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I agree.
“I will say this with Sam (Darnold) though,” said Carolina Panthers wide receiver Robbie Anderson, a former New York Jet. “I feel like his development was all messed up coming into the league. Look at Pat [Mahomes] and look at Lamar [Jackson]. They didn’t play right away. I don’t think that Sam should have played right away I feel like his career got jumpstarted the wrong way. I feel like — being in the building, the coaches — I was there. In his defense, I don’t think he was developed 100% correctly.”
No he wasn’t.
I don’t believe starting rookie QBs right out of the gate.
If Mahomes, Jackson and Aaron Rodgers could wait, why couldn’t Darnold?
Not sure.
Darnold was raw as heck when he arrived with the Jets as their first round pick in the 2018 draft. He came out of USC after his junior year in college. Darnold was just 21 when he started for the Jets as a rookie.
Why start him out of the gate? He wasn’t ready. You aren’t doing him or the team favor by starting him as a rookie?
Whose decision was it at the time in 2018? The GM, the coach, the business side? I can’t answer, but now it’s happened three times in a row with first-round quarterbacks – Mark Sanchez, Darnold and now Zach Wilson?
I’d love for them to do a “30-for-30” documentary on why one some teams start rookie quarterbacks over and over again.
Like Chicago with raw as heck players like Mitch Trubisky and Justin Fields, players that were nowhere near ready to start.
All these guys I mentioned came out after their junior years, which makes it even riskier.
Look, once in a while there is a senior prospect who you can consider starting as a rookie like Mac Jones, Justin Herbert and Joe Burrow.
I wouldn’t do it there either. I’d have them sit, at least for half of their rookie year. Watch for a while.
But getting back to Darnold. There was no way he should have started as a rookie.
Not only was he only 21, and came out after his junior year, he was coming off a bad Cotton Bowl against Ohio State, where he struggled against the best defense he faced all year loaded with NFL talent.
Darnold wasn’t an elite reader of defenses in college. He needed a lot of work in that area, so that is another reason he shouldn’t have started.
Now you could make the argument that the issue Darnold had coming in reading defenses might have continued to be a problem, even if he sat.
But you know what, why not let him sit for a year or two and try to improve in this area.
If he struggled reading defenses as a junior in college, why would you think he’s ready to start the very next year as a rookie in the NFL against much tougher schemes to diagnose?
Sometimes the eclectic Anderson can say wild things, but that isn’t the case here.
When it comes to Darnold, he’s 100 percent right.
July 8, 2022
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