My RELUCTANT Defense of Matt Leinart On The Occasion Of His Benching

The truth is that as a general rule, young quarterbacks should not even be considered for the starting job until their 3rd or 4th season. (This is not to say that a QB is ready by year 3 or 4, but rather you have to get them on the field by that point so that you can give them 2 years of time as the starter to see whether they will pan out.) As a consequence, no QB should be taken in the first round, especially in the top 15 selections, unless he has special ability or skill, which Leinart of course does not have. (John Elway: special ability. Peyton Manning: special skill. Dan Marino, Warren Moon, and Johnny Unitas: both.) The reason for this is not only so that the QB can learn the NFL game, but also so that the team that drafts him will have an opportunity to learn his strengths and weaknesses and acquire offensive personnel around it. That way, you avoid situations like the one with, say, LEINART IN ARIZONA: a guy with an average at best arm and limited mobility even for a dropback passer playing with 2 deep threats at WR, an injured shell of his former self at tailback, and a bad offensive line. Why does this not hinder Kurt Warner? Simple: Warner has been playing professional football since Matt Leinart was in fifth grade. He has the knowledge and experience to succeed in a situation that does not conform to his abilities. Before Leinart or most any other QB is handed a starting job, they either need a favorable situation or the knowledge and experience necessary to be productive without it.

Let me give you another recent example that is not as egregious as the nightmares that guys like Tim Couch and David Carr were thrown into where they had absolutely no chance: Byron Leftwich. It was well known that the fellow lacked mobility, had a slow release, and played in a shotgun offense against a low level of competition in college. This was on top of his having little experience at the position, having moved to QB from defensive lineman during his senior year of high school. What do the Jacksonville Jaguars do? Draft him #7 overall and stick him in the starting lineup immediately behind a terrible offensive line and with bad receivers, and had him run an offense that was completely different from what he had run for 5 of the 6 years that he had played the position. Leftwich did little but take a pounding until David Garrard, who had much more abillity and a quicker release, took over. This was similar to the experience of Trent Dilfer, another immobile QB with a slow release, with another Florida franchise, the Tampa Bay Buccanneers. Dilfer arrived at Fresno State as a linebacker, and only had 3 years experience playing QB - at the small college level in a rather simple wide open vertical offense - before being taken #6 overall and thrown into the starting lineup as a rookie on a team with a terrible offensive line and worse wide receivers, to speak nothing of going through a series of offenses that were completely different from what he ran at Fresno State. Seriously, how was either guy supposed to succeed? The truth is that both guys should have been drafted in the third round and made to sit on the bench at least until their franchises acquired better linemen and receivers or at least learned to be decent QBs without them.

That is why west coast offense teams from the Bill Walsh school do it best. West coast offense teams RARELY draft QBs in the top 10. Instead, Ken Anderson was drafted in the 3rd round, as was Joe Montana. Steve Young was signed as a free agent, as was Rich Gannon. Matt Hasselbeck was acquired by Seattle in a trade. Jeff Garcia was signed from the CFL. Green Bay did trade a 1st round pick for Brett Favre, but only after he showed great promise with the Atlanta Falcons. West coast offense teams know that it isn't about your individual talent or what you did in college, but learning and having the ability to run their offense. So since it is going to take 3 to 4 years to learn their offense and for the coaches to see if you have the ability to run it anyway, why bother on a top 10 pick based on his alleged ability to play right away?

Now truthfully I loathe the west coast offense, so I am not going to argue that more teams adopt it. However, I do fully advocate teams' adopting their approach to handling their QBs no matter what offense they run.

A. Do not draft QBs too high because you are smitten with their great arms or college careers.
B. Do not play QBs until they have demonstrated that they have learned and can run your offense over a few seasons in practice, preseason, and mopup time as backups.

You're currently logged into Facebook

Do you want to share your Bleacher Report activity on Facebook?