Mark Brunell booed

[jsarno]

Originally Posted by GTripp0012

Plummer was applauded while Cutler was still down on the field. What's interesting is that when Cutler came back, he got equal applause from the crowd. Supporting your own QB...what a novel concept.

I can't prove the generalization that Brunell dumped every play either right or wrong, but my only defense for that is this: his 6.88 yards/attempt. You'd think if defenses didn't respect his ability to go anywhere else but the flats, they could have creeped on him, but apparently none did.

I believe Brunell was attacking a phallicy in NFL defenses. With all the speed in NFL back 7's today, few teams can tackle that flat dumpoff efficiently enough to stop the offense. Thus Brunell took the easy pass every time it was given to him. That probably caused a few failed conversions on 3rd downs, yes, and thats certainly on him. But considering he completed more than a yard per pass more than Campbell did, I'm very surprised they (Al after Campbell became the QB) went away from it. Theres no reason to suspect that Campbell wouldn't have been able to improve his yards/attempt if he attacked D's the same way Brunell did, and he probably would have scored more points for us doing it.

The consecutive completions record is nice and all, but meaningless by itself. However Brunell also threw for 261 that game (9.67 yard/att) and still a solid 7.1 yards per attempt even if that Portis 74 yd shovel is to be counted as a run, which it wasn't on the stat sheet. So although a good % of his passes went underneath, he completed stuff in that game no matter where he threw it, and THAT is what the completion record represents. Campbell couldn't have done that because he's going to miss more than 1 out of every 20 underneath throws.

If the Texans (or teams in general) aren't going to prevent the short stuff, why would you risk a longer throw? I don't know, but for JC's first 5 starts, thats what happened.

The fact that Brunell and Campbells % were so close (in yards / attempt) show that Brunell didn't throw downfield. Campbell didn't complete as many passes, yet have similar numbers???? If you have 2 attempts, one for 16 yards, and 1 incomplete, that's an everage of 8 per attempt. But if you complete 2 passes for 12 each, and the other incomplete, that averages out to 8 per attempt. Also, YAC counts. So if Brunell throws a screen to Moss and it goes 20 yards, he didn't throw the ball 20 yards, he threw it 1 yard and Moss did the rest. Campbell threw very few screens, Brunell lived off them.