Fantastic write-up.
My feelings on DangeRuss are so mixed that I feel like a flavor at Ben & Jerry's.
Down:
1) A signifigant part of Russell's first year success was due to his preternatural poise and preperation. He was uniquely suited to avoid the pitfalls that usually plague rookies. That advantage will have been removed.
2) He frequently missed open reads last year.
3) His ball placement is consistently only where his receiver can make a play on it. Mostly a pro but the con here is that this occurs on even the straightforward passes. He almost never makes it easy on his receivers. They always have to be at the top of their game.
4) His rookie season was literally historic. One cannot reasobably expect such a sustained pace.
Pro:
Forget everything I just said above. He's Russell Wilson. Just let me believe. ::heart::
.
Take out a #2 pencil, kiddies. One question for all the marbles -- a lifetime 20% discount card and a someday seat in section 323 with Dr. D. Um, next to Dr. D. Um, in the same row as Dr. D.
Russell Wilson spent his first NFL offseason:
- Back in the 'Toe, splashin' the cash
- Becoming an "Unnamed NFL Player" on the blotters
- Holding out for a new deal, and demanding a full 20c on the production dollar
- Getting cornrow'ed and tat'ted up
- Buying a new wife
- Learning how to LOCK his throwing elbow properly when he sticks it out at a linebacker
- Appearing on Japanese game shows that pound you with a giant boxing glove when you get one wrong
- Studying Drew Brees vid
- Studying ALL the Drew Brees vid
Word is that Wilson spent his offseason reviewing every snap Brees has taken, since 2001 (that's twelve years' worth, 6,149 attempted passes, and what ... about 10,000-12,000 plays?)
.
BookUp, Dept.
Obi-wan was challenged, "Can you handle this guy?" To which he confidently responded, in Galaxy Standard British Drawl, "Sith are our spesh-ee-al-i-tee." As a tournament chessplayer, booking up is a process as familiar to me as entrails are to Dr. Grumpy.
Bobby Fischer once walked into a random little chess shop in Yugoslavia. Two guys were going over a game, reading out of an old book. He glanced at the position. "Oh, that's the Rubinstein Nc6 game," he shrugged. A few moves later, the move Nc6 came up ... they were playing an old 1912 game of Akiba Rubinstein's. Rubinstein played hundreds of tournament games, and of course he was one of many classic grandmasters.
.............
It goes without saying that knowledge is power. (I just said it, so write your own Dr. D joke.) But when a chess player "books up," by (say) studying 500 games in two months, there is a danger ... what you have seen on the page isn't NECESSARILY something you can now execute.
"It's not what you KNOW," said International Master Tim Taylor. "It's what you can DO." Lots of players are "booked up fish" who have studied a ton ... and can't assimilate much of it. Ask Dr. G about med school dropouts.
.
Drew Brees
... has been Russell Wilson's model for a long time. This is exciting, because Brees is a short man. Hold it, that came out wrong.
::reboot:: Russell Wilson just watched 6,000 historical chess games (pass plays) executed by a player who is just* as short as he is. What Drew Brees can do against a certain defense, Russell Wilson will be able to do. It's as if Erasmo Ramirez just spent 1,000 hours studying pitch sequences not from Randy Johnson, but from Hisashi Iwakuma and Doug Fister.
Random thought. With $100M contracts at stake, why doesn't everybody do this? You see, Joe Sheehan my friend, there are differences in competitive makeup. Even among pro athletes.
:- )
Brees is also a dropback passer. We don't have to tell you that Blake Beavan would be better off working on his forkball than on the command of his fastball. (We just did: make up your own Dr. D joke.)
In top-flight chess, it is axiomatic that players go from the top 0.01% to the top 0.0001% by focusing on what they cannot yet do. This is always very personalized. It's a custom job for top chess trainers to tear apart a player's game to even find the soft spots in his game.
The fact that Brees' style is dissimilar? To a chess player, that fact is very encouraging.
.
Learning Curve
Redundant phrases:
- "And that's a self-portrait of himself. By himself." - Richard Madeley
- "It's like deja vu, all over again." - Yogi Berra, completely serious, we're sure
- "It looks like a busy weekend on the ferries, especially Saturday and Sunday." - Peter Powell
- "Sometimes you can observe a lot, just by watching." - Yogi again, and don't kid yourself that he was tongue in cheek
- "I don't normally do requests, unless I'm asked to." - Richard Whiteley
- "If we do not succeed, we run the risk of failure." - Dan Quayle, with high gravita
- "Russell, you ended my career on that play." - Brian Urlacher (hold it, how'd this get in here?)
- "Sometimes football is so incredible, it's unbelievable." - Cowboys coach Tom Landry, who was never observed smiling in public
- "There is a tremendous article on Field Gulls." - jemanji
In this particular specific Field Gulls article, Kenneth Arthur points out that Russell Wilson's first 8 games had exactly the same stats as Drew Brees' first 8 games as a rookie. But then, Drew Brees regressed, having a terrible 2nd half of his rookie season ... which of course is totally normal .... while Russell Wilson got wayyyyyyyy, WAY better. (Also Brees had an understudy year in the NFL.)
Could be that Russell Wilson is an unusually quick learner. In chess, if you intersect that natural talent with a huge bookup process, that's when you can get something special.
............
On Field Gulls, they thought something was off about Russell Wilson's timing in the last preseason game. I disagreed on this one.
As a quarterback coming off a huge bookup? Russell Wilson looked like a guy who was processing the action more intensely downfield, and whose timing in avoiding the sack was a little off. IF Wilson's head is crammed with pass routes more so at the point, that would account for his being collared a few times, and crossing himself up a few times.
I was blown away by the quickness of his downfield vision, even on the few drives he was in there. To me Russell Wilson looked wayyy different from 2012. He looked like he had Bad Intentions downfield. He checked off to some hot routes like, in the past tense. Time machine.
Random thought: there was a fun play against Green Bay, twelve or thirteen men out there ... Wilson gets the ball snapped and then, as the play is running!, turns around and starts pointing the formation out to the back judge.
I don't know what Russell Wilson will be, but as a rookie he was a revolutionary quarterback, and I'm looking forward to the next number in this sequence.
Cheers,
Dr D