2014 NFL Season

[Berober]

Sexy Rexy, Plubby! Sexy Rexy!

[SeanDMan]

go easy on the cumslinger Plubby.

[DYSI]

Wow, the Browns took rookie hazing to the next level.

[Meacon Keaton]

That's awful. No person should suffer that.

[Lint]

[Thrilla]

Is it just the Jags/Bears tonight?

[Meacon Keaton]

Yeah, just the one game tonight.

[Dan]

I hate football. Staying up to 4am to watch a pre-season game

[Maxx]

Dan, when are the Jags going to finish painting their helmets? They must have some lazy equipment managers.

[Dan]

When the bucs alarm goes off

[Plubby]

This Blake is bananas. B-a-n-a-n-a-s.

[Dan]

He's looked good again. Enjoying watching him throw.

[Dan]

The backtracking has already started.

[livid]

Bottles has looked good but let's not pretend Bayless' opinion on him mattered in the first place.

[Meacon Keaton]

Skip doesn't know anything about sports any more.

Also, Bortles went up against Chicago's 2's last night.

[gunnar hendershow]

Lot of guys look like stars in preseason and we never hear from them again.

[Dan]

Oh I'm not basing how Bortles has done on anything Bayless is saying/has said. Quite the opposite, I've watched every play from the first 2 pre-season games myself live and watched the highlights of him multiple times. I'm not getting too excited like I said after week 1, he's playing against backups (he's also playing with backups and third string WRs) and it's pre-season. However he has looked really good in both games which has given me hope that he can become a good NFL QB.

Hopefully will be seeing more of these tweets from more TV guys over the years as a lot of people didn't like the Bortles pick.

You guys didn't have to sit through Gabbert, you don't know what it's like.

[Meacon Keaton]

You guys didn't have to sit through Gabbert, you don't know what it's like.

I sat through Bubby Brister and Brian Griese immediately after having Elway. You know nothing of pain.

[Maxx]

Quincy Carter, Chad Hutchinson, Vinny Testaverde, Drew Henson and Drew Bledsoe's corpse. All of that in about as long of a stretch as Gabbert's career.

[Dan]

At least you had Elway, and now Manning :/

The Worst Quarterback of the DVOA Era

That's better. Blaine Gabbert opened the season as the Jacksonville Jaguars starting quarterback, but he was benched after two interceptions, six sacks, and a 28-2 loss to Kansas City in Week 1. He re-entered the lineup for two more games in Weeks 4 and 5, but after five more interceptions and six more sacks, he injured his hamstring and never saw the field again. That left him with 86 pass attempts and 12 sacks, a total of 98 pass plays that came up just short of the minimum 100 needed to qualify for our season tables and record book.

In that minimal playing time, however, Gabbert produced an awful lot of bad football. He finished with -426 DYAR passing and -8 DYAR rushing, a total of -434 DYAR that would put him ahead of (behind?) Brandon Weeden as the worst quarterback of the year. His final passing DVOA was -83.7%. Only two quarterbacks with at least 98 plays have ever been worse than that: Alex Smith as a rookie on a 2005 49ers team that had even less talent than this year's Jaguars (-88.6%), and Craig Krenzel of the 2004 Chicago Bears. (-85.4%). You know that Smith eventually turned his career around, but Krenzel never played again. (The Bears actually went 3-2 in Krenzel's five starts, and he also won a national championship in college. In other words, Craig Krenzel was Tim Tebow before Tim Tebow was Tim Tebow.)

When you add this to Gabbert's rookie season (-1,010 passing DYAR, the second-worst season we've ever analyzed) and his 2012 campaign (-268 DYAR), you get a total of -1,704 passing DYAR. That sure sounds bad, but can we put into context? Why yes, yes we can. Before this season, Danny Tuccito looked over the worst quarterbacks on record in total DYAR, and found that the only quarterback worse than Gabbert was Ryan Leaf. Well, forget that. Gabbert has fallen deep below the Leaf pile, and stands alone and undisputed as the Worst Quarterback of the DVOA Era. No high-profile bust of the past 25 years -- not Leaf, not JaMarcus Russell, not Akili Smith nor David Carr nor Joey Harrington -- has ever been this bad. Each of those notoriously bad passers looks down at Blaine Gabbert, likely with disdain, or perhaps pity.

One final kick in the teeth to former Jaguars GM Gene Smith: Gabbert was the tenth overall pick of the 2011 NFL draft. The Jaguars traded up to pick him. J.J. Watt was the eleventh pick. Andy Dalton went to Cincinnati 25 picks later, and with the next pick after that, the San Francisco 49ers took Colin Kaepernick. And that is why Gene Smith got fired.