QB Previews: Part 1, Fly Into The Disaster Zone

For my QB previews, I decided to classify guys based on the state of their career.  First off you have the guys who are the franchise for their teams.  These are the superstars, the guys who are flat out money.  They don't necessarily rake in Super Bowl hardware by their mere presence, two of the six guys in this category have collected four rings, but without them, their teams don't even contend.  They are the elite, they are the studs, they are the guys we all wanted to be when we were nine year olds tossing the ball around.

The next class of guys are the caretakers.  They help their teams win by sometimes being spectacular and sometimes being just average.  But what they don't do is toss away games for their teams.  There are some Super Bowl winners among this bunch, some potential idols, but these guys rely on other forces within their teams to put them over the top, thus they are not money.

There are a bunch of guys that need to be in what I call the "Show Me, Don't Tell Me" class.  They haven't done anything worthy yet.  Maybe they have some flashes of greatness, come with a great pedigree, a high draft pick, but the reality is that when you look at their NFL resume, they have nothing worth talking about.  These are the guys with the opportunity to step it up or melt down hard.  You just don't know, you're not sold on these guys unless you're a partisan of their team.

There's another class of guys whose best days are clearly behind them.  They are the "Fading Fast" class.  That thing they call upside... it's all used up for these guys.  They ain't got it anymore.  Anything they do that looks good anymore comes on a few remnants of skill and guile.  These are guys are playing out their contracts and in deep self-denial that the end is near.  They have the potential to be nuclear bombs for their teams, delaying the needed refresh of their offense for two or three years while they desperately try to get their ring.  These teams are going to ride these guys until they find top five draft pick status.

Lastly, you have the total damn disasters, aka the Disaster Zone.  There is little chance that anything good will come from the QB position.  The QB position will lose games for them by turning the ball over, leading the offense to a string of three and outs that concede good field position.  They are more of an asset to the other teams defense than they are to your offense.  If you are the opposing defensive coordinator, you tell your players, "don't hurt the QB!"  Only their mom, wife and kids wear their jersey and they have a future of selling insurance on the horizon.  With that said, let's start by ripping... I mean reviewing, the Disaster Zone guys.

The Disaster Zone

San Francisco
Alex Smith/ Shaun Hill/ J.T. O'Sullivan
Looks like J.T. OSullivan has outshined small handed Alex Smith, which is another strike against Mike Nolan who spent a number on pick on Small Hands.  Smith’s destiny was franchise status and has melted down completely, but given the right opportunity he could come back successfully in another uniform in a few years.  Shaun Hill looks good because he's not Alex Smith, not because he is good.  Now on to J.T.-- when a guy has the name J.T., his professional sports career should involve BMX or motocross racing, not being an NFL QB.  
Trend: Going down, down, down

Atlanta
Chris Redmond/Matt Ryan
Both of these guys are probably going to be left in several pieces on the Georgia Dome field.  The Falcons had only Mike Vick on offense.  Vick was so money, before getting snagged for dogfighting, that he covered up the fact that the talent on the Atlanta offense just was not there.  Redmond & Ryan  can not solve those ills, so they will get beaten like the next gasbag that Elite XC sends in the ring to face Kimbo Slice on CBS.  Ryan has some upside, if he can survive and that is a big if.  NFL stands for "not for long" when you're looking out your earhole after every third play and screaming "I'm Batman" on the sideline after getting creamed because your running back thinks blitz pick up means go run a circle route.  Redmond is only there because of his former college coach, who ditched this sinking ship last year leaving his rep in tatters just to get away.  In Atlanta, the disaster is less about the QB, but the guy taking the snaps will suffer for it.
Trend: Nowhere for Redmond, maybe up for Ryan

Tampa Bay
Jeff Garcia?
The Bucs made a huge mistake in not getting the Favre sweepstakes to win it.  I agree with all of the assessments that the Bucs would not have been playing in January because of Brett Favre, but he was their only chance of playing more than one game in January.  By pursuing Favre and not getting in it to win it, the Bucs have done an even bigger disservice to themselves by taking a marginal QB talent and confirming his marginal status. That’s as if they needed to marginalize him further by keeping 7 QBs on the roster already. Radio talk and the fans are going to go nuts the first time Garcia does one of those jump pass INTs. He’s not good to begin with. The offensive genius that Gruden showed in Oakland has been absent in Tampa, so the QB is going to get no help from the system or the guys around him.
Trend: Sinking into The Abyss

Chicago
Rex Grossman/Kyle Orton
Chicago has never forgiven Rex Grossman for the Super Bowl, despite the truth that Urlacher, Briggs and company got eaten alive by the Colts. Rex Grossman is an average skilled guy who has had the pressure of needing to be a franchise guy and he can’t deliver that. No one wants him there, including him, but the contract was signed and the Bears keep cutting the check rather than going out and looking to improve that position. Kyle Orton is viewed more favorably in the same way that Shaun Hill is... because he’s not Rex Grossman. He’ll make one decent pass, everyone will think he’s the guy and then he’ll prove that he’s not. Lovie Smith is not stupid, if Kyle Orton gave him a chance to win, he’d have the job already.
Trend: Continuing mediocrity

Baltimore
Kyle Boller/Troy Smith
My feeling in the past has been that Boller was better than Brian Billick ever gave him credit for, but found the coach’s dog house as he needed to throw someone under the bus for the lack of offensive genius Billick showed over his tenure in Baltimore. Let’s face it, had Billick not won that Super Bowl, he would have been run from town years earlier. Billick has wrecked Boller and that just is what it is. As far as Troy Smith goes, he’s a classic case of a great college player whose style of play does not translate to the NFL. Not a knock on the guy, he’ll be a hero in Columbus forever, but he’s not a guy who can drop back and wing it around. He’s not an NFL QB. This team has had nothing but bad QB decisions since the karma-killing move of tossing Trent Dilfer aside for Elvis Grbac.
Trend: Desperation

Miami
Chad Pennington
Spare me all of the talk that Bill Parcells makes this a 9-7 team this year. That is just plain ridiculous, stupid, ain’t going to happen. There are several years of bad personnel moves to undo here and the QB situation. Somehow they got it into their heads that Trent “Never Won A Damn Thing” Green would take them to the promise land. Remember the SI prediction two years ago? Chad Pennington has not been able to throw the ball more than 15 yards with any zip since back-to-back years with shoulder injuries. For The Chad, his career has jumped the shark, but he hasn’t figured that out yet. I guess there’s nowhere to go up from last year, but if you think this team has solved their QB problem... get that notion out of your head.
Trend: Nowhere to go but up