The Draw Play

It’s funny how time works sometimes. A couple years ago and the 2018 QB draft class was mostly disappointing. Lamar was great right out of the gate, but Josh Allen took a couple years to come into his own. Baker Mayfield had somewhat disappointed in Cleveland and was abandoned for shiny new rapist toys. Sam Darnold languished on the Jets for a few seasons, having memes about him perform better than he did on the field, and got discarded so the team could draft a new, even worse player at QB.

Yet look at the 2018 class today! Lamar is still brilliant. He’s won MVP twice, even if last year’s win was sorta by default. The Ravens dropped an inexplicable loss to the Raiders in week 2 but outside that they’ve been great and look to be on track for another deep playoff run. Josh Allen has matured into a genuinely great talent. He went from a dude who could not pass the ball but could truck dudes into a guy who actually could pass the ball. The Bills lost most of their weapons this offseason (namely Diggs) and yet Allen is passing the ball around better than ever. The Bills are 3-1 and the only loss came to Lamar and the Ravens. They also feel primed for a playoff run and will likely win the AFCE.

Baker Mayfield? Baker was done dirty by Cleveland to be honest. After leading the team to their first playoff win since the dinosaurs he got injured and suffered as he tried to gut it out. His gung-ho attitude rubbed some in the locker room the wrong way and he seemed to lose a power struggle to OBJ. The Browns decided they wanted a QB with real character, so they went out and paid top dollar for a piece of human garbage. Baker was never that bad, his struggles in Cleveland could be chalked up to injuries and heavy expectations. Baker got dumped to Carolina to compete with fellow 2018 pick Sam Darnold, lost that battle, and was shipped to Los Angeles. He credits his short stint in LA as reinvigorating his play, and he managed to get a job in Tampa to fill the void left by Brady. Since then, he’s only gotten better. Baker is balling out this season, back to his fun self, talking shit, chucking TDs, embarassing the Eagles. It’s been a joy to watch him find his place.

And then Sam Darnold. Poor Sam. Drafted onto the Todd Bowles Jets, Sam struggled as a rookie. The Jets replaced Bowles with Adam Fucking Gase and everything got even worse. Darnold was terrible. He got caught on the sideline cam talking about seeing ghosts. He missed half a season with Mononucleosis, resulting in the funniest graphic of all time. Darnold was dumped to Carolina and forgotten about. That season though, he wasn’t bad. He suffered an injury though and the next season he would compete with Baker for the job he would eventually win after Baker was shipped off to LA and Matt Rhule was shipped back to college. That Steve Wilks era of Panthers football was probably the best football the Panthers have played in the last 5 years but it wasn’t enough. Sam would leave with the drafting of small child Bryce Young, spend a year as Brock Purdy’s backup, learning from Shanahan in Santa Clara. When he got picked up by Minnesota it was very obvious he was there to simply hold the job until the team wanted to play JJ McCarthy.

McCarthy got hurt, but he wouldn’t be playing right now if he was healthy. Sam Darnold, through 4 weeks, is one of the best QBs in the NFL. He’s balling. It’s a testament to how situations can matter. He has Jefferson and Addison to throw to and Aaron Jones as RB support. He has the Flores defense stimying other offenses. He’s got nothing to lose and he’s playing like it. It’s hard to not be proud of him. Most of us, myself included, are still kind of just waiting for the other shoe to drop on Darny Dimes, but until it does, we can enjoy this ride.

 

There is of course…the other one.

 

NBC kind of beat me to my own joke Sunday night by throwing up this graphic of the 5 guys. Josh Rosen was a pretty hyped prospect that year. I remember him and Darnold being a flip/flopping #1 and #2 for a while during the draft process. Baker rose into first pretty late. Allen was the “lesser Josh”, and resulted in my worst aged comic ever? Lamar was viewed as a scrambling project who couldn’t throw. Rosen was supposed to be the smart, cerebral one. He got drafted into a dismal situation in Arizona, got replaced after one year by Kyler Murray, went to Miami to suck just as bad, and then basically vanished. The NBC graphic showed us that he’s out of football entirely and apparently enrolled in business school. He’ll probably be fine. Much of the criticism of Rosen was about how his head wasn’t in the game and he may have been too smart for football. He was not a jock, he was an intellectual who spoke his mind, and not in the Aaron Rodgers quack sense but in the actual smart sense. That unfortunately doesn’t tend to make good football players at the highest level. Just look at Josh Allen, a dumb farm boy who probably laughs at fart jokes every day and can wrestle pigs. You tell Josh Allen to run a draw and truck a linebacker and his tail starts wagging. Josh Rosen will question the play and be worried about the head trauma. That might be smart, but it doesn’t win you the locker room.

I hope Rosen is happy, doing whatever he does now.