Per Vinny Cerrato, JC is our QB this season!

[GTripp0012]

Originally Posted by BigHairedAristocrat

How is it a "fact" that he was performing at a pro-bowl level? Thats a matter of opinion. All campbell did was manage games and not throw interceptions - generally, that doesnt get a guy in the pro-bowl. In the first half of the season, Campbell only threw 8 Touchdowns - thats an average of one a game. usually, guys averaging 1 TD a game dont go to the pro-bowl.

Its nice to say "he was performing at a pro-bowl level" but what does that really mean? To make it to the pro-bowl, Campbell would have be one of the top 3 QBs in the NFC (1 Starter, 2 alternates). Was he?

For their first 8 games of the season, Kurt Warner (14TD, 6 INT), Drew Brees (15TD, 7 INT), Tony Romo (14-5 in only 6 games before injury), and Aaron Rogers (13 TD, 5 INT) were all performing at a higher level than Campbell. (I looked up TDs and INTs online but not yards and other stats because i dont have the time). Campbell was playing exceptionally effecient, but he wasnt doing enough to garner serious pro-bowl consideration. he certainly couldnt be considered better than Warner, Brees or Romo, although an argument could have been made for Rogers. Either way, he wouldnt have been in teh top 3. During the first half of the season, Campbells play was more in line with that of guys like Eli manning and Donovan McNabb - good, but not good enough to go to the pro-bowl.

This is your best, and most realistic argument in the thread, not to mention that you've gone out of your way to support it.

For the record, I didn't agree with Ron Jaworski at the time he said that Jason Campbell was the first half league MVP. I thought he was the second or third most valuable player on the offense in that half of the year. He was definately very valuable to us, but not moreso than Brees or Romo or Warner, I would agree.

However, Jason Campbell was the only one of the players on our offense who actually improved the level of play in the second half of the year (well, Fred Davis if you want to go there). The only empirical evidence I can back this up with is his efficiency on QB rushes, non-existant in the first half as the offense was a burden to learn, but more effective in the second half of the year than any other QB in the NFL. Throuough tape study backs my opinion here. Moss pulled his hammy at the end of the Detroit game and was not productive from that point on. Randle El stayed productive through December 1st and then fell off of the face of the earth. Portis was half as effective as he was in the first eight games (this was mostly because of the run defenses we faced, our OL was simply overmatched). Cooley was rather inconsistent. Devin Thomas never did get it together. By the final three weeks of the year (mind you after playing 4 of the 5 best defenses in the second half of the year during the prior 6 weeks), the running game was practically non existant. Campbell, in essence was the entire offense.

He was making faster, smarter reads on the whole (he made some big mistakes against Philly), but most telling, started to deliver first down passes on the money while getting drilled in the chops. Scouts will tell you that those plays are what separates franchise QBs from the rest. Maybe they just think that. Maybe it doesn't matter. Point is, unlike critcisms like reads and progressions, that actually happened.

On the macro level, the national media sees the decline in the total production of the Redskins offense, they don't take into account that they played three awful Ds in October (masking when the decline began), while playing 5 top defenses in November and December. So they see decline, and they start pointing fingers at the most noticible culprits. Sadly, this passes for football analysis these days. Hey, gotta get columns out somehow.