Mary Kay Cabot has even Adam Shefter talking about showcasing Johnny Manziel for a trade. Larry Brown brought this to my attention.
Shefter guesses a conditional fourth round pick from Dallas.
I hope this is Mary Kay just spitballing, since unless Johnny plays worse than he has been playing, that would be idiotic.
Larry thinks that Johnny will have to win a couple games and be awesome in general to stick around. I can't imagine why.
This is a second year quarterback with about five games under his belt. No rational GM would set that high of a standard for any quarterback with Johnny's history and experience.
Talk about standards, if they expect this guy to be a monk for the rest of his life, he should ask to be traded!
If Johnny plays well with the supporting cast he has (a huge challenge), why else would they trade him for a fourth round pick? Could that be it? They're afraid that sometime in January or February he'll get caught having fun again? If so, I quite understand, since almost everybody sits at a bar occasionally, and they know how they would feel in his position.
I've been tracking Terrelle Pryor's status as well as I can, along with the coach's comments.
Brian Hartline practiced yesterday. Benjamin, Gabriel, Bowe, and Hawkins did not. Marlon Moore was limited, and I guess Jennings is there and ok. There is some hope for a couple of the other guys, but it still seems unavoidable that Terelle Pryor will be active.
What I'm afraid of is that Grover Pettinenheimer will keep him on the bench for the whole game.
Maybe not, though. And I predict that if he plays, Johnny Manziel will find him, just like he found Mike Evans in college.
Imagine yourself as a 5'10" cornerback trying to cover this guy. If you try to bump him, you'll bounce off and you won't catch up to him. You have to hang back and stay ahead of him.
He's almost uncoverable. Right now. I remember Dave Logan with the Kardiac Kids. Brian Sipe sometimes didn't even see him, but threw a high, arcing bomb to where he was supposed to be.
Logan was kind of slow, so by the time the ball reached him, he was usually surrounded by defenders.
It didn't matter. They couldn't knock him off-course, and couldn't out-reach him. He usually didn't even have to leave the ground, and got a few more yards before they could take him down.
Johnny is (in reality) two inches taller than Sipe, and has a much stronger arm. Pryor is an inch taller, twenty pounds heavier, and much, much faster than converted basketball player Dave Logan.
The combination of Barnidge and Pryor could cause some real coverage problems, something like Winslow and Edwards.
You can't put two people on both of them, and you can't trust a linebacker to cover Barnidge for more than a couple seconds.
The 49ers might well blitze over left guard, since they know that almost every single run will go to that side like always. Some of their key passrushers are injured.
If Benjamin can play, using Pryor and Hartline outside could present a real NFL-type offense, and get Johnson and or Benjamin into the slot where they'd be much more effective.
What's that Terrelle Pryor playing more than one or two plays? I must be insane, right?
Listen to me: NONE of the other quarterbacks who attempted to switch to receiver were as gifted as Terrelle Pryor, ok? I know that most of them failed.
Tim Couch's favorite target, Kevin Johnson, switched from quarterback to wr as a college sophomore, and led the Browns in receiving, and I think went over 1,000 yards.
That guy had great hands, but nowhere near the size or speed of Pryor.
Pryor knows DeFillipo's offense because he ran it. As a receiver, he will know where to go, whatever the defense does.
He's been practicing all the routes, getting at least eight times the reps he would have gotten had he been on a team. He's had months to process what he learned about hand-fighting, leverage, and dirty tricks from the coaches and other receivers.
Like Johnny, he can't yet be near his potential, but I'll bet he can play, right tf now.
Who else in the NFL is like him? Well if you said Josh Gordon, you're mostly wrong. He's around two inches taller, 10-15 lbs heavier, and much faster out of the blocks.
Calvin Johnson. And look at Megatron's biggest plays. He runs down the field, ignoring the little terrier running with him. He looks up and back. He catches the ball. Quit telling me Terrelle Pryor can't do that, or even that it matters if the defense knows it's coming.
Maybe the 49ers would think like that, and try to single cover him. Johnny and Terrelle would really like that! Decoy, huh?
If only Mike can see it. I'll bet Flip does. I'll bet he's trying to get the old blockhead to actually let him play.
Probably, the 49ers, whose lately-formidable pass rush has been dented by injuries, will blitze over left guard, since they know that if they succeed, they'll blow up any run since, as we know, that's the only side they ever run to.
That's the formula for every Browns opponent. Penetrate between center and left tackle.
But with Johnny, they have to contain him with pressure from the strong side as well. That will be an outside linebacker trying to out-quick Scwartze. But he can't get too deep and open a gap, and the DE on that side can't get out of his lane.
If it's done right, you'll see Johnny scrambling some, but mostly backwards and to his left. If he has room to his right, he can buy himself way too much time to find somebody.
Rather than keeping Crowell or Johnson in to protect (if they don't go to a slot), I hope Flip sends them to the flat behind that left outside linebacker.
IF Pryor is on the field, he should be the x receiver, usually to Johnny's left. That would put Hartline to the right. Hartline usually gets press coverage, meaning that cornerback turns to run with him. He's not worried about getting outraced.
If an inside backer is blitzing, then the other has Barnidge to worry about. The strong or shallow safety has to track Manziel himself, if not Barnidge (and let the linebacker watch Manziel AND the backs. This leaves one safety to watch everything else.)
Well I'm getting into the weeds here. The dumpoff is a good safe way to burn that type of blitze, and can be executed in one second.
From the latest injury report, only Hawkins didn't practice. Everybody else listed was limited, which might be partly precautionary.
Benjamin should play. I would put Pryor at x opposite the top cornerback, Hartline opposite vs the second best, and Benjamin in the slot, or else Johnson there out of an apparent 2-back huddle. The former dictates a nickel, the latter a base defense in which they have to put a safety on Johnson.
Most coaches being presumptive blockheads, they'll trust their number one cornerback to take care of the clueless rookie x-receiver and number two to cover Hartline. The guy they'll sweat the most about will be the slot guy, and the high safety will need to hang back in center field and mirror him.
Pryor might be contained mostly, but can take his corner deep and away from scrimmage most of the time, and if he slants can challenge the deep safety.
Here's the deal: A healthy Joe Haden type can often neutralize a much bigger and even faster receiver by anticipating the cuts he needs to make and putting himself in the way.
But not longer than about 4 seconds. One of the reasons Haden got burned so much was because quarterbacks had too much time. Several of those burns were "come-backs". All veteran (and former quarterback) receivers break off their routes and run towards the quarterback after around four seconds if the ball isn't already in the air.
This is literally impossible to cover. No human being can stop and reverse directions fast enough to keep up with a wide receiver who does the same. He always loses at least two or three steps.
Well, when Johnny does buy himself a couple more seconds, Pryor is probably the first guy he'll look for, because in four seconds he can be 35 yards downfield.
It's a little more complicated, of course. The receiver won't just keep running back to the quarterback, but once he has separation will run parallel to the quarterback if possible. This makes an accurate throw much easier, preserves the yardage, and gives the receiver a chance to run with the ball.
Two of Johnny's huge passes to Benjamin happened just this way--on scrambles. A number of Barnidge catches from every quarterback happened this way too, and a few to Hartline.
That's been frustrating. This is a timing offense in which the quarterback is supposed to throw within 2.6 seconds. This doesn't happen often enough. All the quarterbacks hold the ball too long.
If it was just the young guys, I'd blame them, but because it happened with McCown too, it's more likely the receivers not getting open, or getting knocked off their routes.
Easy to understand, since except for Hartline and Barnidge (love you man!) they're all smurfs...so...
Will Pryor get his chance?
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