Taylor Heinicke Discussion

TOF was invited to take a break to consider whether he/she would opt to become part of the community rather than just an instigator.

TBD.
 
The great Washington Post sports columnist Tom Boswell came out of retirement today to write this terrific piece about Taylor Heinicke.

Boswell and I are of like minds -- Heinicke is the best QB that Washington has had since Joe Theismann.

From the article --

What does Taylor Heinicke have to do get some respect around here? Not just affection as an underdog or an energized leader, but as a starting NFL quarterback.

When — or will — the Washington Commanders grasp that the rest of their games this season should be about tailoring an offense to Taylor, to see whether he might be a good quarterback, not just a feel-good story?

We know Heinicke’s arm strength is average. He has moments of turnover insanity when moxie turns poxy.

But let me slap you awake — with facts. Nothing else will work since his “career backup” rep is now so strong.

What do Kyler Murray, Joe Burrow, Matthew Stafford, Trevor Lawrence, Jared Goff, Baker Mayfield and Jameis Winston — all No. 1 overall draft picks — have in common?

None of them have as high a career winning percentage as a starter as Heinicke (9-8, .529).

Neither does (injured) Carson Wentz, a No. 2 overall pick, nor Justin Herbert and Daniel Jones, both No. 6 overall picks. Neither does Kirk Cousins (65-60-2), now a Viking, whom Heinicke will face at FedEx Field on Sunday.

Small data sample? Yes. But the things Heinicke has done in his small sample add up quickly. For example, Aaron Rodgers, Patrick Mahomes and Hall of Famer Sonny Jurgensen played a combined 42 seasons. None of them ever had a season with four game-winning drives in the fourth quarter.

Heinicke did it last year in his only season as a consistent starter.

Then, on Sunday he had his fifth fourth-quarter game-winning drive — let’s call them GWD — in only his 18th career start.

Heinicke also has four fourth-quarter comebacks which, for most quarterbacks, are even rarer. Why? You can get a GWD “just” for leading a field goal drive in a game that’s tied in the fourth quarter or overtime. However, a 4QC must prevent a loss and also end with a win or tie.

 
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From the article --

Even by small-sample standards, Heinicke’s 4QC and GWD totals are nuts. I haven’t found anybody — ever, regardless of sample size — with such a high ratio of late-game dramatics. (But I’m still searching.) Those stats, as tracked by Pro Football Reference, go back so far that we know Hall of Famer Sammy Baugh, D.C.’s greatest player, needed 16 years to amass his 19 GWDs.

For reference, a great ratio in recent times is Peyton Manning’s 43 4QCs and 54 GWDs in 265 starts. In 214 starts, Rodgers has 19 4QCs and 28 GWDs. Yes, he often has his team in the lead. But what Heinicke is doing is rare, hard and special in a parity league built for close games.

Heinicke’s standing in traditional quarterback stats over the past two years — like his 87.1 quarterback rating — put him in the middle of the pack of starting QBs. His numbers do NOT say “backup.”

Yes, I remember how Heinicke was bum-rushed into 7-for-22 irrelevance in that 56-14 loss at Dallas last year. But I’m also aware that last year he won starts against Tom Brady, Russell Wilson, Cam Newton, Derek Carr, Matt Ryan and Daniel Jones. This year, Rodgers.

So far, Heinicke’s always played with an offense that’s about a dozen cards shy of a full deck. In 2021, he was the team’s second-leading rusher — with 313 yards. He had only one receiver with 400 yards; Kansas City had five. With 29 missed games by Curtis Samuel, Logan Thomas and J.D. McKissic, Heinicke often had just two offensive weapons, and three virtual voids at the rest of the skill positions.

This season, after spending money and draft picks on the glaze-gazed Wentz, Washington left itself open to calamity if it had even normal O-line injuries. The Commanders’ line is so shredded now it might send Iron Man to the injured list. That’s irony in Snyder World, a purgatory we devoutly hope the team escapes soon. Now Heinicke has better weapons, but the Five Turnstiles are protecting him.

In the last two drives Sunday, covering 82 and 89 yards — in which he nailed 12 of 14 passes for 151 yards, plus ran four times for 15 yards — here’s what Heinicke had to do.

On fourth-and-one with 1 minute 40 seconds to play, Heinicke showed why he’s suited to late, close and scary. To avoid the rush, he moved up in the pocket, then retreated and reset, before finally abandoning the play and rolling out to his right for a 12-yard completion.
Daniel Snyder considers sale of Washington Commanders.

One play later, he shrugged under a rush, whack-a-mole style, then one-handed a chest push-pass to McKissic for four yards, avoiding a sack. The defender he deked hurt his knee and left the field on a cart.

Next play, he stepped backward out of a potential sack, looked right, rolled left, directed traffic to freeze defenders, then scrambled for nine yards to pick up a first down as he ran out of bounds to stop the clock.
 
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From the article. This was written specifically for all the lame Heinicke-haters out there. --

Seconds later, still in the hurry-up spread offense that he loves, he stood in the pocket and threw a rope over the middle to Cam Sims for 21 yards. Then came the play you remember — the 33-yard bomb to Terry McLaurin. Until I saw it in slow motion, I didn’t realize how quick Heinicke’s feet are when necessary and how easy it is to understate his value in turning a failed play into a second or third variation.

Because of pressure in his face, Heinicke had to set the pocket three times — at nine, 12 and finally 14 yards deep. The play was broken, but time had been bought. McLaurin broke deep in a scramble drill and Heinicke lofted the ball 47 yards in the air to him at the 1-yard line.

In postgame TV comments, analysts critiqued that if the ball had been thrown a yard further, McLaurin wouldn’t have had to make such a dazzling, wrestling catch.

I’ve had enough of this. I don’t know how good Heinicke can become — maybe he’s as good as he’ll ever get right now — but I want to know the answer.

Pretend, for a moment, that Heinicke was not an undersized, undrafted “nobody” out of an obscure (football) school but, instead, was taken with, say, the 102nd overall pick in the fourth round as a project.

Like Cousins.

In his first three seasons and 407 passes, as Cousins learned the NFL, he was 2-7 as a starter with an 18-to-19 touchdown to interception ratio and a 77.5 quarterback rating. Then, helped by whimsical Jay Gruden, an offensive thinker miscast as a head coach, Cousins eventually ended up with more than $100 million in guaranteed contracts.

Debate Cousins’s true worth at your leisure. But he took a major step from backup to consistent 4,000-yard passer because he was smart and learned with more starts.

Nothing we’ve seen implies that Heinicke will ever be an elite quarterback. But who says that is necessary? Joe Gibbs said you needed a quarterback who was tough, smart and a leader — but not necessarily a star. Then you build a whole excellent team with him as one part — and that team in turn makes the quarterback look better, too.

Right now, that is as decent a battle plan as is available to Washington. And Heinicke has earned a chance to show whether he can be that sort of player.
 
You know we can just click the link instead of being spammed, right?
 
I hate to break this to you, but none of what Boswell has said in that article is new to this board (with the possible exception of some of the other QB w/l records). Hell, nothing you have said is new to this board either.

We have all, at one point or another, made the same points, if not as eloquently as Boswell. Or as arrogantly as you.

And, if we are truthful, Boswell has really done little more than point out exactly what we have been telling you for weeks now - coaching matters. Play calling matters.

On this team, with this OC, running this offense - Heinicke is a .500 QB. Nothing more and nothing less.

Could he be more? Possibly. But unless Turner decides to mold this offense to the skillset of his current QB none of us will really ever know. Another point that Boswell makes and that we have been trying to tell you.

We are Heinicke fans (although your abrasive support of him and your desire to make every damn thing about what you view as his superiority to Wentz is testing that fandom). We want him to succeed.
 
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Neophyte said:
I hate to break this to you, but none of what Boswell has said in that article is new to this board (with the possible exception of some of the other QB w/l records). Hell, nothing you have said is new to this board either.

We have all, at one point or another, made the same points, if not as eloquently as Boswell. Or as arrogantly as you.

And, if we are truthful, Boswell has really done little more than point out exactly what we have been telling you for weeks now - coaching matters. Play calling matters.
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You believe play calling is the most important factor, yet Heinicke has vastly outperformed Wentz. Which is Boswell's point.

And many people on here thought that Wentz was going to be better than Heinicke. That was obviously a huge miscalculation.

On this team, with this OC, running this offense - Heinicke is a .500 QB. Nothing more and nothing less.
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And Wentz and other Washington QBs from the past are less than .500 QBs, because they are not as good as Heinicke. Which is Boswell's point.

We are Heinicke fans (although your abrasive support of him and your desire to make every damn thing about what you view as his superiority to Wentz is testing that fandom). We want him to succeed.
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Some are Heinicke fans. Some are mad that they were wrong about Wentz being better than Heinicke. Boswell even pointed that out in his article, about sour-grapes morons criticizing Heinicke's game-winning TD pass to McLaurin last week. It was a broken play and Heinicke adapted nicely and threw a catchable pass to his best WR. Nobody should be nitpicking at clutch game-winning throws like that.
 
Theismann To HOF said:
Some are Heinicke fans. Some are mad that they were wrong about Wentz being better than Heinicke. Boswell even pointed that out in his article, about sour-grapes morons criticizing Heinicke's game-winning TD pass to McLaurin last week. It was a broken play and Heinicke adapted nicely and threw a catchable pass to his best WR. Nobody should be nitpicking at clutch game-winning throws like that.
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apparently your vacation for the last two weeks didnt change your attitude

I know this back handed, passive aggressive post is about me... might as well just call me out if you feel so strongly about it.

and you're wrong, the entire post is wrong.
 
Son, no one here is mad about being wrong about Wentz. Most of us were not wrong.

We are mad that our coaches can't adapt. We are mad that our new uniforms look cartoonish. We are mad that our beloved team is the laughingstock of the whole of the pro sports world for most of our adult lives.

We are mad about a great many things but no one here is mad about being wrong about Wentz.

If you had been here longer than a hot second, you would know that every single posting member of this forum had concerns to some degree or another about Wentz. Every single one.

And some of us were downright mad about picking him up. (full disclosure, I wasn't mad but he wasn't my first choice)

I think all of us will be mad if we keep him this next year although my guess is that is less of a worry now.

Now, if you are smart, you will STOP trying to tell all of us how we feel about things because we are getting mad about that.
 
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You know what's dumb? Taking an opportunity to make friends and talk football and turning into making yourself unwelcome. You could have just said 'check out Boswell's take - he sees it like I do'. But you just aren't capable of posting without being an insulting prick. I'm guessing everywhere you go, this is pretty much your schtick. The saddest part of all (as Neophyte clearly stated) is that we all like Heinicke and are rooting for him. We just don't believe he's the next Joe Montana (or the current Joe Montana). If it turns out he is, no one here will be anything but thrilled. Honestly, this whole back and forth has gotten boring. I'll bet most of us didn't read Boswell's article - not because it's not worth reading - but because you posted it.

Why are you here? I'd really like to know.
 
You'd probably get a better answer from the other sites he's been banned from for doing the exact same thing.

I used to think he was someone we knew trolling us. But, now I just think he's a troll on his own accord and this is what he does to any/all people he can.
 
I did read the article, at least what TTH posted, and I wasn’t able to find where “Boswell even pointed that out in his article, about sour-grapes morons criticizing Heinicke's game-winning TD pass to McLaurin last week.”

I did see where he referenced that some post-game analysis by some media members was critical. Say what you want about the local media but I wouldn’t characterize any of them as ‘sour-grapes morons’.

But that wouldn’t fit his narrative or his penchant to take impetuous shots at the other board members. That sthick has grown very stale and has outlived any value. For me, the experiment should be over.
 
Boone said:
You know what's dumb? Taking an opportunity to make friends and talk football and turning into making yourself unwelcome. You could have just said 'check out Boswell's take - he sees it like I do'. But you just aren't capable of posting without being an insulting prick. I'm guessing everywhere you go, this is pretty much your schtick. The saddest part of all (as Neophyte clearly stated) is that we all like Heinicke and are rooting for him. We just don't believe he's the next Joe Montana (or the current Joe Montana). If it turns out he is, no one here will be anything but thrilled. Honestly, this whole back and forth has gotten boring. I'll bet most of us didn't read Boswell's article - not because it's not worth reading - but because you posted it.

Why are you here? I'd really like to know.
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There is no denying that many of you thought that Wentz would be better than Heinicke. We argued about this before the season started.

It's now plainly obvious that I was correct when I said that Wentz was not as good as Heinicke. Some people here seem to have a problem with that.

I don't know why you all are so easily offended by what I'm saying. I honestly don't. There is nothing to be upset about when someone else is correct and you're not.

This is an observation, take it for what it's worth -- many of you focus on the wrong qualities when evaluating QBs. Overall, you all are way too focused on arm strength.

You all should be paying much more attention to athletic ability, instincts in the pocket, anticipation, and the ability to extend plays. Heinicke excels at all of this.

Slow, lumbering big-armed QBs with poor anticipation and poor instincts do not fare well in the NFL. That is Carson Wentz.

Again, you all should look at QBs the same way you would look at successful tennis players. The best athletes with great anticipation and poise under pressure are the best tennis players and the best QBs. Heinicke is Andre Agassi. Wentz is John Isner. Isner is big and strong and a good tennis player, but he will never be nearly as good as Agassi.

I think some of you are too myopic and short-sighted when analyzing QBs.

And I'm sorry if these views offend you.
 
Online life makes people act in ways they wouldn't in real life. This guy won't stop and it's obvious he doesn't want to be a part of this community.

Even the people I argue with only goes so far. This guy here is just looking to get under skins and troll. He isn't going to change and deep down we all know it.
 
MikefromOH said:
Online life makes people act in ways they wouldn't in real life. This guy won't stop and it's obvious he doesn't want to be a part of this community.

Even the people I argue with only goes so far. This guy here is just looking to get under skins and troll. He isn't going to change and deep down we all know it.
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I didn't say anything offensive at all. I would say the same thing in person talking to a friend that I disagree with about a QB.

You are far more abusive than I am.
 
Theismann To HOF said:
I didn't say anything offensive at all. I would say the same thing in person talking to a friend that I disagree with about a QB.

You are far more abusive than I am.
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I know you would, sweety. It's ok. We all know you're genuine.

I'm only "abusive" because all you do is talk shit to people I've known for well over a decade and disrespect a site many here have worked extremely hard to build.

You offer nothing, you don't do anything but troll, and you won't stop. I hope one day you'll actually understand what I just wrote instead of read and ignore it.
 
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