[quote]farmerson12 wrote:
[quote]coolnatedawg wrote:
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
they have the most physically-talented QB in the NFL…[/quote]
perhaps a little bit of bias there, no? You and I are never going to come to terms on this hahaha[/quote]
Of course its biased. DB is one of the more knowledgeable NFL fans on this site but his infatuation with the 9ers casuses him to say ridiculous things. With that said,
Kaepernick is certainly one of the top 5 “physically talented” QBs. Who exactly is first is pretty much opinion. But Kaeper, Griffin, Newton, Rodgers, and…Wilson? Idk. Fill in the last.
Edit: And those arent in any particular order.[/quote]
I don’t know how you could make an argument against Kaepernick.
He has a bigger, more accurate arm than anyone you mentioned, other than Rodgers, whose arm isn’t as strong but is probably more accurate as of now. Kaepernick was routinely clocked throwing 60 mph passes at the combine two years ago. That’s Elway-type arm strength and neither Griffin nor Newton nor Rodgers nor Wilson can match that. He’s shown himself to be an extremely accurate passer and the only reason his completion percentage isn’t higher is because he makes more downfield throws than anyone you’ve mentioned.
He’s not as fast as Griffin, but he’s faster than everyone else mentioned and quite frankly, with Griffin’s second tearing of his ACL even he might not be faster than Kaepernick anymore.
Newton is slightly heavier than Kaepernick at about 245 compared to Kaepernick’s 235. But they’re both 6’5", which makes Kaepernick much bigger than any of the other QBs mentioned. Rodgers is 6’2" 225, Griffin is about 6’2" 215 and Wilson is only 5’11" and about 205.
His combination of size, speed and arm strength is a better combination than anyone you’ve mentioned, so I don’t see how my claim that Kaepernick is the most physically-talented QB is a product of bias. What else would we use to gauge pure physical talent? He’s also already shown to be as calm under pressure as any of those QBs. He was one play away from making what would have been by far the biggest comeback in Super Bowl history, he came back from down 17 on the road in the Championship Game, he turned in the performance of a lifetime in his first playoff game in which he threw a pick-six that most players making only their 8th career start would have folded after, he lit up NE in NE on national television in December, which literally no QB has done in the Brady era, and he put 32 points on the board against a top-five defense in his first career start. And he did all of this at a time when many people were saying he wasn’t good enough or deserving enough to take over for Alex Fucking Smith.
THAT is mental toughness right there. I know Newton doesn’t have it at all; Rodgers has it; Griffin MIGHT have it but he was too injured to prove it so the jury is out on him; Wilson has it, but the fact is that Kaepernick won in Atl and Wilson didn’t.
And I’m not sure that any of those QBs are as smart as Kaepernick either. Kaepernick scored a 37 on the Wonderlic test, which puts more than 2 standard deviations above the mean (translation: he’s in statistical outlier territory with a score that high). Griffin only scored a 24, less than one standard deviation above the mean. Rodgers scored a 35, which is incredible, but still not as high as Kaepernick. WIlson scored a 28 and Newton scored a 21.
What other criteria should we use? I’m all ears. But of the criteria listed thus far, it’s crystal clear that Kaepernick has the greatest combination of tools at his disposal of those guys mentioned. Some of them are more accurate or bigger or faster, but none of them has the combination of all those things that Kaepernick has, and Kaepernick is already more accomplished in just ten career starts than any of them other than Rodgers.