where the outcome will be a bit different!

i love seeing the patriots lose.

The 49ers might have won a few championships by now if they had picked him. However, I have heard people say they had offensive line problems when they drafted Alex Smith. So, I do not know, maybe they would have won a few, or maybe they would not have won a few.

and had 4 different head coaches and who knows how many different coordinators, like Smith did? I'm not trying to crap on your regret at not taking Rodgers, but sometimes the development path a QB takes has a good bit to do with their success. I think that's why so many first round QB's fail, because they're expected to be "NFL ready" on Day 1 and almost none are.

I've always thought the same thing (bring guys along slowly) and am in complete agreement.

Compare the two players now. Rodgers has a much better touch, more pocket presence, and looks more relaxed and in command. Smith has had ample time, good coaching and solid teams under Harbaugh and Reid in which to exorcise any demons from those awful earlier 49er teams. Yet he still plays just average. I remember the 2005 draft. Rodgers had the better skill set but the report on him was that he needed time to develop and Smith could start right away. Huge mistake by Mike Nolan. He had other options.

were debating about "Johnny Football". In today's game the Russell Wilsons of the world are the anomaly (and I still would say the defense of that team had more to do with the Super Bowl win than Wilson). Rodgers apprenticed under Favre and it shows.

But the Packers defense is what has improved the past few weeks. Shaking it up and moving Clay Matthews has made quite a difference. Packer fans argue up and down about Dom Capers but for now he seems to have found a way to arrange the players that actually works. It is a big day when you beat the Patriots - very exciting!

after Peyton Manning.

7.88 YPA career average, 67 TDs to 24. The defense is great but so is he today. He is far from an anomaly--the league is full of first year starters.

Advanced NFL Analytics(at-the-time stats) looked into it and didn't find a major difference but came to an obvious conclusion--NFL teams should start the best QB they have on roster.

What made Johnny Manziel not NFL ready was he came from a spread offense system that doesn't use a playbook with just a few reads which isn't true for other college quarterbacks. That kind of situation he needed to be brought along more slowly.

2 years - we'll see how he does over the long haul. Personally as a fellow Badger I'd love to see him do that but I think it's too early to call. I do agree they should start the best QB they have on roster. It's very hard however to measure someone just out of the draft vs. a veteran performer.

If he suddenly started dropping off it wasn't because he was rushed in too soon. Most of the current starting QBs in the league are QBs who played their first year in the league.

Here was the study

This is a hard question to answer statistically, particularly because of a problem of bias in the stats. The better QBs would be the ones to earn starting jobs their rookie year, and would also likely tend to be the ones to enjoy successful careers.

The trick is to properly account for underlying QB potential. There’s no perfect way to measure that, but in the end, I think the most reasonable indicator of potential is overall draft pick number. Although it is often an unreliable predictor of career performance for individual QBs, it correlates very well for QBs as a group.

To find out if starting as a rookie harms his career prospects, I first estimated the expected level of success for each QB based on his draft slot. Then I compared the group of starting rookies with the group of non-starting rookies in terms of how much they exceed their expected success. To measure career success, I used Adjusted Yards per Attempt (AdjYPA). This is passing yards minus 45 yards for every interception, per pass attempt. All first- and second-round QBs drafted between 1980 and 2004 were included in this analysis.

<snip>

But this is only one way of looking at whether a QB was a starter or not. What if we draw a line at say, 5 rookie starts — below 5 starts he’s not a rookie starter and above it he is. The group with 5 or less starts averages -0.01 AdjYPA above expected, and the group with 6 or more starts averages +0.3 AdjYPA above expected. If I define it at zero starts, those with no rookie starts averaged -0.03 AdjYPA above expected, while those with at least one start averaged +0.02 above expected. In fact, no matter where I chose the cutoff, from 3 to 13 starts, the group with more starts outperforms the group with fewer starts by about 0.4 AdjYPA.

Does this mean teams should rush their rookies out to face the onslaught of N.F.L. defenses to somehow make them better? I really doubt it. But at the very least, we can say: Given this analysis, there is little reason for a coach to arbitrarily keep a rookie QB on the bench. He should start his best QB, rookie or not, and not worry about incubating him under a ball cap on the sidelines.

http://fifthdown.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/28/statistics-show-theres-no-harm-in-starting-a-rookie-quarterback/?_r=0

The original article at advancednflanalytics was lost due to the site change.

though ...

there are so many team intangibles to consider (o-line pass protection ability, strength of the running game, offensive strategy, opponent strategy, time of possession, receiver talents, etc) that what else can you do but watch how a QB handles himself, adjusts, learns, and leads a team over a finite period?

I was thinking along three years too, Jon. That should be ample time for coaches and team and QB to mesh. I think the jury is still out on Russell Wilson, BTY. Kaepernick too, though the 49ers in general are struggling and that's going to affect him as much as his physical/mental skills or lack thereof.

He sure didn't acquire that from good ol' Brent Favor who would just throw the ball anywhere and either threw an INT or got his receiver killed in the process. Aaron prides himself in his accuracy. AND he IS my #1 boyfriend.

I'm still sort of bitter about Brett as well. I far prefer handsome Aaron

17.6 rating and 32 share -- highest since a 17.6 for Patriots' game at Denver on Dec. 18, 2011, vs. Tim Tebow.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/2014/12/03/patriots-packers-is-highest-rated-game-in-3-years/19842651/