In his first press conference after getting drafted by the Arizona Cardinals, former Hokie QB was quick to dismiss the notion that he is a project QB. Thomas claims to be further along than people realize. Considering all the extra work he had been doing with QB Guru George Whitfield and OC Scot Loeffler leading up to the draft, Logan Thomas may have a point. With better talent around him, Thomas has all the tools to succeed in the NFL if he can put them all together. Whether he does or not is up to debate.
Is Logan Thomas a QB project at the NFL level?
http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap2000000351125/article/logan-thomas-rook...
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Yes.
Project no...Projectile yes.
When you are a fourth round pick, its hard to argue youre not a project until you prove otherwise. LT3 has work to do to show he is not a project. Saying it is one thing; showing it is a completely different beast.
Preseason will be his time to shine.
He's a project... A bigtime project...
Look, I like Logan. He did a lot for VT when he was here, and he bridged the gap between the Stinespring-led clusterfuck of an offense and the Loeffler-led resurgence we're going to see going forward now that the talent is replenished (albeit young). He won a lot of games in 2011 and he did set records for the school, but, as a quarterback, he regressed over his career at VT. He has major inconsistency issues, that only got worse over the years. He is highly inaccurate with most passes he makes. His mechanics need a complete overhaul to fix those issues, and even then, on top of that, he has to get over the mental issues that plagued him the last couple seasons with simply bad decision making. He had 9 turnovers late in his senior year in crucial games when the season was on the line. By that point in a career, you shouldn't be doing that. You can nitpick those turnovers to death, and say maybe one or two was not his fault, but when there are 9 over the span of 2 games... Not good.
To succeed in the NFL, or even play any meaningful downs over the course of his entire career at QB, he's going to need to display more traits than just being able to run over a defensive player on a run (and even that trait is negated in the NFL with bigger players across the board). He'll need to show touch on the ball, he'll need to be able to hit guys in the numbers on the simple routes, he'll need to make good decisions and not throw the ball into double coverage, and he'll need to do this relatively fast, because as much as the Cardinals say they like him right now, they're not going to sit around and wait for him to grow into the position. This is not a league where that happens anymore, especially on a team without a legitimately good player in place at that position already. This day and age, coaches are fired fast if you go too long without a legitimate starter at QB.
You made some good points; but, you failed to point out that the receivers had a lot of drops and sometimes ran the wrong routes. In the NFL, he is going to have better players around him to protect and catch the balls. When all is said and done, he is in a good situation with BA , Moore as his coaches.
I've explained this before.... Yes, Logan did incur a lot of drops, but even if you give him the benefit of the doubt that half the drops were the fault of the receivers, and not an errant or inaccurate pass that the receiver had to alter his route to make an attempt, his pass completion % raises to only 61%, which still puts him outside the Top 50 (I believe it was t-53rd overall) in completion % this past year of eligible QBs.
The only thing I have about this argument that if those drops were caught, he still would only have a completed 61% of passes is the fact that you don't actually know what his completion percentage would be. Yes, if you go by straight math, it would be 61%, but when that drop was on 4th down, or caused an interception, or resulted in a punt, it changed the flow of the game. The gameplan then adjusts accordingly and the need to pass more arises if you're down. You don't have the luxury of running the ball to eat clock. So we don't actually know what his completion percentage would have been, but we know that he, and the team, would have done better had those drops been completions.
You can play the "What If?" game all you want until we win the MNC, but it doesn't change the facts. He made a lot of bad decisions and very poor throws. Granted if a few drops were caught they might have prolonged a series, but then you apply the 61% rate and really the only meaningful stat would change is the number of touchdowns and interceptions due to more throws.
The point is even excluding obvious drops he still threw the ball too hard, in the wrong place, too early or late, and made bad decisions. It's not as if half his interceptions came from the receiver not catching a ball sometimes he just lobbed it too high. He needs work, and a fair amount at that.
Nowhere did I ever say he doesn't need work. My argument was that you are trying to apply a purely mathematic calculation to something that has an unpredictable human element. To say that his completion percentage would have only been 61% no matter what is to say that there is no element of strategy and that every game, he should come out and only complete 61% of his passes. Never more, never less. That's just not how it works.
Then how does it work for everything else? The human element is in everything yet we can extrapolate using data like that to get a reasonable guess. Not to mention it's not like all of his dropped passes were around a position where he had a better completion % than anywhere else. Maybe the extra completions would have set up passing situations he wasn't as good at and would have lowered his %. They happened all over the field so it's reasonable to assume that it would have been around 61%, his average with the drops excluded.
If you really want to get down to the lowest level of why this is a false assumption, it breaks down into psychology. More or less, a QB's decisions heavily relies on operant conditioning to what has happened over the course of the game. If a QB sees that his WR is able to make a play on a DB, he is more likely to return to that receiver on another throw. On the contrary, if the WR doesn't make the play, especially one he should such as a drop, he is less likely to give them another chance. Your future response to a situation changes when a prior action has a positive outcome just as much as it does if the outcome is negative. The same thing applies to the Offensive Coordinator's play selection. So in this situation you are taking a negative punishment, such as a change of possession, and replacing it with a positive reinforcer, a completion/first down/touchdown, and assuming the response will be the same. You can't draw that conclusion. If it was simple statistics, you would be correct, but psychology has different effect on the situation entirely.
The problem with your scenario is that you're assuming that the outcome was a turnover on downs or something very negative outcome. That wasn't always the case. Sometimes the drops were on first down. Sometimes second, third, or fourth. Sometimes they resulted in a punt, an interception, or a kick. Some, if caught, could have been a TD, first down, or second.
The sheer variety of the situations the drops occurred is what lets you reasonably use his completion percentage. If the receivers always dropped passes that would have led to first downs you would be on to something, that was not even close to the case. You could construct a model that takes all Logan's throws and based on what yard line, down, time left in half, score, etc and figure out with more accuracy what his % would have been. Fact is he made bad decisions at very inexplicable times.
If you want to use the randomness of the game as a way to justify not using 61% then comb over everything and come back what you think it would be? 63%? 65% 75%?
This is my last comment regarding this since we are going back and forth over something that didn't actually happen, so the point is moot. But can you not say that facing a 2nd & 10 is worse than a 2nd & 2 and is thus a negative outcome because the completion was not made on first down? The play selection changes in those situations, so it does in fact have a large effect on whether it is considered a passing or running down and distance.
Here are the situational passing statistics for VT (mostly Logan Thomas):
Logan was near terrible on 3rd and long, but not great on 3rd and short. He was better on 1st and 2nd down, but not near NFL levels...
Data from cfbstats.com
Wonder who keeps downvoting you for no reason....
Honestly, almost every QB drafted is a project. We have been spoiled in recent years with Andrew Luck, Russell Wilson, and RG3 (in his first year only...you would have to say RG3 is actually back to being a project again)
In the old days, QB's used to ride the pine for years until they got their shot. Look at Aaron Rodgers. There have been numerous highly drafted QB's that have failed in recent years...and I am sure there will be some in this class also.
Look at Brandon Weedon, Blaine Gabbert, and even Jake Locker to a certain extent. Gino Smith was pretty awful last year. I think Logan can at least do what Gino Smith did last year.
Logan will have at least a year or two to learn from Carson Palmer...
Agreed and Cam Newton is another QB that comes to mind. The Panthers might of had the worst offense in NFL history in 2010 and than the next year with him they were top ten yardage wise in the league. I still have nightmares of that Jimmy Clausen led offense.
There were other factors in that scenario besides Cam, but yeah agreed mostly.
Yes, he is a project. There's no shame in that. As mentioned above - when you are drafted in the later rounds, when the overwhelming consensus is that it will be years before you contend for a starting position, when the general discussion is of the fundamental changes you must make in your form to succeed, then you are a project. Working with a QB coach for two months does not turn Logan into a starter-quality QB. It takes more than that. Had Logan worked with a QB coach like Whitfield for four years during college, then the story might be different. Thanks to the coaching hires made over the last several years, though, that was not the case. Logan denying it does not make it so, he is a project. And that's okay.
Not as much as many people think.
Absolutely a project.
Logan has a point in that he doesn't have to be built from the ground up; rather just the shoulders up.
Yes. He is a project.
Logan has the strongest arm strength of all the QBs. At the NFL combine, he was the only one of the QBs to throw the ball at 60 mph. That was better than Kaepernick, Cam Newton, Russell Wilson, EJ Manual, Joe Flacco . LT just needs learn where and when to throw those lasers.
Faster doesn't really equal better in my opinion.
http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2014/03/03/logan-thomas-threw-60-mp...
I'm not saying you should throw out that stat, really. But it doesn't really do much for me.
I saw Mccarron throw it 47mph on Sports Science on ESPN.
There are times when QBs are asked to throw a Hail Mary or a deep ball down the end zone at the end of a quarter or a game . The ability to throw the ball faster is good quality to have. IMO.
Sure, it's nice to have. But I think there are more important things, like pocket awareness and accuracy, which I think Logan needs plenty of work on.
He has a coach that likes him and wants to work with him. He has a few years to prove himself a started and hopefully he will. I don't know how it will turn out and I think it depends on that coaching staff sticking around and him not getting baptism by fire.
Im going to wait to see what he looks like with NFL talent around him to pass my final judgement on Logan.