By TARIQ KENDALL
Staff Writer
We’re about a quarter of the way through the NFL season and it’s come time for teams to evaluate their talent and start making adjustments (or if you’re the Jaguars, just give up). In lo of this league wide evaluation this week’s edition of “Who Ya Got” will be looking at rookie quarterbacks that play for team’s awful front offices. This week, The Chronicle will be pitting the Bills’ EJ Manuel against the Jets’ Geno Smith.
We’ll start in New York, the city that is, where the lights are focused on the jersey of the Miami Born Eugene Cyril Smith III. The man more commonly referred to as Geno Smith has started his career off with a bang. Three games, two wins, over 800 yards passing, a passer rating of 65 and completion percentage that’s second worst in the league. Okay, so everything isn’t perfect in Genoland. To accompany his awful completion percentage is a total QBR of 48 and six interceptions, that’s second only to Eli Manning’s eight.
Yes, at times Smith has been nothing short of brilliant. He’s been able to thread the needle with his passes and march down the field like a seasoned veteran. However, he hasn’t be able to avoid the interception. Smith has given away twice as many passes as he’s been able to score with. If it weren’t for this three picks against the Patriots the Jets might be 3-0, imagine that. Either way Smith has shown his potential, but needs to make better decisions when throwing the ball.
On to EJ Manuel, the future of the Buffalo Bills (they hope). Alright, so the Bills haven’t had much luck at the position of the quarterback since Jim Kelly’s departure. In the past 5 years the Bills have started four different QBs and EJ Manuel is supposed to answer to this riddle. Well, so far Manuel has been solid, not successful, but solid. Manuel has lead the Bills to a 1-2 start, which is last in the AFC East, and has put together okay numbers in the process. 689 yards through the air, 4 touchdowns, and an interception, as I said before, solid. Nothing about his numbers really pop. Yeah, he’s got completion percentage of 59.3, a passer rating of 86.5, and total QBR of 47.4 but those are all middle of the road numbers.
Head-to-Head it looks like the Manuel is better, he’s got more touchdowns, a better completion percentage, a passer rating twenty points higher than Smith’s, oh and he’s got one interception to Smith’s six. Manuel can do everything Smith can and he’s a more accurate passer. Game over, stop the fight ,ring the bell the nod goes to Manuel right? WRONG. Smith isn’t nearly as accurate Manuel but that’s in part because Manuel doesn’t throw the ball down the field. In his five attempts that have been of 30 yards of more he hasn’t completed one pass. Manuel, on his completions, average 6.38 yards (that’s 25th in the league) you couple that with the fact that this conservative passing hasn’t lead to team success and Manuel doesn’t look so great anymore.
Now I could sit here and blame that on play design and coaching but head coach Doug Marrone runs offence predicated on airing it out so Manuel’s pedestrian performance so far is on him not anyone else.
Smith, despite having the judgement of one of the characters on ‘Teen Mom’, has shown himself as a quarterback that with work can be more than the alright EJ Manuel. He racks up yards, moves the ball, and more importantly wins games. Yes, he may be interception prone, but if you take a look at the 10 quarterbacks with the most interceptions all-time, 5 of them are in the Hall of Fame and one is Brett Favre. While the Bills probably don’t want to hear this, the real franchise quarterback in this discussion is Geno Smith. Manuel is nice, but in the NFL ‘nice’ doesn’t win championships.
