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Couldn't find a good article with Jaws quotes on ESPN (thanks Pat Y ), so resorting to Pro Football Talk. Romo was ranked No. 10 today, and this article has #10 thru #30: http://espn.go.com/blog/nfceast/post/_/ ... o-is-no-10



http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/20 ... ed-pocket/

Jaws: Matt Ryan must improve in ‘muddied pocket’
Posted by Evan Silva on June 30, 2012, 4:24 PM EDT


As Ron Jaworski of ESPN continues his ranking of the top-30 quarterbacks in the NFL, he slotted Atlanta’s Matt Ryan 11th among signal callers after back-to-back playoff appearances. Ryan is 27 years old. His career touchdown-to-interception ratio is 95:46, and Ryan’s yearly passer ratings have risen steadily.

“You know what I really appreciate about Ryan; he has improved in each of his four years as the Falcons’ starter,” Jaworski said on SportsCenter Saturday. “… He’s won 69 percent of his NFL starts. That’s pretty good.”

Jaworski likes Ryan’s talent level, and particularly his commanding presence and decision making before the snap of the ball.

“Ryan is a timing and rhythm passer,” Jaws observed. “He hits his back foot, and the ball comes out. First down was the explosive-play down for Ryan [in 2011]. He had 24 completions of 20 yards or more. … I also like Ryan’s natural feel for anticipating throws. …

“In 2011, Ryan was given more responsibility at the line of scrimmage. The ability to control the game before the snap is an increasingly important attribute in today’s NFL.”

Jaws still sees one part of Ryan’s game that must improve, in order for the fifth-year signal caller to take another step forward.

“Ryan is right on the edge being a top-ten NFL quarterback,” Jaworski opined. “I love the way he’s engaged in every single game. But there’s still one element of Ryan’s game that needs work. He must become more consistent in what I call a ‘muddied pocket.’ With bodies flying around him. Right now, he needs that comfortable cradle, functional space. If he improves in that area, he’ll crack my top ten.”

jaws is a moron, but with that said 11 is about right. After the elite 6, Manning, Manning, Brady, Big Ben, Brees and Rogers, there is imho a big gap to the next group where there's about 8 guys that depending on the year move up and down in the order. Ryan falls in that group, with Rivers, Flacco, Vick, Schaub, Romo, Stafford, and heck I'll throw Cutler in as well.

I think Rivers belongs in the Elite 6 more so than Eli Manning, but I agree with you otherwise. Just not a fan of Jaws ranking Flacco ahead of Ryan. Apparently, Jaws put him there because of his superior "arm talent." This from the guy that always talks about how arm strength is overrated.

https://twitter.com/SportsCenter/status ... 7460784129

Jaws is a super dork, just be glad he's off MNF.

I'd agree with the tier of the top 6, then the next bigger group. I would have Rivers in tier 2, as he threw WAY too many picks last year. I'd actually have Eli at the bottom of the first tier, and Stafford at the top of the 2nd tier, with Rivers just behind.

It's funny, because people knocked Eli last year for having too many INTs, when like 9 of his picks came on dropped passes. And people do the same with Rivers now. Eli had a better season than Rivers last year, but it was the only instance in the past 5 years that has been the case. People feel the need to bump Eli for this past year's success, when IMO he's still far away from the "Big 6" because of the lack of consistency. If he was to have 2 or 3 more years like this past year over the next 3 or 4 years, then I might put him on par with Rivers. But he's not there yet.

And for the record, I like Jaws. There are a finite amount of individuals at ESPN that are good at their jobs and do the work to be good analysts. Jaws is among those.

I like his ability to break down QB tape, but hearing him yammer on, while you could instead get the great duo of Tirico/Gruden, no brainer to me. You could literally hear Gruden swallowing his tongue half the time, trying not to hammer Jaws for some of the stupidly obvious things he'd say.

Real time rankings baby! Thats why Eli over Rivers. Playoff clutchness is a factor for sure. I still think Stafford has the easiest jump to the higher group currently. If we legit change our O, then Ryan could go with him. Next to drop out of the top group is Peyton, he's closer to 40 than 30. Brees is no spring chicken anymore either.

I thought Gruden came off as pretty bratty on MNF. The petty arguments they had in the booth were obnoxious, IMO. I like Gruden as an announcer though he hugs nuts alittle bit probably to make a transition back to the sideline less problematic. As to the list, winning when it matters most is important numbers be damned thus Manning>Rivers, Flacco>Ryan. By all rights it should have been a Flacco vs Manning SB.

It is real time to rank Rivers ahead of Eli. Look, if you're projecting who's going to be better in 2012, then you see that Rivers has belonged in the Big 6 in 4 out of the last 5 years, while Manning in 1 out of the last 5 years. That means that Rivers has an 80% chance of having a better season in 2012 than Manning. Past success is your best predictor for future success.

And again, I think people tend to rank teams and then make that equate to the QB. I don't think Flacco is a better QB than Matt Ryan, but I do think he's on a better team.

Everyone admits that we give QB's too much credit for wins, and too much blame for losses. Yet people continue to fall into that same trap. People making the equation of Who is the Better QB based around postseason wins and Super Bowl rings is a very, very flawed equation.

I try to base it around what I see. I don't think you can watch a random Chargers game and then what a random Giants game, and see Manning over Rivers. The only thing that Rivers underwhelming season did was widen the gap between him and Roethlisberger by a bit.

That's your opinion, Pudge. The Braves had a better batting average and ERA in the 96 World Series than the Yankees but lost 4 gaes to 2. Clutch is the great immeasruable.

But because one team wins in the postseason doesn't make a guy more clutch over another. Winning football games, whether the regular season or the postseason is all about matchups. If you have the superior matchups, then you'll win your games. The Texans and 49ers had arguably 2 of the best front 7s in football, and it meant they matched up very well with Bengals and Saints. That doesn't make T.J. Yates or Alex Smith clutch. The Giants had the league's 4th best passing attack last year going against a Falcon secondary that lost its best player: Grimes. That doesn't make Eli Manning more clutch than Matt Ryan. But it does mean his team has a significant advantage over his opponent. Now, I would say Eli is more clutch than Ryan, but not because of last year's playoff game, and certainly not by a huge margin. It's the same foolish thinking that people argue Chandler is more clutch than Ryan because of 1 game against the Vikings. You don't narrow an argument down to 1 aspect of it, especially when it includes 10, 20, or 30 aspects.

Look, if you believe that Eli Manning is a better QB than Philip Rivers, then so be it. That is your opinion. But if your opinion is based largely because the Giants are a better team than the Chargers, then you have a very flawed opinion in my humble opinion. And if that opinion is largely based upon the fact that Rivers had an inordinately high number of interceptions last year, then the fact that Eli Manning suffered the same thing the previous year, but suddenly this past year everybody is slurping him should tell you that you should not put too much stock into one season.

Eli Manning is no better/worse a QB than he was a year ago. THe only difference is that he had a better season. The same applies to Philip Rivers. The reason why Rivers had a "down" year was because of how beat up their offense was, with Gates missing 3 games, Floyd missing 4, McNeill missing 7, Mathews missing 2, Dielman missing 10, Vasquez missing 2, thus forcing Rivers to have to put more on himself to make up for all those missing pieces, and thus leading him to force a few too many throws than he should have. But what's funny, is that Rivers still had a great season by any standard, and only threw 4 more picks than Eli did.

The Chargers have had loads of talent when Rivers was there. I just think seeing what Eli has done in two dif post seasons and SBs is pretty significant. Admittedly, I have not watched a ton of Rivers games and, truthfully, not watched a ton of Eli's. But the destination is pretty importnat in the NFL along with the journey.

On this board where I could have swore it was Super Bowl or Bust; then ELI Manning playing in the toughest sports city should get his credit....

In both Super Bowls he made clutch passes that not many could make; and hung in the pocket the way a "man" stays in
the pocket to hit the open receiver.......

You can say what you want about the regular games
but I've come on over to the dark side so as to not fight City Hall. Eli Playoffs has been as clutch as anyone's!!

I've consistently given Eli credit over the years. I've often argued that if his last name wasn't Manning, he would have earned much more respect/credit throughout his career. But the problem is that now all of a sudden people want to rewrite the first 7 years of Eli's career because he has won his second Super Bowl. And it goes back to what I say, Super Bowls are magic. Because the moment you win one, it completely overshadows everything else you've done in your career.

But you change a few plays in each of those conf. championship games, and all of a sudden Joe Flacco and Alex Smith are playing in the Super Bowl. The point I'm trying to make is that people make the guy that wins the Super Bowl out to be this Almighty figure, but the gap between his team, the team that loses the Super Bowl, and the teams that lose in the conference championships are often miniscule. Eli gets all the credit for leading his team to the Super Bowl win, when in reality if the Packers don't rest their starters for Week 17, Kyle Williams doesn't fumble a punt, and Rob Gronkowski doesn't hurt his knee, then they probably don't win the Super Bowl. Frankly, if Miles Austin doesn't drop a wide open TD in Week 14, the Giants may not even make the playoffs. Same thing with Tom Brady, if Big Ben doesn't get hurt then the Steelers probably beat the Broncos and then the Pats, and then probably the Ravens.

But no, it was Fate that guided Elisha to the mountaintop! IMO, the margin for error over the course of 20 or so games that it takes to win a Super Bowl is so small that a great deal of luck has to do with winning a championship. Luck as defined by me is basically a coin flip. Something that there is no real rhyme or reason to why it turned up heads or tails. But if you flip 1000 times, it will fall on either side equally, but the fact that you only flipped it once makes it seem so profound that it turned up heads this time, or at least that's how people tend to perceive it. A perfect example of this is Nate Clements fumble in 2010. Sure, Roddy White gets credit for hustling down the field. Stripping the ball wasn't luck. But Harvey Dahl recovering it was. There is no rhyme or reason to where a football is going to go once it hits the turf, it's an oblong pigskin that could bounce a dozen different ways before it bounces the same way twice. Now, Matt Ryan driving this team down the field afterwards was not luck. But his getting that opportunity was extremely lucky.

Now part of the reason I believe this is because I don't possess a worldview that believes in fate, destiny, or a divine hand pulling strings behind a heavenly curtain. And it seems to me that often people want to equate some fate-like force to allowing one team to win a Super Bowl and 31 others not to, and somehow that team's QB in particular has some secret ability to coordinate, navigate, or control that fate.

I'm a firm believer that if you're going to evaluate something or someone, you evaluate everything. Don't let 1 season or game whitewash 6 or 16 others.

But people don't like or want to do that. Part of it may be because our brains genetically programmed to try and narrow things down to its simplest/basest form so that we can understand it. But that's just another case of perception reshaping reality, as opposed to reality guiding perception.

I don't have a problem with people putting more stock in the postseason. But what ends up happening is people put all of their stock in the postseason. And part of it probably has to do with many people only seeing the Giants games where they played in the postseason to base their opinion off. Now, I didn't see all 16 of the Giants game. I saw big chunks of some during the regular season. And I saw a very good QB in Eli. But the fact that he made some clutch throws in both Super Bowls doesn't mean much. Why is Eli getting credit for David Tyree's catch? Is Tom Brady less clutch than Eli because Wes Welker dropped a pass? Eli makes a helluva throw to Mario Manningham in that game, which took guts basically because he wasn't open, but Manningham went up and made a play. Is that clutch? Sure. But don't let that single instance overshadow the fact that in the 6 seasons that the Giants didn't win Super Bowls, there were many instances where Eli couldn't make those clutch throws. In fact, one of the biggest knocks on Eli during that time was that he was incapable of making the clutch throws in the big/tight ballgames. Now could you make the argument that Eli is now capable of doing that when he wasn't before? Sure, OK. But we'll see if that carries over in 2012.

Eli has been my favorite QB since 2004, simply because he's always been underestimated and an underdog. Every time critics talk down about him, all he ever did was prove them wrong. There Isn't a more emphatic statement than saying you belong in the elite discussion, getting laughed at for it, and then winning SB MVP.

I won't say he's the best, but he sure is top 5 (Rodgers, Brady, Brees, Peyton, ELIte)

Hypocrisy. Ryan has been beaten down like a government mule here because he hasn't won in the playoffs. I take Ryan over Eli any day and twice on Sundays.

Are you calling me a hypocrite? I'm not sure why. The same reason why I deflect blame for Ryan's playoff losses are the exact same reason why I deflect "credit" for Eli's playoff wins. The Giants beat us because they were a better team than us that had much more favorable matchups. And the Falcons counter to those lopsided matchups was to hit the Giants with one of the weaker parts of their offense, their below average running attack. So it's no wonder to me why Matt Ryan played poorly in that game. Again, that's not me absolving Ryan of blame for his poor play against the Giants.

The idea that had the Falcons scored a late touchdown in garbage time would change people's perceptions of Ryan seems like BS. I don't think people would be laying off Ryan if that final score was 24-9 as opposed to 24-2.

I think the Falcons are not coached well to win in January, while a team like the Giants are. Their offense has the "high variance," a trait they've shared with each of the 3 previous winners of the NFC, in that their offenses typically range from very good/explosive to very bad/erratic in the regular season. But through 16 weeks of regular season, that variance is honed to a point that come January they are much better equipped and battle-tested to make it so that they are able to elevate their play to the necessary level to win games. The Falcons on the other hand have a low variance offense that centers on consistency. This IMO prevents them from being able to elevate their play to the new level necessary to win consistently in January. That IMO is an issue completely independent of Matt Ryan. I believe Matt Ryan is capable of running one of the high variance offenses akin to Eli, Kurt Warner, Aaron Rodgers, and Drew Brees before him.

And the problem is that high variance isn't exactly conducive to winning in the regular season as you can see from the regular season records of Warner in Arizona, and the Giants struggles over the past 4 years, as well as the Packers in 2010 and the Saints prior to 2009, you can wind up looking at a lot of 8-8 or 9-7 seasons. But as we've seen with the Packers last year and the Saints since '09, you can see that level of variance become honed to a point that you become a low variance team i.e. a team that is highly explosive yet very consistent at doing so. And given that a team like the Saints have been either the 1st, 2nd or 3rd best team in the conference in each of the last 3 seasons and that Payton has helped lead that team to become a legit SB contender in 4 out of the 6 years he's been htere, contrasted to the Falcons who have only been so in 1 out of 4 (and that 1, 2010, is debatable IMO) shows that is the best strategy from a coaching point. Given that the Patriots have been the same in the AFC, and most believe the Packers will be this way in the forseeable future, this is highly advantageous.

The Falcons are basically on this path where they will have 1, maybe 2 shots over the next 5 years to be that championship winning team. While other teams will get 3, 4 or more shots. It's a strategy of maximization.

And people will blame Matt Ryan for that, when they fail to realize that 99% of that is because of Dimitroff, Smith & Associates.