Round 1 Pick 26 (From Miami) QB Jordan Love Utah State

I don't think bad decision making being fixable is "highly debatable", plenty of examples of college QBs improving on that skill coming into the league. Patrick Mahomes had 25 INTs his last 2 years at Texas Tech, more than Love had his last 2 years (23). Ben Roethlisberger had 21 INTs his final 2 years. Matt Ryan had 29 INTs his last 2 years, 19 in his final year alone. Eli Manning had 25 his final 2 years. DeShaun Watson had 30 INTs his final 2 years. Carson Palmer had 40 INTs over his final 3 years of college. The flip side is that Jamarcus Russell had 17 INTs his final 2 years, Paxton Lynch had 13, Brady Quinn had 14, etc. The point isn't to say INTs are no big deal in college, but context is critically important and bad stats don't always follow you to the NFL. It's a clean slate for the most part and success relies heavily on coaching, team situation, and the individual player's temperament and skill.

We know they're trying to build a strong run game and defense to take pressure off the QB position, so Love almost certainly will not be put in a position to do it all alone. We know nothing of LaFleur's ability to develop QBs but guys like Matt Ryan credit him with their development and success when they crossed paths, but right now that's a question mark. Love certainly has the physical skill and it's not unreasonable to be excited by what he can bring to the table. Does he have the IQ and attitude to be a franchise QB? Big question mark as we have never seen him on an NFL field, but college INTs are historically not indicative one way or the other. 

Who said INTs only?  You based everything on INT totals.  Yes, the whole premise is highly debatable.  If every QB can be "fixed" then there wouldn't be a huge need for QBs who can actually play the position.  You could just pluck whoever and train him up and off they go in the NFL.

BTW, nice "last 2 years" selective stats.  How about 17 INTs in Love's last year., the one before he was drafted into the NFL, which should be much more forgiving.

Love tossed 20 touchdowns and 17 interceptions, was off target on a class-high 15.5% of his throws, and his 51.7 total QBR was worst in the class. Love has a good arm, which shows up in his big plays, but his struggles with accuracy, turnovers and decision-making and against pressure stick out as red flags.

I'm fucking giddy.

@Grave Digger posted:

 The point isn't to say INTs are no big deal in college,

Strike outs are just outs

Finally, Love's offenses leaned quite a bit on quick screens and slants which meant lots of predetermined reads and quick decisions. It resulted in a 9.9-yard average depth of target, tied for 42nd-best in college football, according to Pro Football Focus. Can Love thrive in any NFL offense or must it be one tailored to his strengths? 

I know I'd move up in the 1st round for a QB with that kind of potential.  At least we know with his athleticism he can make those tough Tarkblarsky throws.

Only time and circumstances will tell whether this was a good decision, or not. I'll try to maintain my optimism. 

Absolutely. 

So now we are being optimistic?  Screw that

Times Four, not for optimists

I'm a sucker for an meaningless overblown *freudian* argument in a red dress.

Don't really understand the teeth-gnashing about the trading up to get Love...it was 4 spots at the end of R1 and it cost a 4th round pick.  If we were talking about moving up 4 spots in teens of R1 or earlier, then yeah, I understand the bitch a bit more - but that would have certainly cost a lot more draft capital and thus validating consternation.

If you don't like the pick because you don't like his abilities, fine.  If you don't like the pick because you wanted a different player, fine.  However, using the draft capital expended as a pillar in an argument seems a bit feeble.

Really?   First off, I'm pretty sure the bulk of my take is Love makes bad decisions and I'm not even sure how you could disconnect the arguments of draft capital and Love's skill set anyways.  Feel free to explain that. 

"Boy howdy, I sure don't like Love's skillset but I'm super okay moving up to take him in the first round!"

1) You used the draft capital to pick a 2nd round talent.  If they would've taken Love at 30, great, good times.  There's your potential pick.  Good luck, God's speed and all that jazz.  Worth the shot.  Let's put this into more perspective.  TT didn't trade up to get Rodgers, who was infinitely better.  Anybody making the argument 2005 Rodgers and 2020 Love are the same probably already shamed blushed just reading this sentence.  Sherman and everyone shit their pants about not getting Bert more talent instead of picking a guy that should've been the #1, yes, #1 pick overall.  Still, TT didn't burn draft capital.  Gicklypence decided to move up for a guy who makes bad decisions/2nd round talent. 

2) That draft capital used on a 2nd round talent at best could've been used on say a RT or a DT or a ILB or a WR, all of which we know are of zero necessity.  I guess they could just make do with shitty ol' Rodgers for another year.

3) In a draft deep with WR talent it's possible, just slightly maybe could be possible a WR is there in the 4th.  Also,  you could actually package the 4th with 65 of those 6th and 7th round picks to move up in the 4th or even 3rd to get said talent.  I don't know about you but I'm not going to cry over the inability to draft Ty Summers and James Looney without those 7th rounders.

So tell me how feeble it is when Lancaster and Lowry are getting blown off the line while guys like Mostert giddy up into the distance. 

But other than that I completely agree.

Another interesting tidbit I read on Love is he was either going to transfer or declare for the NFL. 

DUN DUN DUUNNNN!!!!

Good luck kid.  Win many many Superb Owls but I'm never going to use "well, I hope I'm wrong".  No, you and Gingivitis be right.

For the record, I did not like the pick.  I was one of a handful of people in the chat room during this pick and abruptly stormed out when the pick was announced.  I believe Patrick Queen would have been the best pick.  IMO, other great options would have been Ross Blacklock, AJ Epenesa, and Laviska Shenault.  Beyond those four, I don't have any strong opinion.

Regarding WR - this position was so picked over by the time GB picked, the only one left at the end of R1 that I would have wanted was Shenault.  I wanted no part of Denzel Mims, Tee Higgins, or KJ Hamler.  I like Michael Pittman and Chase Claypool more than those three, but I do not believe they would have been good value in late R1 (even though Pittman was taken in early R2, I just think that was about 15 picks earlier than he should have been).

Run defense was the biggest weakness in last year's team and not enough was done along the DL to address that - I completely agree with you.

I just don't believe pick 136 would have helped that.  Based on what was picked shortly after that pick, the "nice to have" players were Jack Driscoll and Tyler Biadasz - but I think GB covered off quite nicely on OL with Runyan, Hanson, and Stepaniak later in the draft.

The funny thing about this is I totally have no problem with the reasoning behind this kind of pick.  I just don't think Love is the guy you make a move for.  Also, my concern is with FO thinking.  Glurp has done well in FA but right now his draft record is a bit rough but it's also still early in his tenure.  Is there really not a guy on the horizon in the next year or two who wouldn't be worth the draft capital?  I guess if his drafting stinks it doesn't really matter.  Simply put, Gjornborn is staking his position on Love.  To me it all just feels a bit Ryan Pacey.

A ton of a QB success starts with the mechanics. Love’s look pretty good. Will be fun to watch him. 

And we have many years of word play with "love" to look forward to.

Personally, I'm conflicted between Dr. LOVEjoy and Dr. Strange LOVE.  But I can see that Jordan will have his pick of personal physicians.  

When I can't make up my mind I go LOVEjoy Library to think about it.  There is sooooo much LOVE in the world.  

Oh, God, I can see where this thread is going.... 

Unfortunately or otherwise, I'll probably be in the big middle of it.

It's the offseason Timmy.  Let's get kooky.

@Henry posted:

Who said INTs only?  You based everything on INT totals.  Yes, the whole premise is highly debatable.  If every QB can be "fixed" then there wouldn't be a huge need for QBs who can actually play the position.  You could just pluck whoever and train him up and off they go in the NFL.

BTW, nice "last 2 years" selective stats.  How about 17 INTs in Love's last year., the one before he was drafted into the NFL, which should be much more forgiving.

Love tossed 20 touchdowns and 17 interceptions, was off target on a class-high 15.5% of his throws, and his 51.7 total QBR was worst in the class. Love has a good arm, which shows up in his big plays, but his struggles with accuracy, turnovers and decision-making and against pressure stick out as red flags.

I'm fucking giddy.

How can you objectively measure “decision making” other than INTs? Everything else, like “on target throws”, is completely subjective and varies depending on who looks at it. It’s the same issue you have with PFF. 

17 INTs is not a good total and clearly indicates an issue in 2019, but only 6 INTs in 2018 also says something important, which is why I pulled stats from both years. Context for both seasons is important, just like it was for all the QBs who put up similar stats their last 2 years. 

I didn’t say every QB was fixable. “...success relies heavily on coaching, team situation, and the individual player's temperament and skill.“

How about progressions?  Knowing when to stay in or leave the pocket?  INTs are certainly the best indicator but not exactly sure how stats are the only measurable. 

The reality is you have a sample of two years.  One year where he did well with dumper passes and another where he failed spectacularly in an offense that should highlight all his athletic prowess.  He failed to the point of where he might transfer.  These are all the same criticisms of Boyle.  Difference was he wasn't even close to a 1st round pick.  Do you build an offense around 10 yard dumper passes?  Then they should've drafted some legit receivers who can churn out YAC and there was a truckload this year.  Is that worth a 1st and 4th rounder?  Is it worth building out an offense that effectively is telling Rodgers their going to cut him loose asap? 

Also, the INT argument leans pretty heavy in my favor when you actually consider the offenses being run in the individual years.  17 INTs?  That's shit.

You want to talk about fixing mechanics, absolutely fixable.  Apparently his footwork has been called into question as well.  Decision making, possible but not remotely a guarantee.  You may get the next Hundley who we all thought was progressing only to do the same stupid shit he did in college. 

I don't like 1st rounders having descriptors like "raw" or "potential upside".

Imagine being Jordan Love in 2018.   ~3600 yds passing, 64% comp rate, 32 TD, 6 INT, 8.6 YPA....gonna be one of the top QBs in the nation next year......

Then your Head Coach leaves, 9 of 11 starters are gone, and you not only have to learn a new system but the new HC is none other than Gary Andersen. QB killing Gary Andersen !! 

Gary Andersen last 4 years after leaving YooDub :

2015  2-10 (.167)

2016  4-8  (.333)

2017  1-5 (.167)

2019  7-6 (.538)

How does this guy keep getting hired ?? 

Gotta be tough suddenly playing QB on a team with no talent and bad coaching. Trying to do too much ? Or was 2018 the outlier ? 

Love starting right away would likely be a disaster. Couldn't have asked for a better situation- watch and learn behind one of the best  - QB friendly coach - QB friendly system. We shall see. 

True.  Definitely can't rule any of that out but he's still the guy making the reads on the field.  Say you get rid of the 2019 season altogether and look at 2018.  I know pundits claim he'd be a top 5 pick.  Really?  Running a short pass/high YAC offense makes him a top 5 pick?  Again, Terblusky but with the "raw" label.  Well which is it?  A polished, high stat guy or a turd waiting to be polished.  Obviously Love has much more ability than Turkblowsky but what's going to make him morph into Mahomes in the NFL all of sudden?  I seriously don't get these Mahomes comparisons.

@Henry posted:

I just don't think Love is the guy you make a move for.  

Fine, then maybe Gutekunst should have traded our 1st round pick for a guy who is third string on a losing team.  

You mean a high second round pick who started all 4 years in college with a rocket arm and tough as nails?  I bet no one calls him "raw".  Go get him.

Brian Brohm was a second-round pick.

What's your point?  You guys are reaching hard.  Almost as hard as the reach to pick Love.

I named my sock-puppet 'Reaching Hard'.

@Henry posted:

You mean a high second round pick who started all 4 years in college with a rocket arm and tough as nails?  I bet no one calls him "raw".  Go get him.

We know all that now.  But leading up to the 1991 draft 'tough' was discounted by many in favor of 'raw'.  In fact plenty saw him as raw.  A wild guy who just threw where and when he wanted to - seemingly.  Among guys who knew, his production and his arm was intriguing.  But how could he be disciplined enough to work within a system?  That was the kind of questions he faced.  And in Wisconsin the "Brett who???!!!" screams were loud and clear when our new GM traded a number one pick for him.  Most Packer fans don't follow Southern Miss.  And some of those fans who did know of him before the draft and heard how undisciplined he was didn't want him either.  

Wolf knew something that many (ok - all) of us (armchair GMs) did not at the time.  Wolf was at the game Favre come back from his surgery.  When Favre ran onto the field there were many loud cheers by all the fans for him - at the University of Alabama.  Favre engineered a upset of Alabama that day.  Wolf saw how he did that and decided then and there that if he could he would get Favre to play for him if he could.  

We all look at the stats and athletic ability.  Your not in the NFL if don't have those.  But how a guy thinks and his determination are hard to measure.  I think that often we discount those and it is these things we know so little about that probably account for most of the differences of how a player is rated.  

Maybe we should give Love a chance before we toss him out with the dish water.  There were a bunch of fans who would have dumped Favre if they had the chance back in 1992.  

As entertaining as it is to watch Henry try to cure his boredom, it’s truly eye roll worthy reading the wanna be scouting reports. I can say “I think his mechanic look good” and Henry can say “how is he in his progressions” but it’s all bullshit.

Read Rodgers’ pre draft scouting report. Read Mahomes’. Read Brady’s. Scouts see what they want to see. They get their opinions in print, and then we read them and then we’re talking about “progressions”.

Lafleur is into him, convinced Gutekunst to go up and get him ahead of a couple teams that also wanted him, and hopefully we get to see him play in a few months. Should be fun. 

TOG's reputation in Atlanta was the same--maybe worse--than what it was in college. The drinking rumors were legendary but he suddenly wasn't a "star", so there was nothing to balance out his bad habits.
A rookie QB behind an entrenched starter, not particularly motivated or dedicated, left him with plenty of spare time.... to drink. And he did.
He soon found himself (rightfully) in Jerry Glanville's doghouse. When asked by the Falcons after Wolf called, Glanville wanted to wash his hands of him, so they were receptive to the offer. 

Holmgren was divine intervention. Without him, TOG could have been even worse in Green Bay.

It’s pretty interesting when you look back on Favre and Wolf and how that all came about.   Wolf was from the old school in that he really valued arm strength and toughness and Brent certainly possessed those two traits.   The maturity, or immaturity, is what caused 4 to be overlooked by a lot of people.   

There are two universal attributes that hold true to any decent QB-  competitiveness and leadership.  The great ones want it so badly and demand it of others that it is almost annoying and obnoxious.  Some would say those types are a bit insufferable and we’ve all heard stories of Elway and Marino and Brady and even Rodgers that they can be prickly or passive aggressive.  That drive to succeed can almost overwhelm some around them or cause self destructive behaviors as we saw with Favre. 

As for Jordan Love, who the hell knows where he will end up but let’s not forget there have been plenty of so called can’t miss guys that have failed badly and others that were critiqued or criticized for their warts or shortcomings and they rose above it.   Think Brady and arm strength.  Think Rodgers and his goofy mechanics.  Think Russ Wilson or Drew Brees and both being undersized.  All rose up and silenced the critics.  

To me, the Wilson downgrades were absolutely ridiculous given how he played in a pro style system at Wisconsin but hey, like Billy Bean said in Moneyball “we aren’t selling jeans” so old habits of what a good QB should look like ie “prototypical size” can be tough to overcome.   

Love certainly has the physical tools and solid intangibles and I’m hoping he translates more like performance from 2 years ago than what we saw last year.   The decision making at times has been sketchy and it’s not like he always excelled against good competition. 

However, with the right coaching and talent around him I see no reason why he can’t be successful.  He just needs to go out and prove it. 

There's always going to be some douchenozzle waiting in the weeds to shit on a pick...when the pick happens, all the way through his entire career. They live for the moments that the guy fails so they can dust off the old schadenfreude and whack themselves into a euphoric state.

You can strike gold or turds anywhere in the draft. They never learn.

@Ghost of Lambeau posted:

We know all that now.  But leading up to the 1991 draft 'tough' was discounted by many in favor of 'raw'.  In fact plenty saw him as raw.  A wild guy who just threw where and when he wanted to - seemingly.  Among guys who knew, his production and his arm was intriguing.  But how could he be disciplined enough to work within a system?  That was the kind of questions he faced.  And in Wisconsin the "Brett who???!!!" screams were loud and clear when our new GM traded a number one pick for him.  Most Packer fans don't follow Southern Miss.  And some of those fans who did know of him before the draft and heard how undisciplined he was didn't want him either.  

Wolf knew something that many (ok - all) of us (armchair GMs) did not at the time.  Wolf was at the game Favre come back from his surgery.  When Favre ran onto the field there were many loud cheers by all the fans for him - at the University of Alabama.  Favre engineered a upset of Alabama that day.  Wolf saw how he did that and decided then and there that if he could he would get Favre to play for him if he could.  

Simple rebuttal.  Let me go out and grab every example of a failure of a QB in response.  Pretty damn easy to steer away from the topic at hand with fallacy.  This is like the discussion that coined McVince.

We all look at the stats and athletic ability.  Your not in the NFL if don't have those.  But how a guy thinks and his determination are hard to measure.  I think that often we discount those and it is these things we know so little about that probably account for most of the differences of how a player is rated.  

How a guy thinks, like decision making?

Maybe we should give Love a chance before we toss him out with the dish water.  There were a bunch of fans who would have dumped Favre if they had the chance back in 1992.  

Yes, that's the argument being made.

@Music City posted:

As entertaining as it is to watch Henry try to cure his boredom, it’s truly eye roll worthy reading the wanna be scouting reports. I can say “I think his mechanic look good” and Henry can say “how is he in his progressions” but it’s all bullshit.

Read Rodgers’ pre draft scouting report. Read Mahomes’. Read Brady’s. Scouts see what they want to see. They get their opinions in print, and then we read them and then we’re talking about “progressions”.

Lafleur is into him, convinced Gutekunst to go up and get him ahead of a couple teams that also wanted him, and hopefully we get to see him play in a few months. Should be fun. 

Pretty sure there's a lot more than progressions, as if that's even a major talking point.  BTW, many scouts have commented Love does well going through progressions, which I hear is something you can actually see with your own eyes.  I hear that's kind of important when playing QB in the NFL.  Otherwise you end up with Hundley.

@Chongo posted:

There's always going to be some douchenozzle waiting in the weeds to shit on a pick...when the pick happens, all the way through his entire career. They live for the moments that the guy fails so they can dust off the old schadenfreude and whack themselves into a euphoric state.

You can strike gold or turds anywhere in the draft. They never learn.

Let me know when that douchenozzle shows up because I know you're not talking about me.

Make the argument.  Have some debate.  Own it if you're wrong.  Pretty much the way it's always been. 

It is fun to watch all the bustle bunching though.  How many fainting couches should I order?

Wasn't referring to you specifically @Henry

There's a cast of characters, I shant name names, that roam these halls that consistently take joy in the failings of players as an excuse to MF TT and now Gutey-Time.

I retract my snarkiness but I do think we need fainting couches simply for a more upscale aesthetic.

Yes, I agree with you as the axe grinding on the short tenure of Mayo/Glorp has already begun.  You have to make big moves and the Love pick is Goopy's move. 

Also, to all my fans out there, I am excited to see what this offense looks like with Dillon and TE/HB guy.  There's no reason to believe Love's 2018 performance in that particular offensive scheme isn't what sold them on picking him.  It's a good fit for what Mayo is trying to build. 

For shits and giggles if you want to hear some entertaining banter go ahead and google Dan Patrick negative draft review.  He features NFL players reading comments from scouts about their skills and projections.  My favorite so far: 

“he will never be a stud pass rusher” 

JJ Watt 

@Henry posted:

I retract my snarkiness but I do think we need fainting couches simply for a more upscale aesthetic.

After hitting the fainting couch, perhaps a nice massage is in order.