The news: The NFL lockout is over, but so is Matt Hasselbeck’s time as a Seahawk. Last March he walked away from an offer of a $7 million 1-year contract. In what was probably a classy move by most accounts, Carroll and Schneider recently called Matt up to thank him for his contributions to the organization, but let him know that they have decided to “go in a difference direction.”
And congratulations, Seattle, as that new direction -for the time being- is the duo of Charlie “Clipboard Jesus” Whitehurst and the other less known Michael Vick, Tavaris Jackson! Jackson agreed to terms of $8 million over 2-years. With his ties to Bevell in Minnesota, we knew he was a real possibility.
Why a Whitehurst-Jackson duo is not the interim QB answer: When I first read the news that we weren’t bringing Hasselbeck back and instead signing Jackson, I had to focus on not spontaneously combusting. After that I tried to remain optimistic. I thought to myself “Hey, maybe Jackson will have a 2008 type season where he started 5 games and ended up posting a 95.4 passer rating.” Over the past two seasons he actually possesses the best overall passer rating out of all the viable free agent QBs. As Mike Sando notes, he actually has a better career passer rating than Kevin Kolb – yet that’s really more of a reflection of how overhyped Kevin Kolb is than an actual comment on Jackson. But that’s about as ‘glass half full’ as I can get about Tavaris Jackson.
The reality is that Tavaris Jackson is leaving a team that had a more stable offensive line, a plethora of offensive talent to work with, and an effective run game with Adrian Peterson. Why would one expect him to suddenly improve under objectively worse conditions with the same offensive coordinator?
Some Seahawks fans and commentators have objected to writing off Charlie Whitehurst arguing that he’s had very limited play time. Fair enough, but the play-time we’ve seen has been unimpressive to say the least. In last season’s game against the Buccaneers, early in the 1st quarter Hasselbeck managed to sustain an offensive drive which finished with him rushing untouched into the end zone sustaining an injury typically seen in retirement homes. After taking over for Hasselbeck, Whitehurst went on to only throw for 66 yards for the rest of the game. Even Whitehurst at his best has not given me much to write home about. During last season’s final regular game against the Rams, his 61-yard throw to Ruvell Martin was blatantly under-thrown and arguably should have been a touchdown by most league average QB standards. His persistent tendency to scramble under pressure, give only one look, and general lack of pocket awareness are real deal-breakers.
What’s more, both guys have the same basic skill set. For the most part, they have the same positive attributes (mobility and strong arms) and weaknesses (reads and progressions). In that sense then, we are asking two similar QBs to compete for the starting job. There isn’t really any absolute competition taking place within the QB position.
To be sure, Carroll had the intention of bringing in Matt Leinart to also compete for the position. That shows Carroll and Schneider aren’t confident with the current QB situation either. They could make more moves still and at this point more (actual) competition should be welcomed. Since there’s no compelling argument that suggests the duo of Jackson-Whitehurst is better than the status quo of Matt Hasselbeck at QB, I’m left feeling even more doubtful about the Hawks ability to compete this season while re-building.
P.S. At least Tavaris Jackson doesn’t have to worry about this from Chris Clemmons
My favorite line was the bit about " sustaining an injury typically seen in retirement homes". Hilarious!
ReplyDeleteAlso I agree with you about being basically unimpressed with the QB situation. Jackson is slightly better than whitehurst because he has started and found success before. He has also found lots of failure. Jackson's success has a very large standard deviation. My hope would be that he has learned something during his two years as a backup to Brett Favre, but only the good stuff not the massive amount of INT.