FanPost

Vick A Proven Veteran?

I have been a long time reader of this wonderful site but have never posted or commented on anything. I do not consider myself extremely football savvy and one of my favorite things about this site is reading post and comments from people who know more about football then I do. Because of our current quarterback situation, and the passionate opinions on it, I felt like I might contribute something to the site. I hope this post provides a good read and opens up more great discussion.

As we all know there is a quarterback competition going on in the Jets camp. Most of us have an opinion on who should start as quarterback going into the regular season and it’s been a heated debate between the two sides. I have agreed with a lot of points raised by both parties but one stuck out as odd to me. I have read a few times that Michael Vick should get the go ahead because of his past accomplishment. That being he has a history of good or decent play that is far beyond Geno Smith. I find this strange because when we signed Vick I though great now we have two terrible quarterbacks. The reason I say this is because Mike Vick does not have a great history of play and it is definitely not far better than Geno Smith’s play.

If we look at their career stats things do not look good for our team at the quarterback position. First thing a lot of us would look at is passing yards in a season. Vick has played in the NFL for 11 seasons and his best year for passing yards came in 2011 when he passed for 3,303 yards and an average of 254.1 yards per game. In his rookie year Geno threw for 3,046 yards with an average of 190.4 yards per game. First thing people will point out is Vick didn’t play a full season that year and could’ve raised those numbers with a few more games, but when you have only managed to play a full season once in your career injuries can’t be used as an excuse for a poor stat line. You know what you get with Vick a guy that can’t stay in the game so you can’t expect better numbers. In his rookie year Vick played only eight games a managed a miniscule 785 yards with an average of 98.1. Vick was a danger to run the ball though. In just eight games he was able to rush for an additional 289 yards. That is a pretty impressive number, only problem is he’s supposed to be a quarterback not a running back. Geno averaged 80 more yards a game between passing and rushing than Vick.

The next thing to look at is a very important category, turnovers. In the paragraph above it would seem like Geno is ahead of Vick but this stat line is going to knock Geno down a lot. In his rookie year Vick threw three interceptions and one fumble compared to Geno’s 21 interceptions and three fumbles. This means that Vick had .5 turnovers per game compared to an atrocious 1.5 turnovers per game for Geno. Protecting the ball is a huge part of winning football games and Vick clearly outplayed Geno in this category in their rookie years. The only problem is Vick hasn’t gotten better in this hes’s actually gotten slightly worse throughout his career never matching the ball protection he showed his rookie year.

Now the first two points seem like the first that we would look at passing and rushing yards. The last stats I would like to look at are completion percentage, passes of 20 plus, and passes of 40 plus. First let us take a look at the veteran quarterback. Vicks highest completion% came in 2010 at 62.6% and lowest in 2001, his rookie year, at 44.2%. His career average is an unimpressive 56.2%. In the best year of his career Vick had 48 passes of 20 plus and 12 passes of 40 plus, remember that’s arguably the best year of his career. Now on to Geno, who in his first and only year had a passing percent of 55.8%, 43 passes of 20 plus, and 6 passes of 40 plus. Once again it would seem that Geno has the edge over Vick when comparing these last three stats.

Right now I do not have a choice on who should start at quarterback. I believe that decision needs to wait till the end of preseason, especially with the reports of training camp showing them about dead even and the first preseason game not having either play better than the other. I also think that Vick should not be picked because of what some perceive is his good past game play when stats tend to argue that Vick isn’t as good as some would believe. If at the end of preseason neither has outplayed the other it is my opinion that Geno should get the nod because when it comes to Vick we know what we get, a subpar quarterback, not terrible but also not good. With Geno it’s an unknown, he could turn it around this season and become a starting caliber quarterback. I will say that I am a little biased towards Geno’s corner because it is my belief that he will become a franchise quarterback for the Jets. Hope you all enjoyed the read.

This is a FanPost written by a registered member of this site. The views expressed here are those of the author alone and not those of anybody affiliated with Gang Green Nation or SB Nation.