Originally posted by genus49:
Good post. I understand where you're coming from BUT to play devil's advocate I would say I hope we don't see it that often because I hope we don't NEED to see it often.
Basically you want the peace of mind knowing that if things are falling apart that Jimmy can air it out and get us the W. That's certainly fair, everyone wants that peace of mind knowing their QB can get the W at the end. But if the team is playing good enough to not need those big passes to win then I have no issues with it.
And the fact that we have seen the throw to Kittle, the throw to Sanders vs the Rams certainly has given us enough glipses that he can get it done. Cuz you can pick ANY QB in the sport and regardless of who they are there have been games where they had the ball late with a chance to win the game/close the game out and they failed to make the play to do it.
That's exactly what I've been saying. The best way to win is NOT get behind. Pretty simple. But there are those times when your team will be behind late. We saw it against the Chiefs and we saw it at NO last year. We lost the SB but we won the NO game. How? Not from a great pass into the end zone to win the game. Not from a great throw 35 yards downfield along the sideline. It was a 3 yard pass from Jimmy that Kittle turned into a 38 yard gain woth one of the great efforts you'll ever see from a tight end. Then had 15 yards tacked on for a facemask penalty which set up a short FG to win. Yes we won that game but what if Kittle doesn't break all those tackles. What if there isn't a 15 yard penalty. That would leave 50 yards for Jimmy to make up with his arm and there was less than a minute. That's the situation where the big flashy play is often needed in games. I see them every week from more than one team.
The team might get better at those throws if they worked on them more. Right now there are 2 issues. Jimmy doesn't throw them enough to get a good feel for his receivers and the O line is so used to blocking for 2.5 seconds with the short game that they have a little trouble blocking for a deep pass. I don't think it's that the receivers aren't good enough. Aiyuk can get deep and so can Kittle. They just need to get them and Jimmy on the same page like that deep pass to Aiyuk last week. He was wide open and the pass drifted over his right shoulder which took him out of bounds. If the ball is thrown over his left shoulder he had a good chance of taking it in for a TD. It's a small correction that can only improve if they work on it.
