Every once in a while those little floaters will score a td or be a long play. (It always reminds me of a screen pass type throw, yet thrown down the field) But in the NFL many of the times they are an int. (We saw that plenty) Today it was a td. At least he got one, so good for him.
They played within his framework it appeared, which as others stated imo correctly, called plays where captain checkdown was in his element. With Adrian Foster, it does make more sense. But it's awfully hard to be successful long term playing that way. But he's a backup, so the standard doesn't quite apply, as he's not expected to start almost half a season and into the possible playoffs, except when it does like now (or then).
Leinart shows again his body just isn't nfl capable. When the head, arm, and body aren't up to snuff, or at the very best mediocre...sometimes, then you just can't count on him as a quarterback long term.
His shoulder/collarbone is a big weakness for him. I'm starting to wonder besides his brittleness, if he has a problem learning how to fall/be tackled, which only makes such hard landings on his shoulder area to become more frequent than they should be otherwise.
It also just goes to show all of us, that a broken collarbone just like separated shoulders, can be recurring. The old once it's broke it won't break again, doesn't always apply. My guess, and it is that, it broke on a different area of the collar bone that wasn't 'strengthened' and thus instead of breaking where it did before, it broke right next to that area (the strengthened area pushed the stress to another area), where his collarbone was still naturally weak. That is of course, if it was a collarbone as is being tentatively reported. Terry Bradshaw was saying something about his head, so we'll see.
Eventually though, not given the injury, teams would have figured out his playing style again, and account for it. But he could of had a couple of decent games given Arian Foster and Andre Johnson...in theory.
Given Leinart's brittleness, the coaching staff should have probably not IR'ed MS. I thought it was going to be a few more weeks, and if the Colts haven't IR'ed Manning, I would think it would be better to have not IR'ed MS. MS gives you the best shot to win by far, and so even if he can't come back until the playoffs, or even into the playoffs, you have to keep him potentially available. I personally wouldn't have IR'ed him unless I was SURE he couldn't play until sometime into February.
If one was to want Leinart to do good, he sure didn't show anything new in his repertoire, and the things that people were concerned about, showed up again, despite his stats. One might hope that he might of had something new up his sleeve, but maybe one half of football wasn't enough to get that out, if there was one. But the gameplan seemed to be to play to his strengths, so it's kind of hard to do both. Obviously they don't often show plays called back in highlights so I can't judge whether or not that was luck, good play by whoever made it, poor play by the defense, something else, or an actual good play...like a laser strike 35 yards downfield, or the equivalent. If it was another dink play that went long, it wouldn't of changed my mind. Also many plays look good when penalties occur directly because of the penalty, so I don't know if the penalty was directly attributable to the 'goodness' of the play or one of those ones away from the play with no bearing upon it.
It was also the freaking Jaguars, and only one half of football, and one cannot say he would have been 14/20 or 21/30, because lots of times QB's have a drive or two of doing good, only to suck most of the rest of the way...or even vice versa. They didn't even get to do halftime adjustments. As always, his body not being able to make it through one half, has to be counted in the equation of whether or not he is an NFL QB.
Dink and Dunk, floater, injured collarbone/shoulder....sure seems like good ol' matty to me.
But hey I'm sure he felt good throwing that td...so at least he got something out of all that work, however if he is out for the year, it might be his last NFL td. I saw enough in limited viewing to be glad he isn't on this team anymore, and that he isn't considered, our future. Maybe he stays, maybe he can find his way to Seattle, but no man is guaranteed another opportunity...rightly or wrongly. I think Matty's career is now firmly at risk of continuing.
As always, we'll see.
