Cleveland Browns quarterback Johnny Manziel is getting his first NFL start this week, and a lot has been said about him and how he’ll do this week. I want to frame the question a different way.
Manziel fits into the new wave category of movement, dual-threat quarterbacks. In the NFL now, there are four of those quarterbacks other than Manziel: Seattle’s Russell Wilson, Washington’s Robert Griffin III, Carolina’s Cam Newton and San Francisco’s Colin Kaepernick. How are those four doing?
Wilson is doing great; he’s a very, very good player. But the others aren't doing so well. Griffin isn’t starting anymore. Newton, when healthy, is a game-to-game proposition with little consistency. Kaepernick is, at the moment, seemingly regressing. And all of them are more physically gifted than Manziel.
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I’m not taking a side on the Manziel issue, but I think you have to answer the question, “Why is he going to succeed?” And I’m not saying he won’t. But in the scouting community, you look at players and try to think, what are Manziel’s positive traits and attributes and how does he fit? Who is he like? You have to feel comfortable with your answer.
If you believe Manziel is most like Wilson – which a lot of smart people have said, although I think Wilson is a better athlete with a better arm and is a far more intuitive player – then there’s another part of that, and it has to do with what you're willing to live with as a coach. We watch the game film of Wilson every week, and he always leaves plays on the field. He makes other plays because he is capable of those sandlot-type plays, but he’ll miss some too. Here’s a quick example from the Seahawks’ Thanksgiving game at San Francisco. The Seahawks called a bootleg to the right, and a part of that play is the slot receiver coming on a crossing route from the other side of the field. This time the Seahawks called a shot play (one designed to take a deep shot down the field) and Doug Baldwin broke vertically after showing a crossing route. Baldwin was against safety Eric Reid – exactly what the Seahawks wanted – and he was wide open. Wilson never saw him. He scrambled and hit Robert Turbin for 34 yards, but Baldwin was wide open, it came free just as the Seahawks drew it up, and it should have been a touchdown.
Wilson is able to do that because he’s on a team that has a dominant defense, with a dominant running back in Marshawn Lynch and that compensates for a lot of things. But it’s hard to succeed based on sandlot plays, and especially without a great team around you, and that’s a lot of Manziel’s game right now.
If you want to believe Manziel will succeed because of some charismatic, intangible “it” quality, I’m OK with that. I just don’t subscribe to that theory with any player; to me everything manifests itself on film. Tom Brady doesn’t make great throws because he has an “it” factor, he does it because he’s capable of making a great throw and doing the 20 things that go into making a great throw.
Manziel’s success might come down to how the game is structured for him by the coaching staff. He needs to be in a position where the ball can come out quick, the reads can be defined and they can use the play-action bootleg effectively. It’s an odd thing to say his game needs to be controlled and managed because we think about Manziel as an improvisational player (and by the way, he’s going to make some plays with his improvisational skills), but he’s a certain kind of thrower. He’s 6-foot tall so the ball has to come out quick if he's asked to throw from the pocket – the same is true for Wilson, who is about the same height. You also have to get Manziel on the perimeter, because when you roll him out the reads are better defined with just half the field to work with, and he also has a run-pass option. You can do all of this, by the way. Browns coordinator Kyle Shanahan did that with Griffin his rookie year. Griffin was a one-read passer that season running a lot of read option, before NFL defenses had time to study it and adjust.
I think the Browns’ game against Cincinnati will be a close one, so can you manage and control Manziel’s game and put him in position to succeed? That’s a question the Browns will need to answer.
Romo’s arm strength
Since Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo suffered a back injury, I don’t think he has been throwing the ball quite as well. He was never a power-arm thrower, but he had a good arm. He struggles to drive the ball at this point.
The Cowboys had a limited pass game last week against the Bears, and it worked because the Bears have a bad defense. The Cowboys want to keep handing the ball to DeMarco Murray, and play the game out that way. They won’t be able to do that every game, and maybe not this week at Philadelphia, and at that point is Romo capable of playing in a shootout? Romo hasn’t been asked to do a lot since the injury, not even in the first game against Philadelphia when the Cowboys fell behind and he still just threw 29 times.
If Romo is asked to throw more this week against Philadelphia than he has the past few weeks, it’s worth watching. He hasn’t been asked to be that kind of quarterback since his injury.
The microcosm of Kaepernick's issues
The first play of last week’s 49ers-Raiders game was a microcosm of Kaepernick’s struggles.
The play was called to get him an easy completion in the flat to fullback Bruce Miller. You get Kaepernick a short gain on the first play and get him in rhythm. You know that was the goal because tailback Frank Gore was responsible for cutting defensive end Justin Tuck; you don’t have a back cut block a defensive end on a deeper drop.
But Kaepernick had no sense of the play. He waited in the pocket for a Vernon Davis corner route that was not there right from the snap, and he shouldn’t even have been looking for it anyway. He then left the pocket and made a random play that resulted in an interception.
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NFL analyst and NFL Films senior producer Greg Cosell watches as much NFL game film as anyone. Throughout the season, Cosell will join Shutdown Corner to share his observations on the teams, schemes and personnel from around the league.
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