Kurt Warner on Bryce Young

[SmokinwithWilly]

10 minutes ago, strato said:

I don’t disagree with any of that. Any sport that relies on drilling to get a reliable and repeatable physical action presents these same challenges. I have used Tiger Woods as an example because he is so well known and suffered through trying to change and make it stick in tournament play. Majors and stuff. He really struggled.

At some point you can end up stuck between the old way and the new and just totally confused.  But all the training and drilling in the world often falls apart under pressure. Think about the years he spent training himself to do it the way he did it his entire life. It is really hard to overcome that stuff, it is ingrained in you to the point you don’t have think at all. Hopefully. Undoing that and rebuilding it into a different process is a massive challenge. Getting to the point you don’t have to think and you are doing the new way, is the final hurdle.

This mechanics thing and my opinion on the level of difficulty he would face is the biggest reason I had for being against drafting him. More so than his height. 
 

which, btw, the adapting to a new technique thing, freaking Larry Bird played an NBA game shooting only left handed and they still couldn’t stop him. On a whim. Damndest thing…

One of the hardest things I ever had to do was learn how to push/drive with power again after a knee injury that was really a repetitive motion injury. Even after 7 years, it's still something I have to consciously make an effort to do or I slip back into my old habits. Those things don't just go away. 

[kungfoodude]

1 minute ago, strato said:

I think he is such an outlier people didn’t know what to do with him coming up. If he can get by with his unique mechanics and get the win, those coaches accept it and work around whatever they need to. Path of least resistance.

Easier to put him in the gun and snap it to him back there, you don’t have to teach him to do under center drop plant throw timing stuff. Matter of fact that isn’t just him. That is all over high school and college. But he is a special case with that crazy parallel meandering back pedal on the tippy toes. That is height related, seems to me. It is how he adapted. 

Talk about fixing it, tall odds, as fuged up as his mechanics are relative to proper. What Warner is pointing out (and explaining it much much better than I ever could) is a lot easier to talk about than do something about. 

I am going to go back to watch his stuff at Alabama sometime this offseason and see if it was this obvious how terrible his footwork is. Maybe I just glossed over it. But, I am also not an experienced eye like a Kurt Warner or any of these other ex-NFL guys doing film breakdowns.

[SmokinwithWilly]

Just now, kungfoodude said:

I am going to go back to watch his stuff at Alabama sometime this offseason and see if it was this obvious how terrible his footwork is. Maybe I just glossed over it. But, I am also not an experienced eye like a Kurt Warner or any of these other ex-NFL guys doing film breakdowns.

Maybe it's because I played LT until some fat fug folded my knee, but I love watching footwork drills at the combine for olinemen. I call it fat man ballet. Base and balance are everything when it come to being a lineman. Everything starts there. Sure there's lateral movement, hip flex, bend, hand fighting, strength, push, etc, but without a strong base and good balance, the rest aren't happening.

Those drills are specifically designed to show you things and they stand out big time if you're watching their feet and ankles. You can tell what doesn't feel like a natural movement. I remember watching Greg Little and I was blown away at how bad his footwork was. Like unbelievably bad. To the point I thought maybe he had never practiced one of these drills before. I remember when we drafted him, I thought to myself well fug, there's a wasted pick. 

Aside from the added weight, I wonder if that's part of why Bryce didn't throw. Standing next to all the other QBs, that footwork and mechanics would stand out like a sore thumb, much more so than at a pro day. Bryce is good at some things, improvising and eluding and he does appear to have that clutch gene, but his throws get ugly when he tries to arm it instead of having that solid stead base to throw from. 

[kungfoodude]

4 minutes ago, SmokinwithWilly said:

Maybe it's because I played LT until some fat fug folded my knee, but I love watching footwork drills at the combine for olinemen. I call it fat man ballet. Base and balance are everything when it come to being a lineman. Everything starts there. Sure there's lateral movement, hip flex, bend, hand fighting, strength, push, etc, but without a strong base and good balance, the rest aren't happening.

Those drills are specifically designed to show you things and they stand out big time if you're watching their feet and ankles. You can tell what doesn't feel like a natural movement. I remember watching Greg Little and I was blown away at how bad his footwork was. Like unbelievably bad. To the point I thought maybe he had never practiced one of these drills before. I remember when we drafted him, I thought to myself well fug, there's a wasted pick. 

Aside from the added weight, I wonder if that's part of why Bryce didn't throw. Standing next to all the other QBs, that footwork and mechanics would stand out like a sore thumb, much more so than at a pro day. Bryce is good at some things, improvising and eluding and he does appear to have that clutch gene, but his throws get ugly when he tries to arm it instead of having that solid stead base to throw from. 

Cam was an arm thrower with bad footwork habits too(not as bad as Bryce) but he also had a fuging howitzer attached to his body with that arm of his. Bryce has significantly below average arm strength when is base is so out of whack like it is so often. That's why we see all these off target or limp noodle passes. Bryce is literally the worst version of an arm throwing QB.

I do think they did conspire to keep him from as many eyes as possible but admittedly that isn't a rare occurrence in the modern era. A lot of the top picks are choosing to skip these drills. It would be nice to see the NFL maybe make some of this stuff mandatory. It won't happen, obviously.

[strato]

17 minutes ago, kungfoodude said:

I am going to go back to watch his stuff at Alabama sometime this offseason and see if it was this obvious how terrible his footwork is. Maybe I just glossed over it. But, I am also not an experienced eye like a Kurt Warner or any of these other ex-NFL guys doing film breakdowns.

I am not at all a scout technique guy. I can tell you, you probably have seen me say this a bunch, but 10 minutes or so of watching his pro day was really all I needed. It was there. 

And this goes back to what I said about we are indoctrinated to his play after all this time and it doesn’t look as different to us now (or me), but I went back and looked at that same video two years later and it was harder to see. But it was clear as day the first time I looked, I don’t have the skill to see it if it weren’t. 

[PNW_PantherMan]

4 minutes ago, kungfoodude said:

Cam was an arm thrower with bad footwork habits too(not as bad as Bryce) but he also had a fuging howitzer attached to his body with that arm of his. Bryce has significantly below average arm strength when is base is so out of whack like it is so often. That's why we see all these off target or limp noodle passes. Bryce is literally the worst version of an arm throwing QB.

You can't really be a clean platform thrower in today's league.  You have to be able to move around the pocket and make improvised throws that are not technically efficient.  You're just way too limited with a guy that has to throw from a solid platform.  The archetype for that guy was always the 6'5 statue that can stand there and see the field.  And even that doesn't really work anymore.

[strato]

2 minutes ago, kungfoodude said:

Cam was an arm thrower with bad footwork habits too(not as bad as Bryce) but he also had a fuging howitzer attached to his body with that arm of his. Bryce has significantly below average arm strength when is base is so out of whack like it is so often. That's why we see all these off target or limp noodle passes. Bryce is literally the worst version of an arm throwing QB.

I do think they did conspire to keep him from as many eyes as possible but admittedly that isn't a rare occurrence in the modern era. A lot of the top picks are choosing to skip these drills. It would be nice to see the NFL maybe make some of this stuff mandatory. It won't happen, obviously.

I got killed talking about Cam’s non existent footwork.  Racist! Hater! All that stuff, constantly. You could not speak that way here. I just quit. There were a lot more Cam stans than Bryce stans. For good reason. But it was overwhelming I wasn’t gonna try and argue with them, around the clock. 
 

I was coming at it from the perfectionist perspective. The idea that if he could do that he could really be in the all time great conversation. It wasn’t said to tear him down. People couldn’t deal with it. 

As good as he was, that extra would have put him up on another level. Two levels.
It is a shame that it took an injury to force him to adapt his process. 
 

[strato]

5 minutes ago, PNW_PantherMan said:

You can't really be a clean platform thrower in today's league.  You have to be able to move around the pocket and make improvised throws that are not technically efficient.  You're just way too limited with a guy that has to throw from a solid platform.  The archetype for that guy was always the 6'5 statue that can stand there and see the field.  And even that doesn't really work anymore.

It still does, or can, if you have that guy and can protect him. But getting the ball out is the huge thing right now. Backyard stuff has slowly migrated up from high school to college to the pros. It is the fastest way to get athletic guys on the field. So they build around that. I think. 

[PNW_PantherMan]

Just now, strato said:

It still does, or can, if you have that guy and can protect him. But getting the ball out is the huge thing right now. Backyard stuff has slowly migrated up from high school to college to the pros. It is the fastest way to get athletic guys on the field. So they build around that. I think. 

Can you name one?  Nobody plays like Kerry Collins anymore.  Some guys take too many sacks but that doesn't mean they can't throw off platform.

[kungfoodude]

6 minutes ago, strato said:

I got killed talking about Cam’s non existent footwork.  Racist! Hater! All that stuff, constantly. You could not speak that way here. I just quit. There were a lot more Cam stans than Bryce stans. For good reason. But it was overwhelming I wasn’t gonna try and argue with them, around the clock. 
 

I was coming at it from the perfectionist perspective. The idea that if he could do that he could really be in the all time great conversation. It wasn’t said to tear him down. People couldn’t deal with it. 

As good as he was, that extra would have put him up on another level. Two levels.
It is a shame that it took an injury to force him to adapt his process. 
 

It was fun while it lasted but it put so much undue stress on his shoulder and it eventually failed. 

Sad ending to a potential HOF career.

[strato]

6 minutes ago, PNW_PantherMan said:

Can you name one?  Nobody plays like Kerry Collins anymore.  Some guys take too many sacks but that doesn't mean they can't throw off platform.

How about non 6’5” Brady, just a couple of years ago? Honestly since I quit playing FF and also cut the cable I don’t watch the league like I did. So more examples, I might be slack. Stroud is more in that mold to me.  Classic drop back passer. 

 I think my point is, if you have that guy it can still work. The shift to athleticism being prioritized (which really kind of kicked into gear with Cam) has led to a reduction of guys playing that way it seems like. The pool of players in that mold is smaller. 

[strato]

28 minutes ago, kungfoodude said:

It was fun while it lasted but it put so much undue stress on his shoulder and it eventually failed. 

Sad ending to a potential HOF career.

I remember so many times when he would pop out the pile and get up a head of steam with that long stride and who the hell wants to get in his way? 
Or flick the ball 40 yards on a rope. 
MF was the most naturally gifted player I remember seeing. (At QB. I mean, Bo Jackson?)
 

I was irritated the same way you talk about Bryce, with Cam going back to school (mostly to be BMOC and chase skirts I thought) after his rookie season. I wanted him in those same drills to finish building himself. And that went on throughout his career.
 

He never felt the need to make himself take that last step up. Apparently. 
It came so easy for him, I understand.  He didn’t have to do that to be better than most other guys. He was young and rich and horny. Have some fun, work hard in season. 

Edited yesterday at 07:31 PM by strato

[kungfoodude]

1 minute ago, strato said:

I remember so many times when he would pop out the pile and get up a head of steam with that long stride and who the hell wants to get in his way? 
Or flick the ball 40 yards on a rope. 
MF was the most naturally gifted player I remember seeing. 
 

I was irritated the same way you talk about Bryce, with Cam going back to school (mostly to be BMOC and chase skirts I thought) after his rookie season. I wanted him in those same drills to finish building himself. And that went on throughout his career.
 

He never felt the need to make himself take that last step up. Apparently. 
It came so easy for him, I understand.  He didn’t have to do that to be better than most other guys. He was young and rich and horny. Have some fun, work hard in season. 

I think he was just such an insane, unique athlete and he excelled at so many aspects of the game that he never really had to focus on the finer details until it was too late. Not that he didn't work to get better or any of that, it's that so much just came so easy to him.

[kungfoodude]

Okay, so let me correct my theory about Bryce's lack of dedication to fixing his footwork. I was doing a Bryce Young YouTube dive and came across an actually really great interview with Jon Gruden from the last Super Bowl. Well, it's so, so, SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much worse than he doesn't do the work, he just fundamentally disagrees and while he does explain it to Gruden, it's pretty dismissive of any critique of his "footwork." IMO, this basically means his footwork is genuinely permanently broken because he refuses to change it.