Henne faced the greatest amount of 3rd & Longs in the NFL

Hmm, Imo Henne is not damaged goods, but do think they asked way to much of him in 2010, he probably is not a guy you really would want as the focal point of your offense yet that is exactly what they asked him to be in 2010 as TP points out those 3rd and longs are hard on a Qb, let alone a Starter with less then 20 starts at the time.

I've made this point before but if one looks at the successful young Qb's around the league, you will find that they had a Feature Back early in their careers while they learned their job, he had that in 09 and looked like a up and coming young Qb, RW and RB hit the wall and Henne did not look so good.

 

All these young QBs seem to have the same problem, if the running game isn't working they are done. Sanchez did a great job until the Steelers shut down the Jets running game and then it was over, Matt Ryan & Flacco same thing.

 

More or less, a huge part of that is they are still learning how to play Qb in the NFL, and Flacco did go on a nice run as a Rook, Sanchez has his moments as well.

Matty Ice has had problems in the playoffs.

 

I think QBs take longer to develop simply because of the exotic defenses they face, these young guys can't pull a Marino and carry their teams.
What I saw during the playoffs was that as soon as the running game was shut down it was over and Henne better learn how to deal with that or else he'll be gone even if the results are not his fault.
I'm glad Henne will get a chance to start because in my limited knowledge of football all I saw was Henne's performance be best when the team run the ball effectively and the same applied to the aforementioned young QBs

 

I was never that high on Couch. I felt he was over rated and said so way before the draft. Now I do believe he could have looked decent in the right system, like Rieds, but I don't think he was ever going to be a very good QB.

Back to Henne though, this thread illustrates what so many of us have been saying, that Henne was set up to fail. All those people who keep saying "we know what we have" or "he's had enough time" and roll their eyes when it's pointed out how bad his OC was are simply ignoring the facts. I find it ridiculous to believe that a QB that had an 85 rating for about half the year despite having the worse first down running game and the most difficult third down situations in the league can't be an 85 - 90 rated QB in a better situation. And if those ridiculous thinkers include the coaches, then they're idiots too.

 

I don't think so. I think LTs are as difficult to find as QBs, not as much impact but as difficult to find. And I already know Long is a great LT. Having said that Luck might be the exception since he's the best prospect I've seen since Elway.

 

yes you are right KingMotion , but we havent had many threads clamouring for Brett Farve yet.

 

1) ToddPhins were do these stats come from?
2) Also how did Henne fair on 3rd & 8+ versus the other QB in the same scenarios ( 3rd & 8+) in terms of QBR or performance? So an example would be Henne performance in 3rd & 8+ vs Matt Ryan's performance in his 76 3rd and longs. You have established he faced the most but was his performance much worse than other QB's in this situation?
3) Also what was the purpose at making the dividing point at 7? So why did you choose 3rd & 8+ over 3rd & 7+? Both would be considered 3rd and long, and lumping 3rd & 1 with 3rd & 7 just seems strange. They are very different scenarios.


In terms of my research on this topic:
I have recorded the Play by Play for the 2 Pats games and just a small section of the 2nd Jets game. The sample size of this data is extremely small so it doesn't draw any firm conclusions because it's mostly about how we attacked the Patriots.

So I looked at all the series that had a 3rd and 8+ and decided to see what the calls where on first + second down that led us to the 3rd and very long. Here is what I found.

Against the Pats we never ran the ball 2 straight times and ended up in a 3rd & 8+. This makes sense because even though we were terrible in the run game; we would have had to have gotten less than 1 yard per carry in order to end up in a 3rd & 8+ w/ 2 straight running attempts.

Out of the 11 3rd & 8+ Against the Pats & part of the Jets here was the break down.
- 3 had a penalty in the set of downs leading up to the 3rd & 8+ ( so a penalty on 1st, 2nd, or 3rd down led to the 3rd & 8+). So roughly 27% of the time it was because of this.
- 2 had 2 passes back to back and led up to the 3rd & 8+. So roughly 18% were do to this.
- 6 had run & pass called before the 3rd & 8+ ( this would included 1st down pass followed by a 2nd down run, and it would also include a 1st down run, followed by a second down pass). So this equates to 54%.

This slightly jives with ToddPhins suggestions. If you are in a 3rd & 8+, and it wasn't caused by a penalty, obviously you didn't get much on the ground when you ran it on 1st OR 2nd down.


I still feel like the key question is how did Henne do compared to other QB's in that same scenario.

 

Add dan marino and John Elway to that. Also Tom Brady, and oh yeah Peyton Manning

What QB doesn't do well with a good run game? New England's best seasons were with a strong run game (their last few always fizzle but they did come real close to perfection). Manning wins the super bowl finally with a crap performance throughout the post season. Defense completely bails him out and many argue it was Dominic Rhodes, not Manning, MVP of that superbowl.

I gotta look up Flacco but Ryan had some good games without a run game to support him. Correlation doesn't equal causation. Why is it that they depend on a good running game, and not that they ran into a damn good defense that shuts down both? Steelers shut down the running game and then Sanchez falters? How about the steelers shut down both the run game and passing game? You're taking away from the Steelers' pass defense there.

EDIT: Misread the stats:

These 2nd down numbers are only after 1st down rushes, right?