Hello, Buffalo Wins readers! This is Heather B., posting this for Joe who is apparently too busy to put things up on his own blog. A terrible thing happened Thursday night. The Pirates lost Game 1 of the NLDS, partly because Clint Hurdle has no idea when to pull a struggling starter. Thankfully, Gerrit "Cole Train" Cole, got things back on track, leading the Pirates to a Game 2 victory. Wooooooooo! Let's go Bucs! Let's go Bucs! Wait, what? Oh, right. The Bills.
Thursday night, EJ Manuel, of course, left the Bills game with a knee injury. Geez, you poor, poor Bills fans. Jeff Tuel came into the game and was, I guess, really, really bad at being a quarterback. With EJ most likely out for a while, the Bills need a more viable quarterback. So why not Josh Freeman? I don't really know who Josh Freeman is, but that's what Joe told me to say. I'm pretty sure that is him in the photo above.
Joe had a quick conversation with Sanders Philipse of Bucs Nation about Freeman and what he might be able to do for the Bills. And hey, good news, Bills fans. If you follow the Pirates' trajectory, you only have to do this for… seven more years, I think?
1) What are Josh Freeman's strengths and weaknesses?
Physically, he's as good as any quarterback in the league. He's big, strong, tough to drag down for a sack and he has one of the strongest arms in the league. He also does a good job avoiding sacks with movement in the pocket. He hasn't scrambled recently but used to be very good at creating plays on the move — whether the lack of scrambles is his fault or because of the coaches remains to be seen.
His weaknesses are significant, though. He has a lot of footwork issues, which leads to very inconsistent accuracies. There will be throws every game where he will miss someone by a wide margin. His completion percentage has been depressed the past two years because of the offensive system and a lot of drops this year — but he's just not very accurate, overall.
One other issue that has cropped up is a tendency to throw balls up for grabs when there's pressure in his face. He can throw some ill-advised balls off his back foot in those situations.
2) What in the world happened in Tampa with him and Schiano? From afar, when you look at Josh's stats prior to this season, I would have taken him on my team. Do you think he was sabotaged by Schiano?
No. I don't think Greg Schiano intentionally tried to hurt Freeman's play, but I also don't think the team did a very good job of helping him out this year. He had no tight end to throw to, while Kellen Winslow was his favorite target in his first three years. The Bucs gave him very few easy completions, consistently asking him to make very tough downfield throws. All of that led to an inconsistent performance, although Freeman certainly didn't play great football, either.
3) The Bills run a no-huddle that is a variation of the West Coast Offense that runs out of 3-WR sets mostly, how do you think a guy like Freeman could play in that type of offense?
Josh Freeman has traditionally looked very good in two-minute drills, so in that sense he would seem to fit well. He also had his best season (2010) in a West Coast offense. However, there's a bit of slowness to his game overall — in his dropback, in his movement and in his release of the ball. Overall I'd think he could certainly play in that offense, but he may not be the perfect quarterback for it.
4) What sort of WRs does Freeman work best with, Route runners or guys who can go deep? Why?
He works best with guys who have a wide catching radius, mostly because he doesn't have pinpoint accuracy. That's part of the reason why Mike Williams, Kellen Winslow and Vincent Jackson worked so well with him: big, physical targets who can win contested balls consistently. He's also not a consistently good anticipation passer, which hurts when he's throwing to players who rely on slick route running to get separation with fast-closing windows in the NFL.
5) Do you think he can still be an NFL starting QB and should the Bills sign him as a short-term guy?
I certainly think he can be an NFL starting quarterback and I'd expect him to be an immediate upgrade over Jeff Tuel. So in that sense, he may be your best option. But the best situation for Freeman would be a place with a very meticulous quarterbacks coach who can help him work on his mechanics and footwork, and who will adjust his system to Freeman. Look at what Marc Trestman did with Jay Cutler this year for an example. If the Bills can do that with Freeman, they could end up with a really good quarterback behind E.J. Manuel for the long term.
Add The Sports Daily to your Google News Feed!
