A coaches perspective of last night’s Cowboys vs Buccaneers game

Let's start with the good. Dak Prescott has made a ton of mistakes over the last seven games. I think seven straight games with at least one interception.

They get 11 in that period. Something about the game or the game plan or maybe the opponent last night snapped him back into the Dak we need to see. That Dallas needs to see if they are going to win a Super Bowl and I think they're good enough to do that. What did you see from Dak? Well, just what you said but at the same time Tampa Bay's defense has proven to be not great.

They're serviceable but not great. That playing Tampa Bay at this particular time was good medicine for Dak. We'll see where it goes from here but he has been uncharacteristically up and down. You know you just never know what's going on behind the scenes and in the building and you know internal pressures and all those kinds of things. I've lived it up close and personal and there's a lot of competing elements that go on with a quarterback performance. It's curious to watch. I know one week ago we saw the Cowboys.

It was an incredibly bad performance. Where does that come from? I've been in it long enough to be on the sidelines and watch it unfold.

I was the guy coaching them going where did that come from? It's just football man. Alright, Tom Brady. I know it's easy to say this but he looked 45 years old last night and there's a very short list of 45 year old quarterbacks that play well. Is it just that they could not block?

They could not keep him upright or were there other things going on? Well, I mean Tampa Bay is not a very good football team. They're just not.

They've got all kinds of issues and it wouldn't really matter. It would matter a little bit if your quarterback was extremely mobile but the offensive line is just not very good. And in the meantime they can't run the football.

Well guess what? So you've got a front four that's lined up in a motorcycle stance every snap. They're not worried about the run. And so the offensive line that's a problem anyway now becomes a real problem because there's no threat of the run. Very little play action.

It's one dimensional. I think he threw the ball 66 times last night. You can win a game doing that but not very often. You know what I know for instance, take Tom Brady and put him with the Dolphins. And you know, I think he's, I think they'd be a threat to go do a lot of damage in the playoffs. I mean that's kind of what you have to, you've got to discuss it in those terms I think.

This is sort of going to get me off track but I'll go back. Is Tom Brady a better quarterback, better option right now than Tua Tungavailo? If I were in the front office and I could make the money work knowing that I'd be introducing a lot of drama into the building and into the football team, I'd take a long hard look at bringing Brady in because you know when those kids start getting banged around particularly with the concussion thing. I mean you just, you're one hit away again from your entire team season. Everybody's career is taking a different trajectory because you don't have a quarterback. And again, all the way back to Bill Walsh, you better have a quarterback or a plan to get one. And you know again, I don't know how you bring Brady in and tell Tua he's still the starter or have a competition.

I don't know how that works. But I just know it's a blood sport. And you know if you go get, well we've got our quarterback and Tua goes in one more concussion, it could be a career ender and it's certainly going to be a month or two before he comes back in anyway. It's just a mess, you know.

And I don't have any answers to it, I really don't. But Tom Brady can still play winning high, high, high level football in my opinion. At his age, can he repeat it? Can he do it week in and week out? Yes, on a good football team he can. For the same reason that Peyton Manning went and won a Super Bowl and couldn't throw a ball any further than I could spit.

And that's the truth. Last year that Peyton Manning played, I was at San Francisco and we went to Denver that year in the preseason and spent a week scrimmaging Denver. You know how you do that thing and all that stuff. And we walked out there against Denver in practice and I'll never forget it. We were doing a 7 on 7 drill and Denver had the ball first. So I'm just standing there, you know, while I'm waiting, you know, I'm coaching the quarterbacks from San Francisco.

I'm standing there waiting for our turn to go. The first pass of that pass skill, Peyton Manning threw a football that bounced five times before it went 15 yards and I'm not exaggerating. And I said, oh my God, what did I just see? Well, he won the Super Bowl. And he bounced passes all season long. And Tom Brady is way, way, way, way, way better than that right now. So yeah, I think, you know, Tom Brady is still a relevant discussion.

Steve Logan is joining us here on the Adam Gold show. A lot of people don't remember that Manning was essentially benched for lack of a better term. I mean, he was injured a lot. He still had dealing with his neck injury. But he was injured a lot that year. And Brock Osweiler played a bunch of those games in the middle of the season and then they brought Manning back toward the end and realized if we just handed off and we let Von Miller in the defense do a lot of the heavy lifting, we might be able to win one.

And they did. All right, let me ask you about I'm going to make this prediction. I think that your favorite quarterback in the NFL is Joe Burrow. I might be wrong about that, but there's something about Joe Burrow that when I watch him, I think of you. Tell me what you think of Joe Burrow. Well, he's that Joe Montana, you know, need a play? Okay, I'll go make a play. You know, he's that Tom Brady back in the day.

And you got to constantly remind yourself and everybody else of this. He's on a good football team. It's a it's a good football team. So you know, he they need a play. Yeah, he can go make a play.

He's got the factor that everybody searches for. And nobody can coach it. But you can sign it, you can recruit it.

And you can write it when you recognize it. And that's what they've got right now. And Joe Burrow and I, I'm telling you right now, he'd be hard to beat. There's some great quarterbacks in the league in the AFC, the three the three best in the AFC might be the best that we have anywhere with Mahomes, Burrow and Allen and they're very, very different players.

I know you used to tell us all the time that you can accuracy is the one thing that you really can't improve, you can improve it to a certain extent, but you can't really go from inaccurate to accurate. What has Josh Allen done? You know what he and I'm glad you brought that up because the moment you made that statement, which I've made a million times, Josh Allen is an absolute outlier relative to what you just said and what I do believe still to this day. You know, that kid was a 50% thrower at Wyoming.

And I watched some of his tape back in the day. And, you know, I watched him get drafted first time and I watched the whole thing. And I'm just telling you, what he has done is absolutely outside of all the numbers and all of the analytics and all of the quarterback coaches, including me. I would never have drafted that young man.

Never. And, you know, he has absolutely done what we're talking about. He comes to the NFL. He's completing, I don't know, 60 whatever percent of his passes.

He's accurate. He's a big game player, you know, big game player. And he is the quintessential Buffalo quarterback. He's big. He's strong. He can play in bad weather. All the things that, you know, you got to have if you're going to coach in Buffalo. He's that guy that Edgar good for them because I mean, I don't 100% missed on him. Yeah, he's but my only fear about him is that and this this might be because they're so talented. They have been playing a lot of games this year like they know they can't lose. And that's a surefire way to get yourself beat. And that is going to be a great game Cincinnati at Buffalo coming up.

I believe that's the was that the that's the first game on Sunday the 3 o'clock Sunday game that is absolutely appointment viewing. All right. I want to ask is really two things. We don't we don't have a lot of time left. We'll see how much we can get to Brock Purdy was the last player selected in the draft. The last Mr. Irrelevant is the fact that he's a rookie is the fact that Brock Purdy lasted until the seventh round.

What does that tell us about how we Scout how the NFL scouts quarterbacks if we have guys taken way early in the draft stink and Brock Purdy drafted last looks great. Wendy's nose cold and soggy fries are the worst so soggy. That's why we're serving up hot and crispy fries all day every day and all night until close with natural cut potatoes sea salted to perfection. Show me that potato ski Wendy's hot and crispy aren't like other fries.

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So I just translate not allowed to have opinions got it quote with Progressive and see if you could save with America's number one motorcycle insurer Progressive Casualty Insurance Company affiliates. Well, there's a couple of things and again Brock Purdy's playing on a really good football team, right? All right, so he's got great support around him, but I'll tell you when I went into the NFL Europe, right?

And I was asked by a general manager whose name you would know I'm not going to repeat it, but I was asked by him. He said Steve, how do you evaluate quarterbacks because they were considering sending one of their quarterbacks to me as a you know, I was going to help develop the young man and I said to the general manager. I said the way that I did that way that I evaluate a quarterback is simply this I watched the film and do the plays work. Do the plays work? And if the plays work, I get interested in the kid. If the plays don't work, I really don't care about his hand size, his 40 yard dash, all that monkey business that we crunch and research and beat to death. The plays don't work. Okay?

And I really held to that mantra. If the plays work, I'll work with that kid and I really felt confident enough that I had a good quarterback friendly system where a young man could flourish. But if the plays don't work, when I'm evaluating a high school quarterback, I'm evaluating a college quarterback.

Okay? For instance, who was the real tall quarterback at Memphis? Oh, well, Paxton Lynch. Paxton Lynch, okay? I was evaluating film San Francisco 49ers and he was a big deal and he's six foot seven and he can throw a BB through a keyhole and all this other monkey business that the scouts come in and tell you. And they came to me and I said, I don't want any part of that guy. And I understand he's got all the metrics. Well, what's wrong with him?

And this was my answer. The plays don't work. And I had broken him down and at the time at Memphis, he was throwing 60% of the passes he threw were bubble screens. Well, those plays worked okay. Anytime he was required to put the football down the football field, a la NFL, it was a hit or miss opportunity every single snap. The plays didn't work.

And, you know, everybody in the room, look, there's crazy Logan. What kind of an evaluation is that? The plays don't work. Well, the plays don't work. And the plays didn't work in the NFL. I was more right than wrong on that one.

And, you know, that's my answer. Steve Logan is one and one. Correct on Paxton Lynch. Incorrect on Josh Allen. A lot of people were incorrect on Josh Allen.

They're supposed to be right there with everybody else. So don't make fun of the way I evaluate. No question. All right. Final thing.

I'm going to try to do this in 60 seconds if you can. If not, I'll live with it. And this begs a much longer conversation. How hard is the transition as a quarterback, no matter where you're drafted? Drafted first overall, second overall, 247th overall. How hard is the transition from college to the NFL? What are the biggest challenges other than the speed of the game?

I think the biggest challenge for a young man, step one, is you have to be intimately, an intimate understanding of past protections. And at the collegiate level, that is not part of the problem. College football is a relatively simple blitz pickup, blitz idea relative to what the NFL can present to a young man. And if you don't understand how to swing your protections back and forth and when to do it and why to do it, you're going to get injured badly.

Really hurt bad, physically hurt. And if you don't start there, you'll never finish anywhere. And that's just that's where I start with a young quarterback is past protections when it comes to the NFL. All right. We have to have a longer conversation about that. Colleges are not supposed to be training NFL quarterbacks. They're supposed to be. And they're not.

Right. And they're not. And they're only supposed to be winning games. And it's up to the NFL to recognize this.

Brock Purdy, I mean, I wonder if he's breaking the whole system by being as good as he appears. And yes, he is on a good team. Steve Logan, I appreciate you always enjoy grandkids and fishing. And I'll talk to you soon. I'll see you, man. You got it.

Steve Logan. Wendy's nose cold and soggy fries are the worst. So soggy. That's why we're serving up hot and crispy fries all day, every day and all night until close. With natural cut potatoes, sea salted to perfection.

Show me that potato skin. Wendy's hot and crispy aren't like other fries. We're your dream fry. Choose wisely. Choose Wendy's hot and crispy fries. Guaranteed to be hot and crispy. If yours aren't bring them back and we'll replace them.