So Jagsbch, I see you're about everywhere...no loyality to the Jags? or did the Jags message board heat become too much for you? I read you over on the Bucs messageboard, when you thought lord Byron Leftwich was going to save the Bucs last season. Now, you have hopped on the Tim Tebow bandwagon for the Broncos....you are a ture tool...do you have season tickets to the Jags? No, because they they did not pick Timmy? What other excuse? Oh, you probably did buy one ticket for the Jags this season, week one, right? vs. Broncos....let me guess you're hoping Timmy will be on the rookie list too?
Byron took the Bucs 28th ranked offense to being top 5 before he had the rug pulled out from underneath him in week 3 by what was clearly a smoke screen designed to get Freeman on the field.
A good freind of mine is a Buc fan. I know a few Buc fans, last season the bet was that he would not win the starting job. I won the bet.
Now when week 1 rolled around I bet that Byron would immediately emerge as a top 10 QB. I won the bet.
Now when week 2 rolled around the bet was that Byron would emerge as a top 5 QB. I won the bet.
Byron managed to be the third-ranked QB last season in the category of touchdowns and yards combined going into Week Three last season.
Thing is when you allow Byron to thrive in a system that allows his strenths to be polished and his talent to shine, this guy immerges as a remarkaable QB.
This begs the question, as to whether or not, Byron was set up to fail by his own coaching staff, so they could plug in overrated mobile quarterbacks.
Last season, Byrons performance in the first two weeks jacked the Buc's 28th-ranked offense to being fourth best in the league; that is before having the rug pulled out from underneath him by the coaching staff shutting down the offense.
How does a gunslinger like Byron only manage 22 yards on seven completions?
How does a rushing offense that racked up 231 yards rushing be held to just 13 yards rushing?
How can a QB come into a game and in just one late fourth-quarter drive outperform the passing and rushing offense that played the entire game?
Could it be as simple as the fact that the offense was opened up with the spread at the end of the game, when the mobile QB emerged on the field?
This after being locked down with a West Coast offense during the game when the pure pocket passer was out on the field.
They say a picture can tell a thousand words.
Well the tale of the tape say's even more.
All one has to do have to do to appreciate the veracity of this paranoid and audacious take that Byron may have been sabotaged by his own coaching staff, is to look at the highlight reel from the Giants and Jags game on NFL.com.
The single footage of Byron trying to make the best of the situation, while his only two receivers were both sent to the same side of the field within yards of each other while the defenders swarmed on them like flies in the dog fight. This footage alone speaks volumes.
A 2005 top ten QB, Byron has been done so wrong for so long; that is why he has my heart as far as being my favorite player in this league.
Where is a violin when I need one?
The reason Byron managed to accomplish the top ten feat, in 2005, was the result of being set free in the third quarter to unleash his cannon of an arm, before being locked back down again by the obsolete WCO.
Once Jack Del Rio, who seemed to refuse the offense to take the glory off the field, got his lead back, Byron was reverted to simple dink and dunk management rolea role that turned his cannons into pea shooters.
Jack Del Rio is a throwback head coach who is clearly living in the wrong era.
His ultra conservative, in your face, mano-e-mano approach, as admirable as it may be, is outdated in the modern era.
I can only presume that the deep passing game is something Jack Del Rio considers being cowardly, given the fact that he prefers an ultra conservative approach instead of using the arrows of the deep passing game, which take the fight away from the front 7 on the battle field.
Whenever I watch the movie "300," I cant help but think of the Spartan-looking Jack Del Rio.
"Persian: A thousand nations of the Persian empire descend upon you. Our arrows will blot out the sun! Stelios: Then we will fight in the shade."
I think of JDR, especially when they are bombarded with the arrows, and Stelios calls them cowards for not fighting mano-e-mano style.
I mentioned in the article Byrons third down efficiency in 2005, which was actually the last season he was allowed to play before getting benched after his sideline squabble over what with JDR in the Texan game of 2006, game which happened to be the last Byron ever played for the Jags.
I can only imagine that is was the ball and chain scheme Byron was forced to carry around for all those years in JDR's chain gang of an offense. JDR is a defensive minded headcoach, his idea of a great game is a team winning 9-3.
Jaguars have the record for going the most games without scoring 30 points under JDR. JDR wants to see the game played in front of the LB's not behind them. This is why rather than use Byron and Matt Jones for instance in the deep passing game to utilize both their strengths, JDR sadistically sent Matt under neatth the LB's to get punished while he got his rocks off watching the QB who has haunted him his entire career at the LB position get his and how.
Why he had Matt so traumetised that after a catch with no one around him, Matt just laid there on the ground in a fetal position.
I've had a few conversations with JDR, once his Rose Bowl MVP came up, with disdain he said that he had to share it with the QB. So at the peak of JDR's glory in college, there was the QB to take the spotlight away...
Jack IMO has a deep seated hatred for the pure pocket passer, that is why he has a fullback playing the position now in one David Garrard. Heck if Ladainian Tomlinson can have a better QB rating than any of the greatest to play the game at the position, why not put a guy out there who ought to actually be playing the fullback postion?
But I digress.
Back to the 3rd quarter of Byrons last season as a starter in this league.
Despite Byron having to drag JDR's a ball and chain scheme that is not only outdated but obsolete, he still managed to emerge as a top 10 QB. Thing that makes the WCO obsolete, is that defenses are wise to it now.
The scheme was designed for weak armed QB's, and it is designed to be played underneath the LB's in order to take advantage of their lack of coverage skills.
Well opponents put an end to that by installing nickle and dime packages. That pretty much put the nail in the coffin of anyone operating that system.
Now when Byron was allowed to take the ball and chain of the WCO off, he was amazing. The 3rd Quarter of 05 proves this without a shadow of a doubt.
His rating before they changed the rating system a few years back was 137.5. Now it is 128.3 for the entire season.
In the 3rd of the 05 season compared to the 1st...
Byron had 12 times as many 20+ completions
7 Times the TD's
More than doubled the first downs
More than three times the yards
This was the result of running a balanced offense as far as the proportions to the run pass ratio model of the modern era goes.
Byrons only INT's that season came in the 4th quarter and OT.
The 4th quarter had a different tale, when Byron was allowed to run the spread with the deep passing game, it was almost always at the cost of the run.
JDR had a habbit of abandoinging the run back then, and while placing the teams fate squarely on Byrons shoulders. Byron accepted the challenge while leading the team to the playoffs that season.
Byron has yet to be given the opportunity to pick up where he left off, when he ranked as a top 10 QB in his 05 season, by being given a season to play on an offense and with a scheme that actually allows him to develop and execute his strengths as an elite calliber QB in this league.
Byron is a diamond in the rough, and all the Jewelers who have ever allowed him to start managed to do, was hack up the diamond rin the rough with a scheme that goes against his grains, rather than polish his brilliance with one that actually illuminates it.
I have been following Byron since he was in college, my wifes family were huge Herd fans, so I managed to travel and see quiet a few games with them.
From Chad Pennington throwing to Randy Moss, to Byron in the swamp I was there. I know what Byron is capable of and the obstacles he has faced in his pursuit to get a team to allow his diamond in the rough status, to be upgraded, cut and polished to the dazzling state it is capable off.
Yet all he and I have seen is the league hack up this diamond, that is one Byron Leftwich, that is outside of the opportunity Mike Tomlin has given him.
Mike actually honored Byron in the locker room last season during the Super Bowl festivities that occur every year. Mike gets it. I get, and pretty soon I imagine the entire league is about to get it too...
Byron Leftwich has started 49 games in this league. 49 is divisible by 7.Byron has been in a game in a back up capacity only 8 times. 5 of those where for the Steelers in 2008 when the team went to the Super Bowl, and 2 where when Byron was a rookie, so please spare me of the condescending back up caliber crap.
Byron competed for the starting role in Tampa, won and got jerked out of it by a bunch of jerks.
According to the rookie QB, the bunch of jerks only signed Byron as a smokescreen for the draft. Because they thought the raw rookie was a high commodity rather than a reach from hell.
Byron has thrown 900 completions for over 10,000 yards. He passed the 10,000 yard mark on a 42 yard TD strike to Kellen Winslow against Dallas last season.
Point is Byron is clearly much more than your average back up caliber QB.
