Monday, December 19, 2011

Should Orton be back next year?

A lot of Chiefs fans have had it with Cassel. And after seeing one game from Orton in red and gold, they're ready to proclaim him the QB of the future. But how does he stack up to Cassel?

Cassel played 10 games for the Chiefs this year.
Orton has played 1.

Orton's game had a better completion percentage, yards, yards/attempt, and passer rating than ANY of Cassel's 10 games. And compared to last year when Bowe was going off, and Cassel threw 27 TD, 7 INT, Cassel still never had that kind of completion percentage or yards/attempt more than twice in 16 games. In fact, if Orton had yesterday's stats for every game this year this would be his ranks in the NFL this year:

Yards: 5th
Rating: 4th
Yards/Attempt: 1st
Completion %: 1st

So certainly, by any measure, Orton had a terrific game yesterday.

- - -

But it was one game. How many times have you seen no-so-great quarterbacks have great games?

And it was against the Packers. Yes, they were undefeated. But their defense hasn't been that great this year. And they're still going to have home-field throughout. While I'm sure they would have liked to keep winning, this wasn't life or death for them.

- - -

If Orton could play like he did yesterday, everyday, then sure, we should bring him back because he'd be a top-3 NFL QB. But let's not assume, after one freaking game, that he can do that every week.

- - -

P.S. It's funny that it was Orton who I railed against in my first sort of NFL column from 2005. Although if you look at his stats, I don't think you can blame me. Amazing that the Bears went 11-5 with a QB averaging 51%, 116 yards, and a 59.7 rating. (This year, Josh Freeman is throwing 61%, 217 yards, and a 73.5 rating and the Bucs are 4-10.)

And it's just as amazing that the 2006 Bears went the Super Bowl with Grossman putting up these numbers. He had two games where he combined for 0 TD, 7 INT, a 5 passer rating, and 35% completion. And Chicago won both games.

No comments:

Post a Comment