Fear & Loathing said:
Oh...and in very few ways is Rex Grossman like Brett Favre. He sometimes throws off his back foot, and he throws a pretty good deep ball. How else? Favre has had one of the better pocket presence's you'll ever see. Rex one of the worst. Favre has been a heady QB most of his career (his bonehead plays, in addition to being severly overblown by most fans, come from gambling rather than poor football IQ), Grossman has been an absolute dolt and basketcase for almost half his games. Favre has been the most durable QB of all time, Grossman extremely brittle. In his prime Favre was one of the most accurate QBs in the NFL. Grossman is one of the most inaccurate QBs in the NFL. Favre was very mobile in his 20s, Grossman is not.
You could say that Brett Favre is the NFL's idiot savant of quarterbacks whereas Grossman is just an idiot.
Im not comparing Young Brett to Current Rex. Im comparing the 2 right now. All of Brett's football IQ is based on his superhuman talent, which he no longer has as a mere mortal now. So, what once worked, is now a bonehead play. They both seem to have zero hesitation after an interception and will sling it right back down the field into triple coverage. Both are higly erratic and look for the homerun ball far too often, forgoing the easier completion. Both have sloppy mechanics and think their arms are better then they are. Neither can do much to avoid a rush.All of these traits are more or less ingrained in Brett because people still claim he's a top QB in the game, despite the huge number of interceptions he's thrown the past 3 years. On the other hand, it may be possible to break Rex of the worst of his habits and have him improve.
As for him always folding under pressure, thats just not true. Late in the season he was under heavy fire and came out and responded by playing well up until the last meaningless game of the season. And in the Saints game, he took over a close game and buried the Saints despite starting off the game poorly. He may not always rise to the occassion, but he's not a complete choke artist.
Yes, he's not a rookie, but game study and game experience are two different beasts. To bail on him after waiting on him for 3 years to be healthy enough to get that experience is completely short sided.
You're way off on Favre's football IQ being based on his superhuman talent. He's shown a very high football IQ and awareness his whole career. The last couple of years, with very poor talent surrounding him on offense, he's gambled and tried to make things happen too often...but he's always been a high IQ football player who has made heads up plays....and still is. It would be interesting to see what kind of season he could throw up with Driver, Moss, Jennings, a legit TE, a running game and an improving O-Line. Rex folded under pressure many times this season -- do you really need me to point them out? He absolutely folded against Arizona and couldn't get it going again. He was awful in a loss to the Patriots. He melted against the Dolphins the whole game. He was atrocious in the 2nd Vikings game. He imploded against the Packers. He folded against the Saints for 3/4 of the game. He absolutely folded in the 2nd half of the Super Bowl. Basically, what you have here is a QB who played well most of the time against weak competition and played so poorly to the point of folding whenever he was challenged by better competition.
It's not about bailing on him. It's about realizing that a QB with his strengths & weaknesses is extremely ill-suited for a team set up in every other way to contend for a Super Bowl the next couple of seasons. Right now Grossman is a turnover prone, inconsistent, inaccurate, immature tease.
They need a more careful, more consistent, more accurate, more mature, more reliable leader. They need someone they can take to the bank in a big game. That's the opposite of Rex Grossman. And Super Bowl windows are too precious a commodity for a franchise to bank on a roll of the dice like the odds of Grossman's future development.
But I agree, the answer is NOT Jeff Garcia. And the fact that he had a few good games in Philly shouldn't be taken as a sign that he is well-suited to be the Bears QB. I wonder how many people were on board the Garcia bandwagon half-way through the season. Or when he was a free agent this past offseason. He was the same QB then as he is now...people just couldn't read the situation well because they continually get caught up in the buzz of the most recent storylines. Evaluate the talent and the environment rather than the hype and the most recent storylines.
Funny that Jeff Garcia is all of the sudden "the answer" for contending teams when nobody even concerned themselves with him at this team last season. He's the same QB.
