Thinking back to the Georgia game in Miami is informative.
For the first time all season, we were losing the offensive battles around the quarterback. Reminiscent of the 1991 season, where Elvis Grbac had only been sacked a few times all season, in their toughest test, in the final game, the line finally met their match and got shredded.
Harbaugh pulled the plug and went with JJ, because even though he might still make some mistakes, he could run away from pressure and make some exceptional plays with his legs and his arm. Cade had been asked to keep a high-functioning (if conservative) offense functioning smoothly, but he wasn't asked to make the types of plays that would elevate the unit beyond what the other guys could do. And for the first time all season... we needed more than Cade, physically, could give us. This was a real football game, not a video game, and how fast you can run and how far you can accurately throw matters.
McCarthy wasn't "ready" yet, but he had special abilities that represented our only chance to make something happen against a defense that a few months later would have backups getting drafted.
It's true that playing the QB position isn't all about physical tools, that the mental side is critical, because missing open reads and committing turnovers can derail an entire game. This is why it's hard for true freshmen to come right in and play.
But there's a difference between a guy you can win with and a guy you win because of.
A guy you win with is the one who can do all the intangible stuff and will rarely make the mistake the costs you a game. He will make sure the offense is exactly as good as the talent around him.
A guy you win because of is the one who makes the eye-popping throw into a tight space when receivers aren't able to just get wide open in the opponents' secondary. (Think: any number of throws Joe Burrow made for LSU in 2019.) A guy you win because of is the guy who keeps a play alive until a receiver finally comes open in a critical moment. (Think: Troy Smith-to-Anthony Gonzalez.) A guy you win because of forces a defense to make impossible choices in how to defend your offense. (Think: Vince Young in 2005.)
When a team wins with someone, we frequently over-index the impact of the QB who avoids mistakes by playing tidy but conservative football, checking down often and not making ambitious throws. Whether it's Ken Dorsey for Miami or Craig Krenzel for OSU or AJ McCarron for Alabama ... those guys had National Championship-level teams around them and kept it simple enough to not screw it up. All had NFL careers but never as starters.
Cade was that for us last year. We had our best offensive line in years keeping him clean and paving the way for a dominant running attack. That and a very good defense consistently kept us in positive game state.
He occasionally had to do some of the intangible stuff in tense moments, but he was never asked to do anything exceptional with his arm or his feet to win us a game the way guys like Jalen Hurts or Joe Burrow did for their teams.
If you put Dorsey, Krenzel, McCarron or McNamara on a team with 6-6 talent around them... they're going to be a 6-6 team. Put Cade on Penn State last season and no one is talking about him as a "winner" because they'd have won the same 6 or 7 games. And his numbers would have been worse than they were for us because he'd have been running for his life (but getting away a lot less than the guys Penn State had last season.)
When a QB is someone you can "win with", that means he won't ever be the reason you lose a game. But he also will rarely be the reason you win a game, either. He won't elevate you.
This is what is commonly called a "game manager".
And on a really good team, that is not something to be dismissed, because when you have a dominant offensive line and great running backs and a stingy defense... why take unnecessary risks? What you have around the QB is going to win you almost every game as it is. You can be as concerned with the floor as you are with the ceiling of your offense.
But I have news for you:
We're not plowing over OSU for 300 yards rushing this year like we did last year. That game's in the Horseshoe and they're sure as hell not going to let that humiliation happen again.
The likelihood is, there may not be a single one of our first 11 games this year where Cade vs. JJ even matters! I'm confident we're going to be 10-1 at worst with either one of them.
But as we learned in Miami last New Year's Eve: unless you're so dominant everywhere else on the field that you don't need your QB to elevate you, there comes a moment where what you need is Joe Burrow, not AJ McCarron, if you want to win a National Championship.
Yes, JJ needs to reach the point where he makes almost as few errors as Cade.
But he's not far from that. The time frame for JJ being similarly tidy as Cade is a week-to-week thing at this point, not a month-to-month or year-to-year process. And being two years younger and not having started a game yet, he still has more room for rapid growth than Cade has.
Who starts the opener really isn't that important and we needn't fixate on it. We shouldn't have a game where we might be tested until the leaves begin to turn, and I don't see a game until Columbus where we might need a "win because of" QB.
But this year, if we want to go back to Indy and to the Playoff again, and hopefully do better... that's what we're going to need: the guy who takes already excellent offensive talent and makes it downright impossible for a defense to even us slow down.
The sooner JJ is ready, the more likely it is that we can again compete for the big prizes this year. Because the Ohio State game will be a much taller task than last year. Our QB is going to need to do more - a LOT more - than stand back there sipping a latte while watching "Running Backs Go Wild" all day.
We had a breakthrough, resurgent season last year, so it's natural that people would have great affection for the QB of that team.
But don't over-estimate the degree of difficulty of what he was asked to do, and don't assume that the QB will not have to do a lot more to get as far this year as we did last. He almost surely will, and that's where the rubber meets the road of a QB's ceiling really starting to matter.
For the first time all season, we were losing the offensive battles around the quarterback. Reminiscent of the 1991 season, where Elvis Grbac had only been sacked a few times all season, in their toughest test, in the final game, the line finally met their match and got shredded.
Harbaugh pulled the plug and went with JJ, because even though he might still make some mistakes, he could run away from pressure and make some exceptional plays with his legs and his arm. Cade had been asked to keep a high-functioning (if conservative) offense functioning smoothly, but he wasn't asked to make the types of plays that would elevate the unit beyond what the other guys could do. And for the first time all season... we needed more than Cade, physically, could give us. This was a real football game, not a video game, and how fast you can run and how far you can accurately throw matters.
McCarthy wasn't "ready" yet, but he had special abilities that represented our only chance to make something happen against a defense that a few months later would have backups getting drafted.
It's true that playing the QB position isn't all about physical tools, that the mental side is critical, because missing open reads and committing turnovers can derail an entire game. This is why it's hard for true freshmen to come right in and play.
But there's a difference between a guy you can win with and a guy you win because of.
A guy you win with is the one who can do all the intangible stuff and will rarely make the mistake the costs you a game. He will make sure the offense is exactly as good as the talent around him.
A guy you win because of is the one who makes the eye-popping throw into a tight space when receivers aren't able to just get wide open in the opponents' secondary. (Think: any number of throws Joe Burrow made for LSU in 2019.) A guy you win because of is the guy who keeps a play alive until a receiver finally comes open in a critical moment. (Think: Troy Smith-to-Anthony Gonzalez.) A guy you win because of forces a defense to make impossible choices in how to defend your offense. (Think: Vince Young in 2005.)
When a team wins with someone, we frequently over-index the impact of the QB who avoids mistakes by playing tidy but conservative football, checking down often and not making ambitious throws. Whether it's Ken Dorsey for Miami or Craig Krenzel for OSU or AJ McCarron for Alabama ... those guys had National Championship-level teams around them and kept it simple enough to not screw it up. All had NFL careers but never as starters.
Cade was that for us last year. We had our best offensive line in years keeping him clean and paving the way for a dominant running attack. That and a very good defense consistently kept us in positive game state.
He occasionally had to do some of the intangible stuff in tense moments, but he was never asked to do anything exceptional with his arm or his feet to win us a game the way guys like Jalen Hurts or Joe Burrow did for their teams.
If you put Dorsey, Krenzel, McCarron or McNamara on a team with 6-6 talent around them... they're going to be a 6-6 team. Put Cade on Penn State last season and no one is talking about him as a "winner" because they'd have won the same 6 or 7 games. And his numbers would have been worse than they were for us because he'd have been running for his life (but getting away a lot less than the guys Penn State had last season.)
When a QB is someone you can "win with", that means he won't ever be the reason you lose a game. But he also will rarely be the reason you win a game, either. He won't elevate you.
This is what is commonly called a "game manager".
And on a really good team, that is not something to be dismissed, because when you have a dominant offensive line and great running backs and a stingy defense... why take unnecessary risks? What you have around the QB is going to win you almost every game as it is. You can be as concerned with the floor as you are with the ceiling of your offense.
But I have news for you:
We're not plowing over OSU for 300 yards rushing this year like we did last year. That game's in the Horseshoe and they're sure as hell not going to let that humiliation happen again.
The likelihood is, there may not be a single one of our first 11 games this year where Cade vs. JJ even matters! I'm confident we're going to be 10-1 at worst with either one of them.
But as we learned in Miami last New Year's Eve: unless you're so dominant everywhere else on the field that you don't need your QB to elevate you, there comes a moment where what you need is Joe Burrow, not AJ McCarron, if you want to win a National Championship.
Yes, JJ needs to reach the point where he makes almost as few errors as Cade.
But he's not far from that. The time frame for JJ being similarly tidy as Cade is a week-to-week thing at this point, not a month-to-month or year-to-year process. And being two years younger and not having started a game yet, he still has more room for rapid growth than Cade has.
Who starts the opener really isn't that important and we needn't fixate on it. We shouldn't have a game where we might be tested until the leaves begin to turn, and I don't see a game until Columbus where we might need a "win because of" QB.
But this year, if we want to go back to Indy and to the Playoff again, and hopefully do better... that's what we're going to need: the guy who takes already excellent offensive talent and makes it downright impossible for a defense to even us slow down.
The sooner JJ is ready, the more likely it is that we can again compete for the big prizes this year. Because the Ohio State game will be a much taller task than last year. Our QB is going to need to do more - a LOT more - than stand back there sipping a latte while watching "Running Backs Go Wild" all day.
We had a breakthrough, resurgent season last year, so it's natural that people would have great affection for the QB of that team.
But don't over-estimate the degree of difficulty of what he was asked to do, and don't assume that the QB will not have to do a lot more to get as far this year as we did last. He almost surely will, and that's where the rubber meets the road of a QB's ceiling really starting to matter.
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