[Baby Lee]

I used to ask in jest why the drafturbators didn't just load up on coverage of the pro bowl QB skills challenge, but more and more it seems like a serious question.

This isn't schtick, or trying to start a fight, but it seems like a contingent is only interested in football insofar as a QB has plenty of time to heave it as far as he can and hope.

The other 21 players on the field are a necessary irrelevancy. The coaches and the trainers and the coordinators and the rest of the roster are window dressing for 'the big show.'

Why put all those bodies at risk just to watch QB highlights? Just work up some smatk targets and develop some drills to test the QB's agility and accuracy. Have those tackling dummies roaming the field for the QB to avoid and target with passes.

There seems to be, in the history of the league, two players that meet their standards. Rodgers can reliably make magic sufficient to eek out some close wins. Elway made chicken salad out of chicken shit in the playoffs a generation ago.

Brady - has always had a competent team around him
Peyton - has had plenty of magic but always fell short when his defense was merely adequate.
Eli - spends a lot of his time as a useless spazz, then the entire team gets on a roll and the defense is fierce.
Romo - plenty of comebacks, nothing of note in the post season
Stafford - plenty of heaves to a big pile of nothing because the rest of the team sucks.
Brees - 1 SB [just like Rodgers] and a long career coming up short because the rest of the team was lacking
Rapelisburger - Occasional great games, but gets carried by his defense in big games. One exception was the one drive against the Cards.
Ryan - plenty of great seasons squandered by a poor surrounding cast. Finally makes it to the big game and squanders the biggest lead in SB history.
Cam - plenty of fireworks, but nothing in the post season unless the D is stout.
Even back to Warner and TGSOT, they had to weather a 10-12 slugfest in the playoffs.

And on and on and on.

Everything positive the team does doesn't matter because it's the regular season. But everything negative the team does ABSOLUTELY matters because it will come back to bite the in the post season.

As much as people like to squawk about a 'QB driven league' postseason success is reliably determined by late-season momentum and roster health. The lone outlier is a big one, the Patriots have a formula for being competitive from the end of preseason to the SB. But even they fell twice to the momentum and health of the Giants.

Forever I've said that 'it's a team game' and people try to twist it into some form of Alex love. But I've also said forever that Alex is merely good enough to win with a competent team. He's not a world saver. He's not an Elway or a Rogers, but few are [just two by my calculations]. His biggest strength ties into his biggest weakness. As Urban Meyer observed before he even left college, if he knows the play he's gonna execute to near perfection, but if he's in unfamiliar territory he's lost. So the key is preparation, comfort and squad health. He's not Miles Davis, but he's Yo-Yo Ma. If you're improvising and drawing shit up in the dirt, he's not worth a lot. If you're playing a symphony, he's capable of playing his part beautifully.

And we can't just sit around and wait for Mahomes to fix everything. I'm high on him, and think he can do very impressive things for us for a long time. But to expect him to cure our dysfunctions with an added spark alone is asking him to SURPASS Rodgers and Elway in game-changing potential. We're no going to be able to continue on with abysmal defense, or heaven forbid let a bunch of talent go as well, and just hope Mahomes magic pulls our collective ass out of the fire. For every thing so see Alex do and think Mahomes can do better, there's going to be in the long run things Alex does that Mahomes isn't ready or equipped to replicate [1/2 a season without an INT, uncanny scrambles, seeing a key matchup, . . . who knows for certain at this point, but they're there].