The Colts went 14-2 with Peyton Manning as their starter in 2010 and 2-14 without him the following year. So saying a good QB might give you 3 additional wins is nowhere near accurate....with basically the exact same roster, Manning gave the Colts +12 wins. And he did it for almost a decade. The same argument can be made for Romo (4-0 as a starter this season, 1-7 without him), Pennington (a 10+ win season with the Fins over the prior year), Brady, Big Ben, Rodgers....the list goes on and on with examples. When they're out, the team can't win. I know that people want to minimize Tannehill's impact on our team because we all want to see him turn into a future Hall of Fame QB. I'd love that, seriously....I'd be dancing in the streets. But he's done little to help this club win outside of a handful of games over 4 years. He also chokes in December, can't rally in close games.....the list goes on and on. And as much as I still want to see him succeed, it's impossible to ignore how one dimensional the offense has become. Like it or not, that is on his shoulders and no excuse in the world can change that. Because no matter how bad the line, the coaching or anything else is, a winning quarterback finds ways to win tough football games. Yet we're 0-5 in the division and showing yet another December collapse.
That's all fair. I don't disagree. But is a young QB going to give you that though? I mean, a young QB isn't going to carry the team for long. Even guys who shine early often fizzle out once the league figures out how to defend them. In that respect, how realistic is it to hope for the next Peyton Manning, Russell Wilson or Andrew Luck? As I showed earlier, while there are indeed examples of greatness out there, there have been nearly 150 QBs drafted over the last 12 years. Outside of Wilson, Rodgers, Luck, Rivers and Roethlisberger, there's not much else outside of a small handful of unspectacular guys who can at least play (which Tannehill's a part of). A team could spend 20 years drafting QBs and never find one of those guys that's transcendent. Most of the time it seems like good coaching is really the thing that pushes a team over the hump anyway. People often fall in love with the greatness of elite QBs but they're hard to find. The fact is, Miami can go draft a QB but people are going to give it the old, "give him time" argument. Why not just give Tannehill time? He's already got the physical tools. I don't really understand why it's so hard to imagine he's not going to continually improve. Don't people normally get better at their jobs when they're trying?
