
Touche, but it’s not just the 40+ we’re talking about with GMAC – IT’S THE FRICKING 10+!!!
If we eliminate the TN game as an outlier (from a stats perspective), how many 10+ yd completions does GMAC have against SEC teams during regular season play?
Now I may be wrong, but my guess is he’s about 15-20% accurate on completion attempts of 10+ yds. So that’s where the tag “game manager” comes into play. Does he throw a ton of picks? No. Does he make good reads at the line? From what I have heard, mostly yes. does he make the safe pass? Almost ALWAYS.
Now the better debate IMO is whether that’s due to GMACs natural wiring or Saban leading him down that path. From past comments from Saban it would seem it’s GMAC.
Well..
Gmac does average 13 yards per completion, so it would be hard for him to struggle with 10+ yard completions :-).
As for your question, what immediately comes to mind is the two longballs, one to Michael Williams and one to Dareus Hanks for a touchdown against SC. Not sure how many others there were, but I’m sure there’s plenty of material to work with.
His average is misleading
Much of that is off the hard work of backs/WRs on dumps/screens and you know it.
"Shave your head, get a wet sponge, and flip the switch, 'cause you're about to get a Truthocution!" -Stephen Colbert
by Slice of Life on Oct 27, 2010 4:41 PM CDT up reply actions
The pass to Hanks was on a broken coverage.
Tough to give him a lot of credit for that.
Blown coverages count
a qb must take advantage of those opportunities when they come. But probably a sizeable amount of deep completions in general are partly the result of blown coverages, and the qb still deserves credit for completing them.
Again...Your numbers are misleading.
That’s based on total yds per completion, a misleading stat.
Based on OTS’ previous article here GMAC only had 14 completions on deep pass patterns of 12+ yards for all of 2009. That comes out to only 1 completion for long pass plays per game.
I would argue, that it isn't even all about the 40+ yard pass,
I’d argue that it’s more about the 15-25 yard pass. As I pointed out in the UT thread, JPW had 10 completions of more than 15 yards against UT in 2007. I don’t think GMac had that many attempts in the USC and Ole Miss games combined.
And this isn’t just a new issue. Here is an article from August, in which OTS notes that in the last eight games of last year, McElroy had only three completions on a pass thrown more than 15 yards from the line of scrimmage.
OTS sums it up perfectly when he wrote:
In the final analysis of things, I think it is relatively clear that by and large we simply didn’t stretch the field very well vertically for most of the 2009 season. We did some good things against Virginia Tech and Arkansas, but after that the vertical threat largely dissipates. From there, we were largely relying on blown coverages and yards after the catch on short-and-intermediate routes in order to generate big plays in the passing game, and the times in which we set up deep in the pocket and delivered a strike deep down the field were few and far in between. McElroy generally played very well in 2009, but I think it’s clear that the one flaw of his performance was that he didn’t consistently stretch the field vertically. I think the data here clearly supports that conclusion.
All of those points still continue today. It’s just that our offensive line is not producing the running game we had last year, and our defense isn’t as good either. Meaning that the lack of a vertical passing game is no longer a mere nuisance, but a legitimate problem.
Gmac's a game manager, that's all you can say about him...
he probably won’t lose you many, but he ain’t winning you many either. and please no one say, “well he won a championship”, no the hell he didn’t. our D won it, and the majority of bama fans know that
It was a woman who drove me to drink and I never got a chance to thank her.
Yeah!
And don’t get me started on those lame RBs and WRs who played for us last season…what dillholes….
"High standards come from passion within...." --Coach Nick Saban
by NiceLittleSaturday on Oct 27, 2010 10:21 PM CDT up reply actions
Not to
mention that LOSER who set records returning punts and kickoffs. We sure the hell don’t miss that guy.
"A demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots." -H. L. Mencken
by Bens4vcobra on Oct 28, 2010 10:17 AM CDT up reply actions
Sheesh back to this again I see......
The way I see it is, Gmac is a safe bet. You’re not going to get rich with him.
Hold my beer and watch this.
i like it. a little investment lingo
indeed, he produces a tidy and suitable ROI, however the opportunity cost of having him in vs having someone with a greater capabilty for producing potentially bigger returns could be enough to tip the scales in AJ’s direction. right now the street estimates we’ll continue with GMac at the helm, and continue our recent attempts to re-align some of our revenue streams (call some PA passes deep and 4 verts). other, bolder, anaylists have the opinion that a Managament change is in the works and that by synergizing our brand equity behind the new leadership, AJ, we will have the potential to levridge even greater returns when it comes to capitalising on what they project to be our significantly increased market share (actually stretching the field vs dialing up 3 specific play calls at certain points in the game).
In an industrial society which confuses work and productivity, the necessity of producing has always been an enemy of the desire to create. - Raoul Vaneigem
take this job and shove it - Johnny Paycheck
by tempebamafan on Oct 27, 2010 9:27 PM CDT up reply actions
Your perception is much appreciated
just know that if you wish to have a qb better than Gmac, you’re wishing for something few and far between.
This is why complaining about Gmac strikes me as odd. It would be sort of like zeroing in on a really good player, like say, Justin Woodall from the last two years, and saying that if only we Laron Landry in his stead, those last two years we would have been extra awesome!
Gmac is a very good qb, and it’s not my gut that tells me that, it’s the facts that tell me that. And I find it highly unlikely that A.J. Mcarron would come in and produce better than Gmac does.
I also felt "roused to action" this morning.
/fap’d
RBR's King of Hip-Hop...
by SpockJenkins on Oct 28, 2010 1:30 AM CDT reply actions 2 recs
All I want is the QB to make good decisions, and to have consistency.....
Instead of having one “great” game about every 8th game(SECCG), how about having several “good” games during the season…like completing screen passes, not holding onto the ball for 5 secs, at least wing it outta bounds or take a shot at your receiver and let him make a play, one handed or not, instead of taking a beating and losing yardage so that the defense KNOWS the next play you are passing it on 3rd and long. Make the defense respect your arm, no matter if it hurts to throw it, at least make em think you can do it so they won’t crowd the box. If they think we can burn em deep, the cannot afford to have our WR’s BEHIND them unless we show them we can’t connect or don’t even try.
We got 2 of the best hoss RB’s in the nation, and all they need is a little daylight to make big things happen. Kinda hard to run right at 8-9 people in the box, so why not go up top and hit a few passes to back em up?
The beatings will continue til morale improves.....
Comments For This Post Are Closed
Secondary Sidebar
User Tools
Related FanPosts on Roll 'Bama Roll
Related FanShots on Roll 'Bama Roll
FanPosts
Community blog posts and discussion.
