Put in the impossible position of starting over the first overall pick, Jon Kitna had an unexpected breakout, killing the Cincinnati Bungles in the process.
I have a suggestion: Use Youtube links to show specific plays you talk about. You can link to specific places in YouTube videos. One easy way is Just make a time stamp in the comment section like 34:16 , Then refresh and that time will be a hyperlink to that video at that time.
It would make these so much better. " Then this happens (hyperlink) ..... and just like that Kitna has pulled the Bengals within 7".
I remember on a blogspot and other blog websites all YouTube links became smaller versions interrupting the text. On a computer You could click to open in a new window or hit the full screen button. I never used phone on Xs and Os blog articles (until substack) so I don't know how it will work here.
You could even edit your old work to make it way more exciting. Your new work will be more fun watching the games and writing down time stamp. Not just box score play by play. Watch it first , be entertained, look up play by play later.
If u go more recent, remember that my channel has a thorough archive of 2012-2016. Ill be adding 2017,2018 to it post draft. My archive goes to present that doesn't mean it can be posted without being blocked. The one thing is I delete all games that arent close and exciting since Ill never want to watch it years later. That stil leaves 50-60 good games a year.
"His year 2012 Alfred morris" is a worthwhile project. A forgotten rushing title. 2012 was a great season with all the Read Option unleashing Running backs due to one unblocked defender being optioned off by the QBs decision to keep the ball and run outside or hand off to RB running inside.
Unblocked defender starts staying wide to prevent RG3, Cam newton, Russel Wilson, Kaepernich from gaining 20 yards...So now the RB now has 5OL and 1TE blocking only 3 DL and 2 LBs. RB is getting to the 2nd level LBs full speed and he's got 1-2 free OL along for the ride
I can't believe you've brought the 2012 season up. I've already talked about my preferred candidate in the 2012 rushing race: https://sportspassion.substack.com/p/his-year-cj-spiller-2012, but Alfred Morris is absolutely a worthwhile chat also. Perhaps his (and CJ's) 2012 would be more remembered were it not in the same league as Adrian Peterson's 2000. Sometimes that's the way it goes.
As far as the hyperlink thing, I would love to do it, and I will make an earnest effort if ever I get back closer to the present. I wanted to include some plays when talking about Paul Justin, to show just how much of a rocket his arm was, but most of his games are not on YouTube. I suppose nobody cared to archive Paul Justin. I promise that I will make a real try at doing the hyperlink thing soon.
I do watch most of the games for the players I write about. The important ones that is. When I expand more on a game, you can almost be certain that I've watched the half of the game (almost always the offensive half) that our player of choice is involved in. I'm just not a fantastic play by play announcer, so it comes across like I'm reading play by play a lot of the time. The YouTube ones are a lot easier, but occasionally I will go through the process of paying NFL Films for the right to watch some old game that I can't find anywhere else.
I do plan to use your channel my friend. It just has to come up that I'm more recent than 2012, which regretfully is a place I don't hang out very often, as my favourite era of the NFL is 1996-2010 (can you tell?). I will get there though. I'll try my best.
Theres plenty of 2000-2010 games on Youtube. Too much in my opinion, 😆! Uploaders don't just put up good games they share every non competitive clunker they got their hands on. Sometimes its VHS sourced, ugh.
I guess watching your old good or great team u feel nostalgic for pummel another is fun for folks especially if they dont have title run games to rewatch.
Ernie Zampese was vaunted before coming to LA and working with Everett, is my impression. It is natural that the magic fades with a coach with time; it is a profession of innovation after all.
I sort of would put Cunningham, 1990, with Elway, 1987, as times when these super hyped, super physically talented players actually delivered early in their careers, maybe getting the help around them to improve their stats. I understand that Elway didn't have nearly the speed or running effectiveness that Cunningham had, and Cunningham probably didn't have the arm strength that Elway did. But they were both super exciting.
I don't have the endless interest you have in just how everyone rates, and I am sure the coaches did not. What is interesting about Cunningham being pulled in a 1990 playoff game was that he wasn't a rookie.
I do agree with you that NFL teams should approach the quarterback job like teams do every other job in sports, remaining flexible and week to week about who the starter is, rather than making it this job that comes with all of these special prerogatives, including unfathomable job security once someone is tapped as "the dude."
This, in my mind, is a 21st-century phenomenon, to separate a starting quarterback so far above his competition. And to give you some perspective, the reason that saying about quarterbacks started is because teams actually used to spin it as POSITIVE that they had two quarterbacks. Look at the Raiders, and how they would alternate among Lamonica, Stabler, and Blanda. Of course, look at the Rams, with their Hall of Famers Waterfield and Van Brocklin. Terry Bradshaw would be benched for Joe Gilliam if it came to that. In my youth, Dallas was really good, but the fans really wanted Gary Hogeboom and not Danny White, and sometimes they got what they wanted.
But Waterfield and Van Brocklin aside, it generally was a bit of a euphemism that teams would present not being settled on the starter as a positive. And critics saw through this, and that's how that saying started. John Madden talked about it. The key thing is that he had to explain why having two quartebacks was usually a euphemism, though. It wasn't always obvious to everyone, or voiced.
If Kitna had fallen on his face, I guess Palmer would have come in, but the historical narrative has always been that Palmer was essentially redshirted. That the fix was in, and for his development, for his own good, he wasn't going to play, even if he was the better player. As you know, it's a famous situation, and the Bengals basically remain lauded for their discipline.
I was in Michigan during Kitna's Detroit years. When I heard him interviewed at that time, he really grabbed me, and along with Matt Hasselbeck and Peyton Manning, I thought he was the most charismatic and the best natural leader among quarterbacks. I remember hearing Josh McCown interviewed, who for one season was Kitna's backup, and he said that their quarterback room was a one-in-a-thousand thing of special guys and talents. Even at the time, and before it became quite clear Detroit was not going to have that long-promised breakthrough, I said, "Huh." Because I sure didn't see things like that at all, at least in terms of their talent.
Not sure who the third guy was. It was before Orlovsky. Might it have been J. T. O'Sullivan? He's gone on to high popularity with his film breakdowns. Am operating on the premise that McCown wasn't full of it, and he is certainly extremely well regarded as a football mind, although the preferential treatment he was supposed to have gotten in Houston, and then the Bryce Young situation, has taken the bloom off the rose.
We agree on this David. Rookies are pushed into the starting job much too quickly most of the time, based on the mistaken belief that having them play really badly for a season somehow helps. It happened to Dan Fouts in 1973. It happened to Caleb Williams in 2024, and teams still have not learned this lesson. I'm honestly not sure what the deal is. There's all the data in the world our there, all of it suggesting that playing a QB in his rookie season truly neither hurts nor hinders his development. Therefore, the decision to play a QB in his rookie year (in my opinion) should come down to a true competition, which more often than not a rookie QB would lose, if we're being objective about it, which as we know, most teams are not.
But, to be perfectly fair to the teams who rushed the QBs in too early, taking as given that I'm strictly playing devil's advocate here, it really isn't that hard to 'redshirt' a first overall pick QB, when Jon Kitna is ranking seventh in EPA/Play. Think about it this way. If David Woodley in 1983 had put up a six flat ANY/A, the way Jon Kitna did in 2003, I'm sure Dan Marino would've 'redshirted' as well, and then Dan's 1984 would've still happened, and the Dolphins would've been lauded for their discipline.
This would be incorrect, as it would have nothing to do with the discipline of the Dolphins, and everything to do with the increased abilities of David Woodley. I think the same is true here. If Jon in 2003 had put up an ANY/A of 3.31, like David Woodley in 1983, I have no doubts we would've seen Carson Palmer at some point, probably beginning with Arizona in week nine. It would've still required a good level of discipline to get Carson even this far without putting him into the real games. Don't get me wrong on that, but I don't think Carson not playing for his whole rookie season is down to discipline on the Bengals' part. I think it's got more to do with how Jon Kitna was turning the whole team around, ending the Bungles era in the process, and they didn't want to interrupt that.
In short, I think this Palmer situation had more to do with the Bengals' extraordinary circumstances than anything else. It's almost impossible to get the first overall pick with a QB as good as 2002 Jon Kitna. It hasn't happened since, but it happened here. It's almost impossible to have QB play as bad over an extended period as 1998-2002 Cincinnati, but it happened here. Those two statements sound contradictory, but 2002 Jon Kitna being uniquely good for a QB of a first overall pick roster does not make him great.
When this team ('this' being the operative word) got a good thing going, they were in a position where they were likely uniquely averse to changing anything, for fear of screwing it up. They hadn't had a top ten QB since 1989. They hadn't had a good team since 1990. They hadn't had an even passable team since 1996. If you were the head of the Bengals, looking back on all that history, now that you've finally got a good thing going with Jon Kitna, would you want to be the one that pulls the plug on it to put in a rookie?
Cincinnati deserves credit for not just closing their eyes and inserting Carson week one, regardless of quality of play, like Chicago did with Caleb Williams this year, but I personally don't know how much their discipline deserves lauding once the season actually began. When you have a QB ranked in the top ten in EPA/Play, how hard is it to decide to leave him in the starting role? It doesn't sound that hard to me. I know teams have messed this up in the past (Carolina ditching Sam Darnold to bring in Bryce Young springs immediately to mind), but most teams would've been able to get this right, I feel.
I also think you're right about the job security thing. I'm not sure why starting QBs are so sticky these days, and difficult to move. I often wonder when this changed, because when I wrote about Paul Justin a couple months ago, the old QB culture was still alive and well. Jim Harbaugh had been one of the NFL's best QBs in 1995, but his backup still got to touch the ball almost 300 times through the course of 1996 and 1997. There's no chance that would happen today, and I think those mid-late 90s Colts might have been the last team where the QB switch button was pushed on a regular basis.
Maybe the 49ers' desperate (and futile) attempts to replace Jeff Garcia in 1999 and 2000 count, but Jeff was not the entrenched starter that he would become at that point, so I'm not sure if it's still the same thing, and I can't find any instances of QB hot potato any later than that. Compare this to somebody like Dan Fouts, who spent his first several years bouncing in and out of the starting position, due to both injury and performance reasons at different points. It didn't seem to hurt him that bad.
So yes. We agree. The job security enjoyed by even really bad players at the QB position is odd to me, and I don't think it's justifiable.
As for the Detroit thing, the 2006 Detroit Lions are a very interesting case. I said Jon Kitna played like a top ten QB that year, despite being a negative EPA/Play QB on a 3-13 team with a bad offence. How can this be? It begins with the fact that the 2006 Detroit Lions are one of the worst rushing offences of all time, with their 1129 rushing yards as a team for a whole season, 3.7 Y/C, and -0.242 EPA/Rush. These are all absolutely horrendous numbers. To Detroit's credit, they more or less dispensed with trying to run the ball altogether, finishing 2006 with the 32nd most rush attempts, and making Jon Kitna just the 11th football player ever to touch the football 700 times in a season or more.
At this point, it gets into the QB volume discussion we were having a while back. Would you rather a man who touches the ball 720 times, as the 18th best per-play QB in the NFL (2006 Jon Kitna), or the man who touches the ball 520 times, as the tenth best per-play QB in the NFL (2006 Steve McNair)? Honestly, it's tough to say, as would Steve McNair have been a top ten per-play QB having to drop back to pass better than 700 times, on the 2006 Detroit Lions? Almost certainly not, but it's hard to tell how good Jon Kitna would've been if we could take some of the harder plays off his plate.
It's just a fun coincidence to me that Josh McCown was there too, as he's another guy we talk about a lot on this publication. There's a popular phrase, that you can bury talent, but you can't kill it, and I think these two guys are two of the foremost examples of that in the new millennium at the QB position. Jon Kitna should've been given a real chance at starting somewhere, never really was, but showed what he had (even at 38) in a big way on the 2010 Dallas Cowboys. Josh McCown is very similar. He also should've been given a a chance to be the starting QB for a playoff calibre team, but never really was given that chance. However, he showed his talent one final time by coming out and leading the NFL in CPOE as a 38 year old on the horrendous 2017 New York Jets, carrying the worst roster in the NFL to a five win record, in a way I've seen few teams carried before.
So, when Josh says this 2006 Detroit QB room is unique and special, I believe I understand what he's talking about. I'm not exactly sure what he meant when he said it, but I would also describe it as, at the very least, an odd confluence of the careers of two QBs whose time on the field ended with results lagging far behind their talents, in my opinion.
At least by QB rating, Marino sort of opened people's eyes about what was possible for a rookie quarterback. He was expected to be redshirted because there wasn't the precedent of himself, but I guess Shula saw what he saw in practice, and Woodley had barely been able to able to get a first down in the second half of the previous January's Super Bowl. But benching a Super Bowl quarterback does give the case interesting context for current fans who have never cracked open a history book.
MVP Randall Cunningham being benched for a broken-arm McMahon in the playoffs after 1990 is certainly one that stands out to me, and shows how benchings were routinely done then to send the QB a message, or give the team a spark. Perhaps there was some racism in this case. McMahon was seen as "the winner," although Cunningham was the player.
I got a kick out of the Ken Zampese references. Ernie Zampese (Ken's father?) seems to have always gotten almost Shanahan-like credit for your favorite, Jim Everett. I'm sure this was not lost on you when you wrote about Ken. He was supposed to have an offenive system that conferred advantages, I gather.
Postscript -- I see Montana was the MVP in 1990, with Cunningham 2nd. But I can't exaggerate how big Cunningham was at that time, and what that move would be the equivalent of today. We looked upon Cunningham's passing/running combo almost like Ohtani and 50-50.
Randall Cunningham is an interesting case. It's a lot like the Notes I posted last week, speculating as to the exact value of QB rushing. It's just hard to tell. In terms of on-field performance, this is almost exactly equal to Jayden Daniels getting benched in a playoff game today, although the connotation (with Jayden being a rookie, and not being given MVP votes for roughly equal statistical performance to Randall in 1990) would be slightly different.
It's just hard to tell what's going on with Randall's career in Philadelphia, mostly because his sack rate numbers from his entire Philadelphia career make him look like a really really bad passer in every season except 1990. I'm not sure if you read those Notes on scrambling I posted or not, but the gist of them is that negative yardage QB rushing attempts get tallied as sacks, which means all the bad rushes mistakenly get counted as passing numbers, which likely means that people like Randall Cunningham, Michael Vick, Jayden Daniels, etc., are not as bad as passers as they seem, but likely not as good at rushing as the stats make it look either.
If you include both passing and rushing together, Randall jumps from about the 11th best per play QB in 1990 on great volume, to the 7th best per play QB in 1990 on great volume. This is a top five player for sure, but I'm still not sure about a second place MVP finisher. Seeing a QB rush like this probably felt like watching Shohei Ohtani at the time, but now that it's become a lot more common, it's a lot easier to conceptualise Randall Cunningham as a player today than it was then.
Funnily enough, including both passing and rushing turns on Randall in 1998, because 1998 is the season where Steve Young put up some of the most rushing value in his career, at a point in time where Randall was putting up basically none. It's basically accepted canon at this point that Randall was the best QB in 1998, but I'm not sure about that personally, because (ironically) the lack of focus on rushing value comes to his defence in a big way.
As far as Ernie Zampese, OC performance is hard to evaluate, unless it's a case like Joe Lombardi in the modern game, where offence gets better as soon as he goes somewhere, without fail, for his entire career so far. Ernie is a bit different. It always seemed like he would have a few great years in places, at which point things would go South, and then he would leave and do the same thing someplace else.
This happened in LA, where Jim Everett was a top QB for several years, but absolutely awful in 1993, at which point he and Ernie Zampese and everybody else held over from the 80s was finally kicked out of town. Then, it happened in Dallas, where Troy Aikman kept right on playing like Troy Aikman for the first few years Ernie was there, but then in 1996 the offence went South, and in 1997 it went extremely South. Then he goes to New England and does the exact same thing. 1998 is great. 1999 is bad, and then it's over for him as a full-time OC.
So as far as he goes, it's tough to say whether he deserves credit for Jim's (or anybody's) success or not. Every team he went to got better when he got there, but every team got better when he left. This is a very odd career path for an offensive co-ordinator, and to be frank, I'm not sure what to make of it.
I hate stories like this, because it's fundamentally about a player who proved he was great, but never got a real chance to show it except this once, but I also love covering ones like this, because I get to talk about how great Jon Kitna was, particularly to an audience that may never have thought of Jon as being that great of a player.
I don't remember 2003 NFL as much as 04 and 05. To me Kitna was the guy Steelers felt good about in the 2005 Playoffs when they injured Carson Palmer early.
The 05 Bengals won the division and beat the Steelers in a Reg season game at Heinz field, TJ Housh using a terrible towel to polish his cleats in front of cameras.
But why do you think you remember 2004 and 2005 so well? 2003 was the perfect setup to everything that was coming. The Patriots became a real team, more than just the total fluke Super Bowl in 2001. The Chiefs became real players. Peyton Manning burst onto the scene as the league's best QB for the first time. The Cincinnati Bengals finally turned the corner, and the 2003 Baltimore Ravens actually were what everybody remembers the 2000 Ravens (whose offence was not that bad) being. The Steelers being legitimately bad for the only time anyone can remember put them in position to draft Ben Roethlisberger, and etc..
As far as the 2005 playoff game, it's weird to me that everybody remembers that perception more than they remember how well Jon Kitna actually played in the game, because how Jon played against Pittsburgh is better than any QB played against them in the eight game win streak that culminated in their winning the championship.
Once TJ shined his shoes at Heinz field, the 2005 Steelers never lost again. Not only that, but they didn't allow anybody to generate positive EPA/Play on them after that. Nobody except Jon Kitna. Jon only got to 0.055, which isn't great, but Peyton Manning in round two was negative. Jake Plummer in round three? Negative. Matt Hasselbeck in the Super Bowl? Negative. Jon Kitna was the only man to not be negative against this team, after throwing just 29 mop up passes over the course of the whole year.
It's an impressive performance when you put it in its proper context. He did not come close to winning, but that's strictly because Ben Roethlisberger played one of the best playoff games of all time on the other side, on the same day. If Ben would've played the way he did the following week in Indianapolis, he would've been beaten by Jon Kitna, and then I wonder how much we'd hear about how the Steelers felt good about playing him.
I have a suggestion: Use Youtube links to show specific plays you talk about. You can link to specific places in YouTube videos. One easy way is Just make a time stamp in the comment section like 34:16 , Then refresh and that time will be a hyperlink to that video at that time.
It would make these so much better. " Then this happens (hyperlink) ..... and just like that Kitna has pulled the Bengals within 7".
I remember on a blogspot and other blog websites all YouTube links became smaller versions interrupting the text. On a computer You could click to open in a new window or hit the full screen button. I never used phone on Xs and Os blog articles (until substack) so I don't know how it will work here.
You could even edit your old work to make it way more exciting. Your new work will be more fun watching the games and writing down time stamp. Not just box score play by play. Watch it first , be entertained, look up play by play later.
If u go more recent, remember that my channel has a thorough archive of 2012-2016. Ill be adding 2017,2018 to it post draft. My archive goes to present that doesn't mean it can be posted without being blocked. The one thing is I delete all games that arent close and exciting since Ill never want to watch it years later. That stil leaves 50-60 good games a year.
"His year 2012 Alfred morris" is a worthwhile project. A forgotten rushing title. 2012 was a great season with all the Read Option unleashing Running backs due to one unblocked defender being optioned off by the QBs decision to keep the ball and run outside or hand off to RB running inside.
Unblocked defender starts staying wide to prevent RG3, Cam newton, Russel Wilson, Kaepernich from gaining 20 yards...So now the RB now has 5OL and 1TE blocking only 3 DL and 2 LBs. RB is getting to the 2nd level LBs full speed and he's got 1-2 free OL along for the ride
I can't believe you've brought the 2012 season up. I've already talked about my preferred candidate in the 2012 rushing race: https://sportspassion.substack.com/p/his-year-cj-spiller-2012, but Alfred Morris is absolutely a worthwhile chat also. Perhaps his (and CJ's) 2012 would be more remembered were it not in the same league as Adrian Peterson's 2000. Sometimes that's the way it goes.
As far as the hyperlink thing, I would love to do it, and I will make an earnest effort if ever I get back closer to the present. I wanted to include some plays when talking about Paul Justin, to show just how much of a rocket his arm was, but most of his games are not on YouTube. I suppose nobody cared to archive Paul Justin. I promise that I will make a real try at doing the hyperlink thing soon.
I do watch most of the games for the players I write about. The important ones that is. When I expand more on a game, you can almost be certain that I've watched the half of the game (almost always the offensive half) that our player of choice is involved in. I'm just not a fantastic play by play announcer, so it comes across like I'm reading play by play a lot of the time. The YouTube ones are a lot easier, but occasionally I will go through the process of paying NFL Films for the right to watch some old game that I can't find anywhere else.
I do plan to use your channel my friend. It just has to come up that I'm more recent than 2012, which regretfully is a place I don't hang out very often, as my favourite era of the NFL is 1996-2010 (can you tell?). I will get there though. I'll try my best.
Theres plenty of 2000-2010 games on Youtube. Too much in my opinion, 😆! Uploaders don't just put up good games they share every non competitive clunker they got their hands on. Sometimes its VHS sourced, ugh.
I guess watching your old good or great team u feel nostalgic for pummel another is fun for folks especially if they dont have title run games to rewatch.
Ernie Zampese was vaunted before coming to LA and working with Everett, is my impression. It is natural that the magic fades with a coach with time; it is a profession of innovation after all.
I sort of would put Cunningham, 1990, with Elway, 1987, as times when these super hyped, super physically talented players actually delivered early in their careers, maybe getting the help around them to improve their stats. I understand that Elway didn't have nearly the speed or running effectiveness that Cunningham had, and Cunningham probably didn't have the arm strength that Elway did. But they were both super exciting.
I don't have the endless interest you have in just how everyone rates, and I am sure the coaches did not. What is interesting about Cunningham being pulled in a 1990 playoff game was that he wasn't a rookie.
I do agree with you that NFL teams should approach the quarterback job like teams do every other job in sports, remaining flexible and week to week about who the starter is, rather than making it this job that comes with all of these special prerogatives, including unfathomable job security once someone is tapped as "the dude."
This, in my mind, is a 21st-century phenomenon, to separate a starting quarterback so far above his competition. And to give you some perspective, the reason that saying about quarterbacks started is because teams actually used to spin it as POSITIVE that they had two quarterbacks. Look at the Raiders, and how they would alternate among Lamonica, Stabler, and Blanda. Of course, look at the Rams, with their Hall of Famers Waterfield and Van Brocklin. Terry Bradshaw would be benched for Joe Gilliam if it came to that. In my youth, Dallas was really good, but the fans really wanted Gary Hogeboom and not Danny White, and sometimes they got what they wanted.
But Waterfield and Van Brocklin aside, it generally was a bit of a euphemism that teams would present not being settled on the starter as a positive. And critics saw through this, and that's how that saying started. John Madden talked about it. The key thing is that he had to explain why having two quartebacks was usually a euphemism, though. It wasn't always obvious to everyone, or voiced.
If Kitna had fallen on his face, I guess Palmer would have come in, but the historical narrative has always been that Palmer was essentially redshirted. That the fix was in, and for his development, for his own good, he wasn't going to play, even if he was the better player. As you know, it's a famous situation, and the Bengals basically remain lauded for their discipline.
I was in Michigan during Kitna's Detroit years. When I heard him interviewed at that time, he really grabbed me, and along with Matt Hasselbeck and Peyton Manning, I thought he was the most charismatic and the best natural leader among quarterbacks. I remember hearing Josh McCown interviewed, who for one season was Kitna's backup, and he said that their quarterback room was a one-in-a-thousand thing of special guys and talents. Even at the time, and before it became quite clear Detroit was not going to have that long-promised breakthrough, I said, "Huh." Because I sure didn't see things like that at all, at least in terms of their talent.
Not sure who the third guy was. It was before Orlovsky. Might it have been J. T. O'Sullivan? He's gone on to high popularity with his film breakdowns. Am operating on the premise that McCown wasn't full of it, and he is certainly extremely well regarded as a football mind, although the preferential treatment he was supposed to have gotten in Houston, and then the Bryce Young situation, has taken the bloom off the rose.
We agree on this David. Rookies are pushed into the starting job much too quickly most of the time, based on the mistaken belief that having them play really badly for a season somehow helps. It happened to Dan Fouts in 1973. It happened to Caleb Williams in 2024, and teams still have not learned this lesson. I'm honestly not sure what the deal is. There's all the data in the world our there, all of it suggesting that playing a QB in his rookie season truly neither hurts nor hinders his development. Therefore, the decision to play a QB in his rookie year (in my opinion) should come down to a true competition, which more often than not a rookie QB would lose, if we're being objective about it, which as we know, most teams are not.
But, to be perfectly fair to the teams who rushed the QBs in too early, taking as given that I'm strictly playing devil's advocate here, it really isn't that hard to 'redshirt' a first overall pick QB, when Jon Kitna is ranking seventh in EPA/Play. Think about it this way. If David Woodley in 1983 had put up a six flat ANY/A, the way Jon Kitna did in 2003, I'm sure Dan Marino would've 'redshirted' as well, and then Dan's 1984 would've still happened, and the Dolphins would've been lauded for their discipline.
This would be incorrect, as it would have nothing to do with the discipline of the Dolphins, and everything to do with the increased abilities of David Woodley. I think the same is true here. If Jon in 2003 had put up an ANY/A of 3.31, like David Woodley in 1983, I have no doubts we would've seen Carson Palmer at some point, probably beginning with Arizona in week nine. It would've still required a good level of discipline to get Carson even this far without putting him into the real games. Don't get me wrong on that, but I don't think Carson not playing for his whole rookie season is down to discipline on the Bengals' part. I think it's got more to do with how Jon Kitna was turning the whole team around, ending the Bungles era in the process, and they didn't want to interrupt that.
In short, I think this Palmer situation had more to do with the Bengals' extraordinary circumstances than anything else. It's almost impossible to get the first overall pick with a QB as good as 2002 Jon Kitna. It hasn't happened since, but it happened here. It's almost impossible to have QB play as bad over an extended period as 1998-2002 Cincinnati, but it happened here. Those two statements sound contradictory, but 2002 Jon Kitna being uniquely good for a QB of a first overall pick roster does not make him great.
When this team ('this' being the operative word) got a good thing going, they were in a position where they were likely uniquely averse to changing anything, for fear of screwing it up. They hadn't had a top ten QB since 1989. They hadn't had a good team since 1990. They hadn't had an even passable team since 1996. If you were the head of the Bengals, looking back on all that history, now that you've finally got a good thing going with Jon Kitna, would you want to be the one that pulls the plug on it to put in a rookie?
Cincinnati deserves credit for not just closing their eyes and inserting Carson week one, regardless of quality of play, like Chicago did with Caleb Williams this year, but I personally don't know how much their discipline deserves lauding once the season actually began. When you have a QB ranked in the top ten in EPA/Play, how hard is it to decide to leave him in the starting role? It doesn't sound that hard to me. I know teams have messed this up in the past (Carolina ditching Sam Darnold to bring in Bryce Young springs immediately to mind), but most teams would've been able to get this right, I feel.
I also think you're right about the job security thing. I'm not sure why starting QBs are so sticky these days, and difficult to move. I often wonder when this changed, because when I wrote about Paul Justin a couple months ago, the old QB culture was still alive and well. Jim Harbaugh had been one of the NFL's best QBs in 1995, but his backup still got to touch the ball almost 300 times through the course of 1996 and 1997. There's no chance that would happen today, and I think those mid-late 90s Colts might have been the last team where the QB switch button was pushed on a regular basis.
Maybe the 49ers' desperate (and futile) attempts to replace Jeff Garcia in 1999 and 2000 count, but Jeff was not the entrenched starter that he would become at that point, so I'm not sure if it's still the same thing, and I can't find any instances of QB hot potato any later than that. Compare this to somebody like Dan Fouts, who spent his first several years bouncing in and out of the starting position, due to both injury and performance reasons at different points. It didn't seem to hurt him that bad.
So yes. We agree. The job security enjoyed by even really bad players at the QB position is odd to me, and I don't think it's justifiable.
As for the Detroit thing, the 2006 Detroit Lions are a very interesting case. I said Jon Kitna played like a top ten QB that year, despite being a negative EPA/Play QB on a 3-13 team with a bad offence. How can this be? It begins with the fact that the 2006 Detroit Lions are one of the worst rushing offences of all time, with their 1129 rushing yards as a team for a whole season, 3.7 Y/C, and -0.242 EPA/Rush. These are all absolutely horrendous numbers. To Detroit's credit, they more or less dispensed with trying to run the ball altogether, finishing 2006 with the 32nd most rush attempts, and making Jon Kitna just the 11th football player ever to touch the football 700 times in a season or more.
At this point, it gets into the QB volume discussion we were having a while back. Would you rather a man who touches the ball 720 times, as the 18th best per-play QB in the NFL (2006 Jon Kitna), or the man who touches the ball 520 times, as the tenth best per-play QB in the NFL (2006 Steve McNair)? Honestly, it's tough to say, as would Steve McNair have been a top ten per-play QB having to drop back to pass better than 700 times, on the 2006 Detroit Lions? Almost certainly not, but it's hard to tell how good Jon Kitna would've been if we could take some of the harder plays off his plate.
It's just a fun coincidence to me that Josh McCown was there too, as he's another guy we talk about a lot on this publication. There's a popular phrase, that you can bury talent, but you can't kill it, and I think these two guys are two of the foremost examples of that in the new millennium at the QB position. Jon Kitna should've been given a real chance at starting somewhere, never really was, but showed what he had (even at 38) in a big way on the 2010 Dallas Cowboys. Josh McCown is very similar. He also should've been given a a chance to be the starting QB for a playoff calibre team, but never really was given that chance. However, he showed his talent one final time by coming out and leading the NFL in CPOE as a 38 year old on the horrendous 2017 New York Jets, carrying the worst roster in the NFL to a five win record, in a way I've seen few teams carried before.
So, when Josh says this 2006 Detroit QB room is unique and special, I believe I understand what he's talking about. I'm not exactly sure what he meant when he said it, but I would also describe it as, at the very least, an odd confluence of the careers of two QBs whose time on the field ended with results lagging far behind their talents, in my opinion.
At least by QB rating, Marino sort of opened people's eyes about what was possible for a rookie quarterback. He was expected to be redshirted because there wasn't the precedent of himself, but I guess Shula saw what he saw in practice, and Woodley had barely been able to able to get a first down in the second half of the previous January's Super Bowl. But benching a Super Bowl quarterback does give the case interesting context for current fans who have never cracked open a history book.
MVP Randall Cunningham being benched for a broken-arm McMahon in the playoffs after 1990 is certainly one that stands out to me, and shows how benchings were routinely done then to send the QB a message, or give the team a spark. Perhaps there was some racism in this case. McMahon was seen as "the winner," although Cunningham was the player.
I got a kick out of the Ken Zampese references. Ernie Zampese (Ken's father?) seems to have always gotten almost Shanahan-like credit for your favorite, Jim Everett. I'm sure this was not lost on you when you wrote about Ken. He was supposed to have an offenive system that conferred advantages, I gather.
Postscript -- I see Montana was the MVP in 1990, with Cunningham 2nd. But I can't exaggerate how big Cunningham was at that time, and what that move would be the equivalent of today. We looked upon Cunningham's passing/running combo almost like Ohtani and 50-50.
Randall Cunningham is an interesting case. It's a lot like the Notes I posted last week, speculating as to the exact value of QB rushing. It's just hard to tell. In terms of on-field performance, this is almost exactly equal to Jayden Daniels getting benched in a playoff game today, although the connotation (with Jayden being a rookie, and not being given MVP votes for roughly equal statistical performance to Randall in 1990) would be slightly different.
It's just hard to tell what's going on with Randall's career in Philadelphia, mostly because his sack rate numbers from his entire Philadelphia career make him look like a really really bad passer in every season except 1990. I'm not sure if you read those Notes on scrambling I posted or not, but the gist of them is that negative yardage QB rushing attempts get tallied as sacks, which means all the bad rushes mistakenly get counted as passing numbers, which likely means that people like Randall Cunningham, Michael Vick, Jayden Daniels, etc., are not as bad as passers as they seem, but likely not as good at rushing as the stats make it look either.
If you include both passing and rushing together, Randall jumps from about the 11th best per play QB in 1990 on great volume, to the 7th best per play QB in 1990 on great volume. This is a top five player for sure, but I'm still not sure about a second place MVP finisher. Seeing a QB rush like this probably felt like watching Shohei Ohtani at the time, but now that it's become a lot more common, it's a lot easier to conceptualise Randall Cunningham as a player today than it was then.
Funnily enough, including both passing and rushing turns on Randall in 1998, because 1998 is the season where Steve Young put up some of the most rushing value in his career, at a point in time where Randall was putting up basically none. It's basically accepted canon at this point that Randall was the best QB in 1998, but I'm not sure about that personally, because (ironically) the lack of focus on rushing value comes to his defence in a big way.
As far as Ernie Zampese, OC performance is hard to evaluate, unless it's a case like Joe Lombardi in the modern game, where offence gets better as soon as he goes somewhere, without fail, for his entire career so far. Ernie is a bit different. It always seemed like he would have a few great years in places, at which point things would go South, and then he would leave and do the same thing someplace else.
This happened in LA, where Jim Everett was a top QB for several years, but absolutely awful in 1993, at which point he and Ernie Zampese and everybody else held over from the 80s was finally kicked out of town. Then, it happened in Dallas, where Troy Aikman kept right on playing like Troy Aikman for the first few years Ernie was there, but then in 1996 the offence went South, and in 1997 it went extremely South. Then he goes to New England and does the exact same thing. 1998 is great. 1999 is bad, and then it's over for him as a full-time OC.
So as far as he goes, it's tough to say whether he deserves credit for Jim's (or anybody's) success or not. Every team he went to got better when he got there, but every team got better when he left. This is a very odd career path for an offensive co-ordinator, and to be frank, I'm not sure what to make of it.
awesome article sir
Thank you very much my friend.
I hate stories like this, because it's fundamentally about a player who proved he was great, but never got a real chance to show it except this once, but I also love covering ones like this, because I get to talk about how great Jon Kitna was, particularly to an audience that may never have thought of Jon as being that great of a player.
facts
I don't remember 2003 NFL as much as 04 and 05. To me Kitna was the guy Steelers felt good about in the 2005 Playoffs when they injured Carson Palmer early.
The 05 Bengals won the division and beat the Steelers in a Reg season game at Heinz field, TJ Housh using a terrible towel to polish his cleats in front of cameras.
But why do you think you remember 2004 and 2005 so well? 2003 was the perfect setup to everything that was coming. The Patriots became a real team, more than just the total fluke Super Bowl in 2001. The Chiefs became real players. Peyton Manning burst onto the scene as the league's best QB for the first time. The Cincinnati Bengals finally turned the corner, and the 2003 Baltimore Ravens actually were what everybody remembers the 2000 Ravens (whose offence was not that bad) being. The Steelers being legitimately bad for the only time anyone can remember put them in position to draft Ben Roethlisberger, and etc..
As far as the 2005 playoff game, it's weird to me that everybody remembers that perception more than they remember how well Jon Kitna actually played in the game, because how Jon played against Pittsburgh is better than any QB played against them in the eight game win streak that culminated in their winning the championship.
Once TJ shined his shoes at Heinz field, the 2005 Steelers never lost again. Not only that, but they didn't allow anybody to generate positive EPA/Play on them after that. Nobody except Jon Kitna. Jon only got to 0.055, which isn't great, but Peyton Manning in round two was negative. Jake Plummer in round three? Negative. Matt Hasselbeck in the Super Bowl? Negative. Jon Kitna was the only man to not be negative against this team, after throwing just 29 mop up passes over the course of the whole year.
It's an impressive performance when you put it in its proper context. He did not come close to winning, but that's strictly because Ben Roethlisberger played one of the best playoff games of all time on the other side, on the same day. If Ben would've played the way he did the following week in Indianapolis, he would've been beaten by Jon Kitna, and then I wonder how much we'd hear about how the Steelers felt good about playing him.
I think I just remember 05 for personal reasons lol. Like needing a distraction whereas 03 was a good year for me lol.