So I just felt like posting this comp that I saw here. BY has played 9 games so far and yes, it’s been tough. But it’s have a look at the numbers:
BY after 9 games of rookie season:
TD/Int: 9/8 Comp: 62.1% Passer rating: 74.7 W/L: 1/8
TL after 9 games of rookie season:
TD/Int: 8/9 Comp: 58% Passer rating: 72.1 W/L: 2/7
Takes like this aren’t meaningful because you’ve intentionally chosen a QB who turned it around after a poor start to compare BY to, as opposed to the much, much more numerous QBs who didn’t turn it around.
Also there’s no actual perspective at play here, since BY and TL are two different human beings with different teammates and different coaching staffs with different conferences, so TL’s capacity for success doesn’t tell us anything about BY’s capacity for success.
Not dumping on you, just ranting about my least favorite type of sports take.
The major issue with this type of cherry-picking is that it doesn’t take into account a “flash” factor. I can deal with losing and sub-par stats from a rookie as long as we’re seeing flashes somewhat consistently of what’s in the tank and you get a sense of the guy’s ceiling. Beyond a couple of throws (the escape and dot to Thielen vs Houston and that bomb to Strachan vs Chicago), we really haven’t seen anything that makes us, or me at least, think that made a wise move to trade up.
That’s part of the way it strips away infinite contextual factors to essentially end up at a true-but-not-useful conclusion: a player who performed poorly at some point can, at another point, perform better.
Sure, Trevor Lawrence or Peyton Manning or whoever became more productive after their rookie season. Many, many more numerous players didn’t. Why did some QBs improve and others didn’t? It’s in those questions we can start to figure out BY’s capacity for success.
The post provides hope. There’s nothing wrong with that.