Usually, when I completely and totally disagree with a sports related comment made on Twitter, online or through other means, I don’t say so. I’m passive. I usually pull the good ol’ “note to the ex-boyfriend” route – you scribble madly for ten minutes everything you want to say, then fold it up, rip it up and throw it out. You feel the release of having said it, but don’t have to deal with the aftermath.
And while that is fine and good for Little Miss Polite me, it’s also limiting. Do you realize how much more blogging material I would have if I just hung onto that writing, stripped out the nonsense and posted it?
So today, when I saw several Boston based football writers seriously suggest, upon the Tim Tebow trade to the New York Jets, that “Brian Hoyer is the second best AFC East quarterback,” I threw my pen across my office in disbelief. I then recovered the pen and started scribbling.
But wait – why scribble and throw? I’ve got a blog that needs material, and this is a pretty legit rant. So here you go: my unedited “Scribble and Throw” response regarding Brian Hoyer, New England Patriots backup quarterback. I’m not claiming that I’m right, that this is grammatically correct, or that this is by any means my best work. This is just what exactly I thought and wrote in fifteen minutes time.
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Okay fine. My beef with the “Brian Hoyer is the 2nd best AFC East QB” comments.
I don’t understand the “the New England Patriots think he is starter material” reasoning behind the comment. Bill Belichick recognizes the value in return he can get in players. If he recognizes Hoyer’s a starter, wouldn’t he negotiate with one of his trusted trade partners and get something for him?
Hoyer’s game experience – which I understand isn’t as valuable of a statistic as some make it out to be – is minimal. He’s played 13 games in three seasons – five each in 2009 and 2010 and 3 in 2011.
If he’s starter material, why do the Patriots make Brady play through injury and meaningless games? I understand Brady’s competitive, but he’s also smart. He knows he’s at an advanced age for an NFL quarterback, and has the mental capacity and football understanding to realize what he needs to do to prolong his career. If Hoyer was starter material, Brady and the Patriots would play Hoyer more often to give Brady the rest he so badly needs after the plethora of injuries he’s been plagued with.
And don’t even try the “Brady isn’t injury plagued” bit with me. The man’s ACL/MCL tear may have been caused by Bernard Pollard, but it also was a cascade injury, caused by overcompensation from a previous injury. Brady has had surgeries in several off seasons. Goodness, he’s been a starting NFL quarterback for over a decade. You’re going to be injured, and you’re going to be in pain, and a Sunday off every once and a while would be useful.
And the Patriots don’t think Hoyer is good enough to provide Brady with that break.
This opens up an even deeper question – who is Brady’s successor? Is Hoyer that successor, and if so, how do you prepare him with experience beyond practice? Belichick likes to win now, not win next year when your QB has more seasoning. And true, Brady came off the bench and was high caliber pretty quickly, but that’s a rarity. Even “perfect QB specimen” Andrew Luck needs seasoning. Starting quarterbacks need to get used to being pummeled like a nail on a worksite and need to command the leadership of all of those around you, regardless of how many more years in the league they have than you. That’s difficult. That doesn’t happen overnight. And that doesn’t happen by throwing a mere 22 yards a year.
Ryan Fitzpatrick may not be the world’s best quarterback, but he (somehow, Stevie Johnson and all) has the leadership thing down. Mark Sanchez is a hot mess, so let’s not go there. Heck, even Chad Henne, Matt Moore and David Gerrard have a more varied and useful set of game experiences than Hoyer. I’m not saying their skill sets are better, but they all have a little bit more panache and a few less butterflies in the stomach every time they jogs out to the huddle. That counts for something.
Is Hoyer better than Tebow? Tebow has measurable results – a bigger sample size, if you will – that we have not been able to measure with Hoyer. Tebow can command an offense down the field in a do-or-die situation. We have no tangible recent pro football evidence that Hoyer can do that.
So the flippant comment that Hoyer is better than Sanchez, Fitzpatrick, Tebow, and the Dolphins-starting-quarterback-de-jour is completely ungrounded in anything besides “well, the Patriots organization says to a few people that he might be ready.” And that and a dollar won’t even get you over the Tobin Bridge.