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Mothman wrote: I'd expand that to "teams that need good backups are all of them".

The idea that a team needs a good backup to grind out a win or two in the absence of the starter flies in the face of what we see practically every year: starters who go down for extended periods of time, sometimes losing most or all of a season. Sometimes a backup needs to become the starter for much more than just a short window of one or two games.

Teams should endeavor to have the best backup QB they can find because at any moment, that player can become the starter.

I always find it baffling that many fans agree QB is the most important position in football yet maintain a laissez-faire attitude about the backup position, when that player is just one injury away from taking over the most important position on the team.

I just think you need two types of backup QB. Its good to have a veteran who can fill in when an injury occurs during a game. You know he'll be prepared, knows the offense, is a pro (that shaun hill) and you need a backup who can come in when your starter goes down for the long term who has a much higher upside.

Maybe Cassel is the #28 QB in the league. He's a bottom tier starter. Hill is maybe #40. a top tier backup. Neither one provides what you need in a longterm starter. Both are valuable as backups, although I'm not sure Cassel wants to play that role. What you need in addition to a guy like this is a younger player with upside. Most teams can't afford two QBs in the top 20 at their position. And if they get that second QB in the top 20 they are usually of much more value to another team, and thus wind up being traded. That's another benefit in finding a promising young QB to fill the "long term" backup role. You can trade them in for other impact players.

Shaun Hill is a good player and has always been a good player. He's also a player who knows his place. He's an asset.

^Well said. I agree.

fiestavike wrote:I just think you need two types of backup QB. Its good to have a veteran who can fill in when an injury occurs during a game. You know he'll be prepared, knows the offense, is a pro (that shaun hill) and you need a backup who can come in when your starter goes down for the long term who has a much higher upside.

Maybe Cassel is the #28 QB in the league. He's a bottom tier starter.

At this point, I think he's a more like a top backup who gets opportunities to start for teams who get desperate or need a bridge to a younger player.

Hill is maybe #40. a top tier backup. Neither one provides what you need in a longterm starter. Both are valuable as backups, although I'm not sure Cassel wants to play that role. What you need in addition to a guy like this is a younger player with upside. Most teams can't afford two QBs in the top 20 at their position. And if they get that second QB in the top 20 they are usually of much more value to another team, and thus wind up being traded. That's another benefit in finding a promising young QB to fill the "long term" backup role. You can trade them in for other impact players.

Shaun Hill is a good player and has always been a good player. He's also a player who knows his place. He's an asset.

He's an asset to an extent because he has experience and he can play at a moderately effective level in the pros. The same can be said for Cassel. I agree that for a team in the Vikings current situation, it makes some sense to have a player like that, although if I were in Spielman's position, my goal would be to have a younger player with significant upside in the third QB slot with the idea that he will move up into that second spot asap, perhaps as soon as 2016. Long term, I'd prefer to see the Vikings avoid the need for mediocre veteran journeymen like Hill and Cassel by developing and keeping their own QBs.

Ideally, I agree Jim. However, drafting and developing your own guy is the exact reason why you almost always need a Shaun Hill/Matt Cassel. Theyre proven commodities. If you draft and develop a backup, then true to the term backup, how do you really know what you have?

Demi wrote: And Hill has 13 years. Why didn't he get those "experience" based opportunities? Because he has less talent than Cassel. As far as the Bills, they had choices, one of them was signing Shaun Hill for half the money and no picks. Instead they traded for Cassel. Because he's a better QB than Hill.
Most people don't.
Others do. Until you downgrade the position, at which point it isn't as important.

Dude you just won't give up will you?? My God!! You're like a little nagging troll that continues to repeat yourself but can't back it up. Cassel is 32 compared to Hill who is 35. They demonstrate similar play. Buffalo had a chance to get a guy that's 3 years younger. If I was in a "starting QB" predicament and my choices were either Cassel or Hill I would take Cassel in a heartbeat but not because his talent is above and beyond Hill's but the fact that he's younger and gives the team more flexibility down the road if they still can't upgrade the position. It's just a smart organizational move.

You act like there is some giant difference between the two and that we are doomed without him....yet you haven't defended it in any way. You just say "we downgraded" and "Cassel has more talent" 100 times. Well back it up!! It's just yet another post by you that has zero backing. It's just according to "Demi standards"....you don't agree with it but can't throw a single fact out there that shows a considerable difference between the two. Others, as well as myself, have posted plenty of facts statistically showing why there isn't much of a difference between the two, yet you can't take those blinders off and actually read/look into them. I would advise you to do that.

Mothman wrote:
At this point, I think he's a more like a top backup who gets opportunities to start for teams who get desperate or need a bridge to a younger player.

That is 110% exactly who he is. It's just some on here can't understand that. When you have a set starter and can get draft picks for Cassel to get a similar QB at a cheaper price, you do that in a heartbeat.

PacificNorseWest wrote:Ideally, I agree Jim. However, drafting and developing your own guy is the exact reason why you almost always need a Shaun Hill/Matt Cassel. Theyre proven commodities. If you draft and develop a backup, then true to the term backup, how do you really know what you have?

There's no way to know until he plays but that's a common enough situation and it applies to any young QB. Players like Hill and Cassel are established commodities, which is precisely why I think it's aiming low to continually settle for them, since what they've established at this point is that they really aren't good starting material.

Mothman wrote: There's no way to know until he plays but that's a common enough situation and it applies to any young QB. Players like Hill and Cassel are established commodities, which is precisely why I think it's aiming low to continually settle for them, since what they've established at this point is that they really aren't good starting material.

But what I don't understand with that is, what backups are good starting material?? There are none. That's why they are backups. If they were good starting material, they would be starting.

Pondering Her Percy wrote:But what I don't understand with that is, what backups are good starting material?? There are none. That's why they are backups. If they were good starting material, they would be starting.

You continually raise the point above and it flies in the face of NFL history. Plenty of former backups have gone on to start and excel. Many have played in Super Bowls. Some have won them. Sometimes a backup is just stuck behind an incumbent starter. Sometimes they're still developing their game but the potential to be a good starter is there and when the opportunity arises to show it, it's revealed on the field. The idea that every backup in the league is always a backup because they're not starting material just doesn't hold water.

Hill has been in the league so long because he has value. If he didn't he woulda been long gone. Front office people know this the same way they know Cassel has value. They have different values though.

I think vet backups are important when you have a young starter with franchise potential.

Cassel is kinda in that tweener place.....so is a Mark Sanchez. Guys that will wind up in the league for over decade backing up younger starters but still have that itch to start themselves. I don't want a guy like that behind a youngster I'm developing. I also don't want some green guy fresh from college unless he is a 3rd string flier.

Most teams settle for any warm body for the right price once they have their franchise guy, when they should be aggressive and really fortify the position through the draft.

In the past 4-5 seasons some of the most sought after FA QBs have been guys that backed up long term starters, learned the system they were in and did well when they got the chance. The rest of them were guys who flamed out as starters and create the pool of meh other teams chose their back ups from.

If Bridgewater can excel at Turner's system, the Vikes can draft another kid and say watch and learn from TB, this is how to play QB in our system. If Hill can help that process along....fantastic. He sure won't hurt it.

The problem the Vikings have had is they really haven't had much of a system in the past decade....they've just been cut and pasting at the position. I think they had the right frame of mind with Ponder...but just about everything that could go wrong did. From McNabb, to the O-line, to no legit WRs, to having a back up who ran a completely different system, to Ponder just not being the guy.
I think the Vikings have been going about it in a good way since they picked Ponder.....if they don't draft another guy this year I expect/hope they get a mid round guy next year and trust their own system going forward. Develop their own guys, with Bridgewater as the model.(hopefully)

Mothman wrote: You continually raise the point above and it flies in the face of NFL history. Plenty of former backups have gone on to start and excel. Many have played in Super Bowls. Some have won them. Sometimes a backup is just stuck behind an incumbent starter. Sometimes they're still developing their game but the potential to be a good starter is there and when the opportunity arises to show it, it's revealed on the field. The idea that every backup in the league is always a backup because they're not starting material just doesn't hold water.

Name me a good backup in the NFL right now. What I'm saying is I don't see any Tom Brady's out there right now. I feel like you're referring more to drafting a guy with upside as a number 3. They bring that kind of potential at times but I don't see any current #2s as the next Super Bowl champ. Sorry but I just don't think its out there right now. Just because it's happened a handful of times in the history of the NFL doesn't mean those guys are sitting out there all over the place

Pondering Her Percy wrote: Name me a good backup in the NFL right now. What I'm saying is I don't see any Tom Brady's out there right now. I feel like you're referring more to drafting a guy with upside as a number 3. They bring that kind of potential at times but I don't see any current #2s as the next Super Bowl champ. Sorry but I just don't think its out there right now. Just because it's happened a handful of times in the history of the NFL doesn't mean those guys are sitting out there all over the place

well, to be fair....before he became Tom Brady, no one knew he'd be Tom Brady....if you get my meaning.

Who knows who will be the next Tom Brady? Maybe he's on an NFL team right now, just waiting for the starter to get injured. Who knows...

But one thing I do know, is that the next Tom Brady will definitely NOT be Shaun Hill or Matt Cassel.....so I'm baffled by most of this thread. But I do get Jim's point that the Vikings really have not made a good effort to develop QBs.......

Pondering Her Percy wrote:Name me a good backup in the NFL right now. What I'm saying is I don't see any Tom Brady's out there right now.

Of course not. How would you see that? Did you see what kind of QB Brady he would be when he was a backup? Did you see Kurt Warner as a future league MVP when he was a backup? Did you think think Brad Johnson would be a Super Bowl-winning QB when he was learning the ropes on the Vikings depth chart, before becoming a quality NFL starter? To pick a more recent and less accomplished example, would you have named Nick Foles as starting material when he was a backup?

I'm not saying it's obvious. I'm not saying there are a bunch of quality backups out there available to the Vikings right now. I'm talking about an approach that makes sense. That really shouldn't be so hard to grasp.

I feel like you're referring more to drafting a guy with upside as a number 3. They bring that kind of potential at times but I don't see any current #2s as the next Super Bowl champ. Sorry but I just don't think its out there right now.

Whether that's out there right now and easily identifiable is not the point. the point is that it's obviously possible to find and develop a quality backup QB with legitimate starting potential and of course I'm talking about drafting a player with upside and developing him.

Just because it's happened a handful of times in the history of the NFL doesn't mean those guys are sitting out there all over the place

Backup QBs have become good starters way more than a handful of times.

VikingPaul73 wrote:well, to be fair....before he became Tom Brady, no one knew he'd be Tom Brady....if you get my meaning.

Who knows who will be the next Tom Brady? Maybe he's on an NFL team right now, just waiting for the starter to get injured. Who knows...

But one thing I do know, is that the next Tom Brady will definitely NOT be Shaun Hill or Matt Cassel.....so I'm baffled by most of this thread. But I do get Jim's point that the Vikings really have not made a good effort to develop QBs.......

I'm glad somebody does. Thanks, Paul.

The next Brady/Warner could be Garrapolo, or however you spell it. Point being you draft and develop that guy, with the occasional exception of guys like Gannon or Plunkett etc..