All Things Teddy-Freaking-Bridgewater

Teddy's deep ball didn't look right to me either, and most others probably. I don't think a mechanical flaw in his deep ball indicates lack of confidence though. If Alex Smith throws a nice deep ball and has good talent/mechanics and STILL can't beat Teddy's YPA that would suggest Smith is the QB that needs a little more moxie. I admittedly am also not super familiar with Alex Smith however.




The 4th quarter comeback stat is what it is but a lot of NFL games come down to one possession which means a lot of games will end up being won or lost in the 4th quarter. I get where you're coming from here; in fact I think it's partially why Teddy's per game stats regressed from year 1 to year 2. He was protecting a lot of late leads in 2015 and not so much in his rookie season.




The Jets had a zero blitz coming that play. Was that not the correct pass to throw? Geez people make it sound like no other QB has ever thrown a screen pass or checked it down to a RB. The Air YAC ratio has its place (like throwing past the sticks on 3rd down as you have pointed out) but at the same time if a QB is hitting his receivers in stride and giving them massive YAC opportunities I'm ok with it. Having elite arm talent is great but it isn't EVERYTHING. If it was Aaron Rodgers would have way more super bowl rings than Tom Brady.




I know you asked for a game where Teddy "willed" the team to a win but that's pretty hard to quantify so I went with a clutch play late. If you were looking for more of like a shootout Teddy had to win I would point to his first ever start where he beat the Falcons 40-28.



I was remembering Zimmer talking about it in his post-game interview on the radio. I hope this is good enough to work as a citation and if not I apologize:

www.foxsports.com/north/story/bridewater-s-audible-leads-to-wright-s-game-winner-in-ot-120714

Nope I don't think it was the right throw to make. Sure with the benefit of hindsight it was the right throw to make, but I'm never going to agree with throwing the ball 6 yards short of the sticks on 3rd and 5 lol. It worked out, that's all you can say. 9 times out of 10 it won't. In fact a screen has a better chance of working if a blitz does come. Teddy was taken to OT by Geno freaking Smith BTW.

It has more to do with how often a QB is throwing screens or check downs. Teddy checks down far too often, and that's a problem as far as I'm concerned.

And I'm never going to give a QB credit if he throws a screen or check down that leads to a big play by the ball carrier. Nobody ever gives the QB credit when he hands the ball off to a RB just before he breaks off a long run. A screen or check down is nothing more than a long hand off IMO.

There's a huge difference between a QB hitting his receivers in stride to give them a better YAC opportunity downfield, and a QB who dumps the ball off and makes the ball carrier do all the work. The former would be a guy like Joe Montana, and the latter is Teddy Bridgewater. I watched all the games, I know what kind of QB Teddy is lol. I didn't call him check down charlie for nothing. Teddy will never have more rings than anyone unless he earns one like T-Jump or Dilfer. Aaron Rodgers would have just as many rings as Brady if he played for a smarter organization. I'm not saying everything comes down to the QB, but would you rather try to build a championship team around a QB like Rodgers or Teddy? No QB is a guarantee, but the choice is still obvious.

Statistically Tom Brady might seem just as conservative as Teddy, but there's a huge difference in offensive philosophy between the Patriots and Vikings. Snap/release times bear that out. The offense Brady has been in, is designed for short quick throws and slants. Look how well it worked against Zims D last year. That's why the Patriots always have all the short speedy shifty receivers. But Brady can also slap a team on his back and will them to victory. Super Bowl 51 anyone? The Vikings offense wasn't designed for that style of play, and that certainly wasn't the kind of offense Norv was running. Which is why I smack my head over drafting him to begin with. There's nothing about Teddy's game, even before he was drafted, that suggested he was an ideal fit for Norvs system, Adrian Peterson, or anything about our team. Jeez we even went out and got a field stretcher like Mike Wallace for him. Why? None of it makes any sense. We were just desperate to grab one of the big names. I'm 100% convinced we tried to trade up to grab Manziel too. Thank you Cleveland.

If Teddy were as great as everyone is claiming, then why weren't we protecting those leads with his amazing talent? I can't think of a better way to protect a 3 point lead than by adding to it. Where's the logic in being so afraid of your talented QB blowing the game that you completely take him out of the game? They never seem to treat other elite QB's quite like that. Can you imagine the Packers asking Rodgers to sit on a 3 score lead in the 4th quarter? Besides, a good QB should have more than 200 yards and 0.85 TD's by the 4th quarter lol. Oh and that was his average. Not his average in 1 possession wins, his overall average. Shouldn't he have been closer to 300 yards and 2-3 TD's in the games we were losing, to boost that average up a little bit? Isn't that what most QB's do? Pad their stats when they lose? Which is what I said earlier, Teddy couldn't even take advantage of prevent defense.

As far as the Falcons game goes. Maybe I'll grant you the Falcons game. Maybe. Although I seem to remember a lot of YAC in that game. Lets take a look ... he had 317 yards passing and 195 came via YAC (61.5%). Looks like my memory was correct xD. His first 4 passes were all thrown behind the LOS for 72 yards on his very first drive, including the 53 yard pass to Wright. Can we really give him credit for any of that? And seems like Wright has made a career of catching Teddy passes in the backfield and turning them into huge gains lol. Theodore did get more aggressive as the game went on. After that opening drive, he was a little more respectable 247 yards passing with only 123 YAC (49.8%). But he threw no TD passes in the game, and didn't attempt a single pass after 11:39 of the 4th when we still trailed by 1. The final 14 offensive plays were all runs, we scored 2 TD's, and the D picked off Ryan twice, but Teddy got credit for a 4th quarter comeback. See why I hate that stat lol? Asiata and McKinnon combined for 213 yards rushing and 3 TD's. This game was Teddy's first career start, but is that really a good thing? He had 29 more starts and not one of them you can say we won because of him. That's almost impossible to say of the QB position.

Haha I'm guessing other people have pointed you to that 2015 Bears game. Well since you brought it up I suppose I can offer a response. There are a few aspects of this particular game I feel are worth mentioning. The infamous 4 TDs:



I'll give you the Line TD - that was a pretty cheap one. The Dump off to Diggs is a good example of why I don't get super concerned with YAC ratio. Diggs had 28 YAC on that play - and his yards after contact was like 8 or 9. Diggs didn't have to beat a defender until 20 yards AFTER catching this 4 yard pass. It was a nice effort to get it in the end zone but this wasn't nearly as lucky as YAC indicates. Even with the LOS pass to McKinnon on 3rd & 7 he didn't take contact until he was already past the sticks. And that was because there was one defender within 10 yards of him when he caught it (and he was NOT inbetween McKinnon and the sticks). Teddy was lucky McKinnon didn't get tackled at the 1 yard line so Asiata could vulture yet another TD, but I'd argue that this was the correct throw that play.

I think Teddy played well here. He completed 85% of his passes with 11.55 YPA. I'm good with that. He got a little lucky with his 4:0 in this game; the same way he got a little UNlucky with his 2:1 in the Jets game we've talked about. You mentioned Teddy never threw past the sticks in this game, and by letter of the law that's right. There were a number of 3rd downs where Teddy threw 2 yards short of the sticks and the closest defender was 5 yards away. That's pretty much throwing it to the sticks IMO.

Here's the thing: I would argue from play to play the different coverages & defensive alignments might occasionally make the LOS pass the correct one. There was a LOS pass in Detroit where Zach Line ran 40 yards untouched due to a complete breakdown in coverage. I wouldn't want Teddy forcing it into double coverage somewhere else simply to throw it past LOS. I say just take the 40 free yards. Whew. My thoughts on that Bears game.




I wish Norv Turner would've let Teddy sling it a little more and I absolutely don't blame Teddy for Norv being a run-heavy lunatic. That would be like blaming Dalvin Cook for the New England game last season. That worthless bum rushed for a meager 84 yards and no TDs - DeFilippo had no choice but to limit him to 9 carries. A truly great RB makes his own sample size! Players automatically get the exact reps/chances they deserve. Why are teams even bothering to pay these meaningless, play-calling OCs?





Yes! Thank you! Volume stats and advanced stats absolutely can be misleading without context. I've also seen every Teddy Bridgewater snap and I believe he played better than the stats would indicate more often than not, and had potential to be a top 10 NFL QB. You have seen the same snaps and feel the opposite. That's one part of football I actually enjoy quite a bit. You can show two people the exact same play and they can see two completely different things. Alright I'm a little out of breath now just typing this.

Careful, your bias is showing.

Lol you're giving me the Line TD? I thought that was the only one where it was his only option. On the Diggs and McKinnon TD's, you're looking at them with the benefit of hindsight, or like you knew Teddy knew they were going to go for big gains. What about the other 500 dump offs in his career that went for nothing? These 2 particular dump offs just happened to work out for him where all the other didn't. I cannot pretend this is some cunning strategy by Teddy when it's more of an instinct of his, to panic and get rid of the ball to his safety outlet. It was a bad habit. You need a QB who isn't afraid to take chances.

This is why I said context is important. When only 2 passes are more than 10 yards downfield, I would hope a QB has a high completion percentage. It would have been higher had Asiata not dropped a pass that Teddy threw to him 8 yards behind the LOS on 3rd down that would have lost huge yards. Same with the YAC, when 75% of your passing yards are YAC, I don't consider that a good thing. Maybe in terms of the game plan, in this particular game, it was a good thing, the Bears had no answers for the short passes, but then this was basically the QB playing on easy mode, and easy mode is not going to work in every game. How could he not go 18/21 with 172 YAC yards? It was more of a stupid game plan by the Bears in fact. Knowing Teddy is not a very accurate or confident QB downfield, why wouldn't you take away his safe short passes and force him to beat you where he's uncomfortable, like the Packers did in week 17?

Maybe so, but once again you're assuming this was some strategy by Teddy and not his nature. Like he was just waiting for the Bears to take the short passes away from him, so he could pick them apart downfield. When in fact even if the Bears had adjusted and played those short passes tighter, Teddy would have still forced the short passes. How do I know? Because that's what he did in all the other games lol. That's why he averaged 200 yards and 0.85 TD's a game. Teddy is going to throw short passes whether it works or not.

And how do we know Teddy wasn't allowed to throw more often? You guys like to give him credit for audibling to 87 yard TD passes, so maybe he audibles to runs quite often too lol? Besides, I would kinda prefer a QB who audibled to more passes if the OC was being too conservative with him, like a lot of these other QB's do. Favre was inventing his own plays for crying out loud lol. Teddy was a bit too soft for my taste and I don't think that mentality is going to fill too many trophy cases. And I'm no offensive guru or anything, but I'm pretty sure the passing tree doesn't start with the checkdown lol. I'm pretty sure that's usually the 4th read. We must have had the worst 1, 2, and 3 WR's in the league who could never get open xD. Couldn't get open enough to make Teddy confident enough to pull the trigger anyway.

Advanced stats are misleading without volume stats. Which is what I try to tell all these homers out here lol. Why don't the super awesome advanced stats translate to higher volume stats? Advanced stats should compliment volume stats. To me it's like, hey look at this student, he aces every test, but then you realize he's a D student overall. Doesn't make much sense. Teddy is a top 5 QB in all these advanced stats, but then you see he's a bottom 10 QB in volume stats. Makes no sense. There's some context missing there. My advanced stats tend to show Teddy as a bottom 10 QB, just like his volume stats. There's no missing context. It all makes sense.

Like what good does it do if Teddy has the 5th highest completion percentage on 3rd down, but is only 22nd in conversions, like he was in 2015? It just means he throws a lot of short safe passes on 3rd down instead of taking chances. Without the context of the conversion rate, his top 5 comp pct rank is meaningless. And no that big of a difference can't be excused away by saying he was just taking what the defense gave him, like in the Bears game lol. The Bears game was an exception, not the rule.

We could mention another Bears game, in 2014, where this strategy didn't work so well. Special teams spotted Theodore a 10-0 1st quarter lead, but it was squandered by do or die painfully short passing throughout. 22 of Teddy's 28 passes were less than 8 yards downfield. He went only 14/22 for 79 yards on those passes, 53 coming via YAC and the Vikings lost 21-13. He wasn't even half bad going downfield in this game, going 4/6 for 79 yards (18 YAC) and an INT when he threw 14+ yards downfield. He threw past the sticks only 4 times on 12 3rd down attempts (converted 3 of 4 on those). The 8 times he threw short, 0 conversions. A whopping 5.86 air yards per pass attempt in the game. Why no adjustment in this one when the short passing clearly wasn't working? Because short passing is his nature and not some master strategy when it's working lol.

Alright since Sloter is back in the discussion, I thought I'd take a look to see how he stacks up in the whole aggressive department by comparing him to a guy who is the antithesis of aggressive. First a reminder of how Mr. Passive fared in the passive/aggressive gauntlet.


Obviously I only have preseason data for Sloter, so I don't have any rankings.

Sloter 2017 Broncos:

Air to YAC ratio .................... 70.0%  (289:124) smokin!
Past the sticks on 3rd down ratio ... 63.6%
Percent of passes behind LOS ........ 11.6%
Percent of passes 0-9 yards downfield 48.8%
Percent of passes 10-19 yards ....... 23.3%
Percent of passes 20-29 yards ....... 14.0%  ( 5/6 ) Nice!
Percent of passes 30-39 yards .......  0.0%  ( 0/0 )
Percent of passes 40+ yards downfield  2.3%  ( 1/1 )

Sloter 2018 Vikings:

Air to YAC ratio .................... 62.0%  (227:139)
Past the sticks on 3rd down ratio ... 55.6%
Percent of passes behind LOS ........ 12.5%
Percent of passes 0-9 yards downfield 59.9%
Percent of passes 10-19 yards ....... 21.4%
Percent of passes 20-29 yards .......  5.4%  ( 2/3 )
Percent of passes 30-39 yards .......  0.0%  ( 0/0 )
Percent of passes 40+ yards downfield  1.8%  ( 0/1 )

Head to head total:

                                      Teddy  Sloter
Air to YAC ratio .................... 47.3%   66.2%
Past the sticks on 3rd down ratio ... 35.8%   58.6%  well someone got the memo
Percent of passes behind LOS ........ 17.2%   12.1%
Percent of passes 0-9 yards downfield 52.7%   54.4%
Percent of passes 10-19 yards ....... 19.1%   22.2%
Percent of passes 20-29 yards .......  6.8%    9.1%
Percent of passes 30-39 yards .......  2.4%    0.0%
Percent of passes 40+ yards downfield  1.9%    2.0%

Percent of passes <9 yards downfield. 69.8%   66.7%
Percent of passes <19 yards downfield 88.9%   88.9%  uff-da not good
Percent of passes >20 yards downfield 11.1%   11.1%

Average air yards per pass attempt     7.48    7.92
Average air yards per completion       5.28    7.17
Average YAC per completion             5.88    3.65

I had to add those last 2 categories because they jumped out and slapped me in the face. On one hand, Teddy is relying on a lot of YAC yards like I had already suspected, and Sloter seems to be doing a much better job of throwing the ball down field. However I'm a little concerned that Sloter receivers aren't picking up much YAC. Since Teddy is throwing much shorter it probably just means his receivers have more open turf in front of them. I mean when you're constantly throwing 5 yards behind the LOS, the RB is going to gain 6 YAC before a defender is even near him lol. Sloter could be throwing into tighter windows too.

The most impressive Sloter stat I've seen so far, other than that air to YAC ratio or even that past the sticks on 3rd down ratio is that fact that he's thrown 7 total TD's and all 7 were into the EZ. 5 were 20+ yards, and 1 was 47. 147 air yards to 1 YAC on TD passes.

2014 Teddy 6 of 14 TD's into the EZ 167 air to 153 YAC yards, 22.9 avg yards per TD
2015 Teddy 8 of 14 TD's into the EZ 141 air to 111 YAC yards, 18.0 avg yards per TD
Sloter 7 of 7 TD's into the EZ 147 air to 1 YAC yards, 21.1 avg yards per TD

Actually surprised Brady isn't higher, since the Patriots passing game is so reliant on their backs and slot guys. And, his passer rating on deeper throws just shows how huge a weapon Gronk really was, because he had to the target on half (or more) of those throws.

Easy Reignman, you've literally referenced plays Teddy wasn't on the field to support a negative opinion of him. We rushed 14 straight times to close out the Falcons game - the last 11 of those rushes were when Christian Ponder was in the game at QB. Right after Teddy put us back in front 35-28 he left the game due to injury with 10:50 left.




Eh, I was looking at them with the benefit of YouTube to see where the players were on the field when the passes were thrown. When a guy is trailing Diggs on a crosser and NOBODY is in front of him for 20 yards I'll trust the QB was anticipating a nice gain.




I'm perfectly willing to admit Teddy may have audibled to a run play at some point. I'm going to need a citation on that though LOL





Being 22nd in conversions is a stat that might also need a little context. The Vikings as a team attempted the 28th most 3rd downs in 2015. I wasn't sure how to find a passing/rushing breakdown on that, but I would be curious where Teddy was in 3rd down pass attempts in relation to being 22nd in conversions.




I would agree that generally the deeper routes are the earlier reads on most passing plays. I would caution that there were probably some designed shorter throws here and there to exploit mismatches, like McKinnon on a slow LB or something.




What was Teddy in his rookie season again? 6th in pass attempts of 40+ yards? I think you might be falling prey to the "dink and dunk" myth a fellow purple pain member astutely pointed out earlier in this thread. I would also argue the team had more RB talent than WR talent at that time and Teddy was also one of the most pressured QBs in the league (if not THE most).




I completely agree. Teddy really struggled in this game; his YPA was under 6 and significantly so. I don't blame the late INT on him in this one but I think he generally struggled through the entire game here.




Sorry for any confusion. OdinsDen is The A-Train and OdinHammer is The Hammer (myself). I'm the "other guy" of this podcast. The A-Train definitely has the more magnetic personality between the two of us lol