The two most consistently interesting appearances on Nashville sports talk radio in my book are Trent Dilfer’s weekly appearance with Sports Night on 102.5 and Greg Cosell’s weekly appearance (mp3 link) with the Midday180 on 104.5. Both know a lot about what goes on on a football field and why, especially at the quarterback position. (And let me throw in a plug for Bruce Feldman’s fantastic new book The QB, which includes a lot of material on Dilfer’s work with his school quarterbacks and the Elite 11.) Unsurprisingly, both discussed Zach Mettenberger’s performance against the Steelers and his long-term prospects in the NFL in their appearance after Monday’s loss to the Steelers. And, well, they did not agree.
Let’s start with Cosell. His overview:
First of all, [Mettenberger] clearly played his best game. Let’s put aside the X’s & O’s for a minute … The first thing you notice – and I thought you noticed this right from when he [first] played – he looks totally comfortable as an NFL quarterback. The game’s not too fast for him. He’s not frenetic. He’s not chaotic. He’s not over-reactive. Obviously every young quarterback needs to improve in some areas. He’s going to need to learn to read coverage better. He probably needs to quicken his game a little bit. But he passes pretty much all the tests. And that was a very interesting game because of the first throw and the way they came back. Now they only ran 39 offensive plays, which is unheard of in today’s NFL, which of course is not Mettenberger and the offense’s fault for the most part. It wasn’t in this game because they couldn’t get off the field on defense a number of times. But I think this kid, and you knew how I felt about him even before he got his first start, I think he’s going to be a quality NFL quarterback with the chance to be a very good NFL quarterback.
More specifically, speaking of the touchdown pass to Nate Washington on his double move:
See, there’s a perfect example of Mettenberger, a sense where there’s people around him and theoretically pressure and he was oblivious to it. That’s the kind of throw, and I say this in all honesty because I watch all the quarterbacks, where I don’t think a Kaepernick or a Newton would have been around in the pocket to make that throw. They would have been gone already.
No surprise to hear Cosell be so bullish, as I noted in the offseason he was high on Mettenberger coming out of LSU.
On the other hand, there’s Trent Dilfer’s assessment:
Mettenberger’s going to be a guy that is going to be pretty one-dimensional as a quarterback. He’s going to need to throw from the same spot, so you’re going to have to protect that spot. He’s going to have get quicker eyes. What I mean by that is see things quicker, get the ball out of his hands a little bit quicker. Even some of his completions –and I’m being hard here, I know it’s only his third start, I’m being hard here – but a lot of the stuff you saw, even though he completed the ball, he was late. And that’s why, by the end of the game, there was some stuff coming open but he held the ball too long and that’s why they weren’t able to sustain consistent offense. He’ll get that. That’s something, if he’s willing to learn, he’ll grow that way if he recognizes it and he’s willing to work on it.
In response to a request for a specific yes or no answer as to whether he believed Mettenberger will be the starting quarterback Week 1 of 2015, Dilfer’s answer was “No.” Later in the interview, he elaborated:
Steve Young accused me of being a Zach Mettenberger hater last night in on our [halftime] meeting because I was asked the same question because we were talking about this. I’m not a hater at all. I like a lot of things about him, and I root for all quarterbacks to be successful. I’ve just studied this thing long enough to say this. When you’re a one-dimensional quarterback, which Zach is – he has one dimension to his game, and that’s dropping back in the pocket and throwing from the pocket – you can’t create space for yourself another way. Whether it’s being highly athletic and being a perimeter guy or having great pocket instincts or something in between, then you have to have an exceptional quality with your brain, with your processing to make up for it. So he has to have what I call quick eyes. He has to have just incredibly quick eyes, both pre-snap [and] post-snap. You have to learn how to throw receivers open. You have to be willing to get the ball out of your hands because eventually teams will attack that spot in the pocket. Peyton Manning and Tom Brady are really the two guys that are thriving in the NFL right now being one-dimensional pocket passers. But they’re savants in so many other areas of quarterbacking. Anticipation, throwing guys open, reading defenses, manipulating the line of scrimmage, mechanics, they’re in the best protections, throwing hot, changing route concepts, I can go on and on and on. Zach’s success will depend on quickly he can become a graduate level student in those other areas. His history, his young history, but at LSU, that was never what they said about Zach Mettenberger. He wasn’t the first guy in the building or the last guy out. He wasn’t a football savant. He was a big, strong, physical kid playing quarterback. Those kids tend to have short tails in the NFL unless they can develop that graduate level football understanding.
Dilfer also had a another very interesting point specifically about quarterbacking when discussing Justin Hunter:
We always talk about who’s going to be your quarterback of the future. Well part of that starts this offseason and which quarterback’s willing to put in that level of work and create that level of demand for his receiver. Hunter’s a really talented kid who doesn’t always reach his potential. That’s probably because he hasn’t been squeezed by the quarterback, because Jake’s not that kind of guy and I don’t think Zach’s that kind of guy. But he’s got a chance maybe this offseason to become that kind of guy.
Writing the Denver Broncos chapter for Football Outsiders Almanac 2014, the existence of Peyton Manning Wide Receiver Boot Camp was very evident. It was one of the more tantalizing prospects of the Peyton Chase in Tennessee back in 2012, because, and it’s hard to have an absolutely firm grip on this from the outside, it seems like an area where the Titans have been rudderless for a decade or more.
If necessary, I’ll take a really deep dive on Mettenberger in the offseason, since any current in-depth assessments are unlikely to change anyone’s mind and can easily be rendered moot by what happens the final six weeks of the season. Right now, as I was before the season began, I’m a lot closer to Dilfer’s point of view than I am to Cosell’s. But six more weeks will give us about three times the sample size we have right now, and that’s plenty for Bayesian updating on the prospects of Zach Mettenberger, potential NFL starting quarterback.
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