Updated: Discuss our Backup QB Situation (formerly Byron Leftwich)

[Slingin Sammy 33]

Originally Posted by irish

Stats are nice and JCs stats compare well but now Flacco & Ryan have taken their teams to the playoffs and won. JC hasnt taken his team anywhere. I think when you look at the talent all three have to work with that JC has the most and still cant score or get the team over the hump. Right now Flacco & Ryan are way ahead of JC on the development scale and JC has a bunch more years in the league than they do.

the sky being blue is nice....but it's still green (sorry couldn't resist)

I would argue that neither QB "took" his team to the playoffs. They didn't lose games for the most part, but when asked to put the team on their shoulders, neither could get it done. Not a slight to either QB, because I think both will be good, but Flacco & Ryan are by no means ahead of JC in development, not even close.

JC was asked to carry the team late in the season, behind a poor OL (and yes that makes a HUGE difference) and unfortunately he's not John Elway or Dan Marino. If you watched the games or look at the numbers, the rushing numbers along with passing numbers declined in the second half of the season, due to injury/poor OL play.

As far as talent at skill positions I would take the 2008 versions of Roddy White, Jenkins and Finneran or Mason, Clayton, whoever the Ravens third WR is, over Moss, ARE and our third (Thomas, Thrash). The OLs of both the Falcons and Ravens are tops in the league, ours is bottom third.

Falcons: #2 in rushing attempts, # 2 in Yds, # 3 in TDs, # 10 in Yds/Att.

Ravens: # 1 in Rush Att, # 4 in Yds, # 7 TDs, # 24 in Yds/Att.

These numbers show the superiority of the OLs. They also show coaches who are trying to protect young QBs with a solid run game.

After Week 2 and up until the Steelers game, the JC bashing crowd was nowhere to be found. Did JC magically just go from being one of the top performers in the league to being crap in 2-3 weeks? Did Portis go from being a top performer to crap in 2-3 weeks? Or maybe OL problems were really the major issue for our poor offensive performance.

The same arguments were made last off-season, those who supported Campbell last off-season were correct. He improved significantly from last season. This is not a point for dispute, it is fact. JC is not the problem, we've got issues on the OL that must be addressed or we will struggle in 2009.