With Tony Romo out for eight weeks with a broken clavicle, it’s Brandon Weeden time for the Dallas Cowboys, which is a truly terrifying proposition for fans of the team. The team may not be completely screwed, but they’re going to have to recalibrate their expectations without Romo under center. Bill Barnwell of Grantland pointed out that since Weeden entered the league, he’s been the single worst pocket passer in the NFL based on QBR — not the best number for a QB with much less mobility than Romo.
However, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, now that he’s over that strange cricket feeling, doesn’t share the same doom-and-gloom attitude. He admitted to the Dallas Morning News that the team is working out some veteran free agent passers, but only as backups to Weeden. He had some glowing praise for his new starter, as well:
“This quarterback Weeden can drive the ball down field,” Jones said. “He’s a thing of beauty on throwing a football. His passing motion and his arm, frankly, you won’t see a more gifted passer, power, accuracy, the entire aspect of it. If he can basically prepare, be the starting quarterback, come in and execute and keep his head right, then I feel good about Weeden.”
Now, if you would just stop laughing for a second, you can see that there’s a kernel of truth here. NFL.com’s draft profile of Weeden lauded his arm strength and accuracy, while correctly predicting that he’d have trouble getting outside the pocket and with pro offenses. Weeden could throw the greatest deep ball any of us have ever seen, but the problem is that he needs to do so in the context of an actual game, and that’s been a problem so far in his career.
Jones has always been fiercely optimistic about his players, and while it’s fun to laugh at someone for being earnest and enthusiastic, it is one of his best qualities as an owner (as a GM, you’d hope that he could be a little more objective about valuing his players relative to the rest of the league). Still, maybe someone should ask him if he forgot about the gifted passer that Weeden’s replacing when he laid down all the superlatives.
Nearly all of the evidence points to Weeden falling dramatically short of Romo’s production, but then again, he did go 7-for-7 in his relief appearance Sunday. Maybe we’re about to witness the rebirth of Brandon Weeden after all.
(Via Dallas Morning News)
