*point of this thread isnt a flame war*

Both guys have played give or take a quarter 5 games now. Thought itd be interesting to compare the stats. 

Drew willy

137/191  71.7% 1473 yards 7.7 yards per pass 5 tds 4 ints. sacked 16 times.

andrew Harris

206 yards 53 carries 3.88 YPC. 283 yards on 30 catches 9.43 per catch

Matt nichols

126/177 71.1% 1448 yards 8.2 yards per pass 7 tds 1 int. 10 sacks. (3 in the last 3 games)

adrew Harris

449 yards 90 carries 4.98 ypc. 85 yards on 11 catches 7.72 per catch.

 

 The obvious large differences are willys lower tds, more picks, and greater number of sacks. Also the contrast between harris running vs catching. I think a good bit of the harris difference is OL, and play calling change. When you cant run, tossing it to the RB is just as high percentage while putting the rb in a better spot to make a play. 

 Of course willy had the worse of the OL, and nichols hasnt had the compliment of wrs. 

Combined numbers 263/368 71.4% 2,921 12 tds 5 picks 26 sacks.  Yards would be 3rd while passing tds would be tied for 4th. I would bet the number of sacks would be still very high. The trend and play of the ol with bond/hardrick + foketi has been very good though. I would expect one of if not the best pass protections in the last 3 games. Before that we had a lot of hits on the qb out side sacks and qb rushes. Lots of yards per game, but as we all have seen, too many FGs not enough tds. Hope fully we continue to get healthy and show an improvement in play calling. 

 

3 hours ago, Noeller said:

If anyone gets the opportunity to read Doug Brown's piece in the FP today, it says, "Drew Willy Never Played For This Team".......and breaks down all the differences in the first 5 vs the last 5

might have to pick up a freep hes usually a good read. 

3 hours ago, Mike said:

If you had to ask me for an offensive MVP at this point in the season, I don't hesitate for very long before I say Travis Bond.

QFT

 

I think what the closeness in stats really shows is the vanilla/passiveness of our offense. Even with the better OL we have now, I dont think willy would do well playing if the offense was opened up more. I think nichols would greatly benefit from opening up the offense. 

1 minute ago, HardCoreBlue said:

Having the ability to lead is a nebulous concept? People have made careers in studying this issue both sport and non sport.

OK cite the study that was done here, regarding Willy.  That's what I mean.  Certainly the ability to lead is a real thing, but no one can tell that by watching a football team play on TV.  Or seeing them play live, for that matter.

All we know is that the entire team is playing better now.  And that's not all on the quarterback.  Tell me the defence is playing better because they believe in Nichols and you'll get a big eye roll from me.

6 minutes ago, HardCoreBlue said:

Having the ability to lead is a nebulous concept? People have made careers in studying this issue both sport and non sport.

It is because its some thing that cant be measured. Its some thing fans and even media can only speculate on. Some guys are considered locker room issues on one team, and strong leaders on others. Or in different years. The changing nature of most locker rooms year to year especially with higher roll over really effect what type of leader ship is effective. 

Some guys like buck pierce have had good length pro careers Being a blood n guts football player at a skill position. And that certainly has an effect on the team around them. But that doesnt change there actual ability to perform the position. Think tim tebow. 

its hard to say how good of a leader nichols is. He isnt that buck pierce type of player. And we can only speculate how much impact he's had, vs the improvements to the OL and the defense catching fire. 

4 minutes ago, Atomic said:

OK cite the study that was done here, regarding Willy.  That's what I mean.  Certainly the ability to lead is a real thing, but no one can tell that by watching a football team play on TV.  Or seeing them play live, for that matter.

All we know is that the entire team is playing better now.  And that's not all on the quarterback.  Tell me the defence is playing better because they believe in Nichols and you'll get a big eye roll from me.

The defense is playing better because they believe in Nichols.

 

:-)

22 minutes ago, Atomic said:

All we know is that the entire team is playing better now.  And that's not all on the quarterback.  Tell me the defence is playing better because they believe in Nichols and you'll get a big eye roll from me.

Especially when you can clearly see the defense improving before the change was made at quarterback. 

stats are close between the two but Willy earned most of his passing yard in garbage time when down by 30.  I get Nichols has a better line, more ToP from a better defence, yadda yadda yadda.  Reality is that i have seen Nichols make countless tough throws both deep and short, including many crucial second and long converting tosses, that I never saw Willy throw this year or have any remote confidence he would make.  Lapo needs to find a strategy in the red zone but once that is ironed out Nichols will be producing us a lot of TD drives.  

3 minutes ago, peggars said:

stats are close between the two but Willy earned most of his passing yard in garbage time when down by 30.  I get Nichols has a better line, more ToP from a better defence, yadda yadda yadda.  Reality is that i have seen Nichols make countless tough throws both deep and short, including many crucial second and long converting tosses, that I never saw Willy throw this year or have any remote confidence he would make.  Lapo needs to find a strategy in the red zone but once that is ironed out Nichols will be producing us a lot of TD drives.  

not true. the average score against us was 25 in the first 5 games. Only once did a team score 29 or more points in that period. We werent down by 30 at any point in time. 

We were out played to a level similar, but not nearly close to it on the score board. A half of football isnt garbarge time. Even a quarter unless you are down by 4+ scores. And we were not. 

8 minutes ago, wbbfan said:

not true. the average score against us was 25 in the first 5 games. Only once did a team score 29 or more points in that period. We werent down by 30 at any point in time. 

We were out played to a level similar, but not nearly close to it on the score board. A half of football isnt garbarge time. Even a quarter unless you are down by 4+ scores. And we were not. 

First game against calgary, down 29 going into the forth.  Defence was clearly sagging off allowed willy to throw for over150 yards and 2 tds in the 4th quarter in what ended up being his best statistical game of the season.  Garbage time stats that greatly inflated what was a brutal Willy performance.  

It's the cfl... IMO unless you are down by 30 plus and it's under 3 minutes it isn't garbage time. Cuz seen it countless times... teams get up big... back off.... other team comes back and scores and occasionally even win the game. Winnipeg vs BC with Jyles is an ecample. Garbage time? Nope. It's the CFL. ... you play till the final whistle.  If a team backs off... you make them pay. Was it garbage time when Hamilton came back and beat Edmonton earlier in the year? 

2 minutes ago, Goalie said:

It's the cfl... IMO unless you are down by 30 plus and it's under 3 minutes it isn't garbage time. Cuz seen it countless times... teams get up big... back off.... other team comes back and scores and occasionally even win the game. Winnipeg vs BC with Jyles is an ecample. Garbage time? Nope. It's the CFL. ... you play till the final whistle.  If a team backs off... you make them pay. Was it garbage time when Hamilton came back and beat Edmonton earlier in the year? 

Sadly in many cases it becomes garbage time because the team behind gives up.

21 minutes ago, peggars said:

First game against calgary, down 29 going into the forth.  Defence was clearly sagging off allowed willy to throw for over150 yards and 2 tds in the 4th quarter in what ended up being his best statistical game of the season.  Garbage time stats that greatly inflated what was a brutal Willy performance.  

Yes that's true, Willy did play poorly.

Also, Harris ran for 13 yards on 8 carries while Messam ran for 137 on 16 carries.  Plus another 40 yards on 5 carries for Tory Harrison.  Damn Willy.

never said that loss was his fault, i said he played poorly but was the benefactor of a sagging/lazy calgary defence in 4th quarter that enabled him to greatly inflate his stats from what was otherwise a terrible game from him

2 minutes ago, Atomic said:

Yes that's true, Willy did play poorly.

Also, Harris ran for 13 yards on 8 carries while Messam ran for 137 on 16 carries.  Plus another 40 yards on 5 carries for Tory Harrison.  Damn Willy.

  

1 hour ago, wbbfan said:

It is because its some thing that cant be measured. Its some thing fans and even media can only speculate on. Some guys are considered locker room issues on one team, and strong leaders on others. Or in different years. The changing nature of most locker rooms year to year especially with higher roll over really effect what type of leader ship is effective. 

Some guys like buck pierce have had good length pro careers Being a blood n guts football player at a skill position. And that certainly has an effect on the team around them. But that doesnt change there actual ability to perform the position. Think tim tebow. 

its hard to say how good of a leader nichols is. He isnt that buck pierce type of player. And we can only speculate how much impact he's had, vs the improvements to the OL and the defense catching fire. 

Not correct. Tier one/two/three Universities teach people how to do it (i.e., qualitative research methods). I can guarantee you NFL teams have people on staff who strictly look at leadership and interpersonal skill sets among their athletes in a very rigorous, systematic and methodical way. As for CFL teams, due to limited resources, not so much.

10 minutes ago, HardCoreBlue said:

Not correct. Tier one/two/three Universities teach people how to do it (i.e., qualitative research methods). I can guarantee you NFL teams have people on staff who strictly look at leadership and interpersonal skill sets among their athletes in a very rigorous, systematic and methodical way. As for CFL teams, due to limited resources, not so much.

It's still a wildly imprecise science and if you follow the studies around this topic, and it sounds like you do, then you should know that.  Even the top researchers in the field would admit the same.

Regardless, it doesn't change the fact that as outside observers, we can't measure it at all.

Edited September 6, 20169 yr by Atomic

There are things Nichols does better and things Willy does better.  Nichols has pretty good escapability (drops shoulder to avoid tackles, slides around in pocket, quick feet) while in the pocket; Willy has almost none.  Willy is more accurate downfield and doesn't rifle balls at receiver's feet.

Until this year.

Now Willy's best attribute as a QB has failed him, and Nichols' biggest weakness as a QB isn't as big a problem as it was in previous years.  I wasn't very high on Nichols getting re-signed this year (while he's the best back-up we've had since Glenn was behind Khari, I want the bar to be a bit higher than "at least he's better than Goltz") but it made sense given the options.  He sure didn't look like a different Nichols during training camp, and I would have had Davis ahead of him from the few practises I saw.  But he got his shot and has been accurate enough that the keys stay in his pocket.  Willy was inaccurate enough that the keys got taken away from him.

This is probably the best version of Nichols we can expect to see.  The best version of Willy has a much higher ceiling than the best version of Nichols, but we haven't seen that version of him all season.  And that's the part where I would disagree with Doug Brown.  Certainly the Oline wasn't as good before Bond was in and Hardrick was on the right side, and certainly our defence and special teams picked up steam through August.  But Willy's struggles existed outside of those factors.  Even on plays where he was clean, he was inaccurate past 15 yards.

So while this is a very different team than the one Willy got to play with in July, he doesn't get the keys back until it's necessary.  Hopefully he's got some of his mojo* back by then.

 

* nebulous concept

Just now, Atomic said:

It's still a wildly imprecise science and if you follow the studies around this topic, and it sounds like you do, then you should know that.  Even the top researchers in the field would admit the same.

Right (Although I don't agree with your use of the word wildly) but so is every other science, like medicine for example. You simply can't right it off. You can question and disagree but you can't right it off because of it's limitations. If one does that then be consistent with every other science.

6 minutes ago, Atomic said:

It's still a wildly imprecise science and if you follow the studies around this topic, and it sounds like you do, then you should know that.  Even the top researchers in the field would admit the same.

Regardless, it doesn't change the fact that as outside observers, we can't measure it at all.

This I agree with you. In analyzing human behaviour, there are a lot of arm chair qb's in our midst.

2 hours ago, peggars said:

never said that loss was his fault, i said he played poorly but was the benefactor of a sagging/lazy calgary defence in 4th quarter that enabled him to greatly inflate his stats from what was otherwise a terrible game from him

  

Willy didn't even play THAT poorly in the Calgary game. Yeah there were some misses but there were busted running plays and dropped passes that led to punting as well. The real problem in that Calgary game was that the defense was absolutely useless all game long. They couldn't stop Messam and they couldn't stop BLM. They let the Stamps own the ball and couldn't get a stop. The O got bogged down and didn't get back on the field because the D was giving up long drive after long drive. The Stamps didn't punt until the 4th quarter I am pretty sure. That's bad, real bad. 

2 hours ago, peggars said:

First game against calgary, down 29 going into the forth.  Defence was clearly sagging off allowed willy to throw for over150 yards and 2 tds in the 4th quarter in what ended up being his best statistical game of the season.  Garbage time stats that greatly inflated what was a brutal Willy performance.  

Thats one time we were down 29. And with a full quarter to play thats tons of time, in our worst blow out. Doesnt change the fact the games scores were close largely in the first half. 

 The D stopped blitzing. they were playing an over-under which isnt easy to throw against. Robber is the cause of a ton of turn overs. One need only look at the last 2 games when dropping a DE into under coverage. 

1 hour ago, HardCoreBlue said:

Not correct. Tier one/two/three Universities teach people how to do it (i.e., qualitative research methods). I can guarantee you NFL teams have people on staff who strictly look at leadership and interpersonal skill sets among their athletes in a very rigorous, systematic and methodical way. As for CFL teams, due to limited resources, not so much.

Actually it still is. Thats why there is a massive business that rotates around coaching kids coming out into the nfl on how to do interviews. Interviews are weighed as less and less valuable with some teams out right skipping them due to this. Colleges dont teach kids to be leaders, they coach them to play systems. Vast majority of kids who are highly scouted were the leader of their HS team simply because they were head and shoulders better then the rest of their team.

 

1 hour ago, mbrg said:

There are things Nichols does better and things Willy does better.  Nichols has pretty good escapability (drops shoulder to avoid tackles, slides around in pocket, quick feet) while in the pocket; Willy has almost none.  Willy is more accurate downfield and doesn't rifle balls at receiver's feet.

Until this year.

Now Willy's best attribute as a QB has failed him, and Nichols' biggest weakness as a QB isn't as big a problem as it was in previous years.  I wasn't very high on Nichols getting re-signed this year (while he's the best back-up we've had since Glenn was behind Khari, I want the bar to be a bit higher than "at least he's better than Goltz") but it made sense given the options.  He sure didn't look like a different Nichols during training camp, and I would have had Davis ahead of him from the few practises I saw.  But he got his shot and has been accurate enough that the keys stay in his pocket.  Willy was inaccurate enough that the keys got taken away from him.

This is probably the best version of Nichols we can expect to see.  The best version of Willy has a much higher ceiling than the best version of Nichols, but we haven't seen that version of him all season.  And that's the part where I would disagree with Doug Brown.  Certainly the Oline wasn't as good before Bond was in and Hardrick was on the right side, and certainly our defence and special teams picked up steam through August.  But Willy's struggles existed outside of those factors.  Even on plays where he was clean, he was inaccurate past 15 yards.

So while this is a very different team than the one Willy got to play with in July, he doesn't get the keys back until it's necessary.  Hopefully he's got some of his mojo* back by then.

 

* nebulous concept

Ehh all 4 of our qbs have very similar tool kits. 3/4 more and more athletic then willy and nichols. Nichols doesnt shed tackles much better then willy, thats for sure. When hes playing at his best his release mechanic /throwing motion is smooth and straight and his footwork is crisp. None of the guys have a great arm on them, but get by with touch and ball placement like most cfl qbs. Touch on the wide field gets you a lot further then raw arm strength. 

Idk if id say mental strength was willys strong suit but its certainly whats failed. Hearing foot steps and forcing his passes. He was throwing at peoples feet especially mid+ and over the middle. Which is what you see when a qb is forcing the ball, trying to throw it too hard it doesnt leave the hand cleanly / gripping the ball too hard.

Pretty much bang on with nichols and willy, I dont know that willy has the potential to full fill his potential here any more. BUt no one will know untill we see him on the field here again/ or if we do. 

If we see Willy on the field again as a starter one of 2 things has happened & they aren't good. One, we're losing again or two, Nicholls is injured. I want to see Nicholls as the starter right thru to the end of the season & playoffs. It probably means we've won a minimum of 10 games & MOS gets a new contract.

2 hours ago, wbbfan said:

Thats one time we were down 29. And with a full quarter to play thats tons of time, in our worst blow out. Doesnt change the fact the games scores were close largely in the first half. 

 The D stopped blitzing. they were playing an over-under which isnt easy to throw against. Robber is the cause of a ton of turn overs. One need only look at the last 2 games when dropping a DE into under coverage. 

Actually it still is. Thats why there is a massive business that rotates around coaching kids coming out into the nfl on how to do interviews. Interviews are weighed as less and less valuable with some teams out right skipping them due to this. Colleges dont teach kids to be leaders, they coach them to play systems. Vast majority of kids who are highly scouted were the leader of their HS team simply because they were head and shoulders better then the rest of their team.

 

First bold, don't know how you know that. Second bold, you mean college football teams not colleges right? Because there are colleges that offer leadership courses with hope of developing leaders. Not too mention the fact that college football teams more than likely help some young men become leaders whether they mean too or not. That's the great thing about football. Ultimate team sport.

3 hours ago, wbbfan said:

Ehh all 4 of our qbs have very similar tool kits. 3/4 more and more athletic then willy and nichols. Nichols doesnt shed tackles much better then willy, thats for sure. When hes playing at his best his release mechanic /throwing motion is smooth and straight and his footwork is crisp. None of the guys have a great arm on them, but get by with touch and ball placement like most cfl qbs. Touch on the wide field gets you a lot further then raw arm strength. 

Idk if id say mental strength was willys strong suit but its certainly whats failed. Hearing foot steps and forcing his passes. He was throwing at peoples feet especially mid+ and over the middle. Which is what you see when a qb is forcing the ball, trying to throw it too hard it doesnt leave the hand cleanly / gripping the ball too hard.

Pretty much bang on with nichols and willy, I dont know that willy has the potential to full fill his potential here any more. BUt no one will know untill we see him on the field here again/ or if we do. 

Again...you lost your credibility when you said that Lapo would be fired before seasons end and Buck would take over! You try to make youself sound like an expert but you are not obviously. Since when have you seen enough of our 3rd and 4th QB's to form such definite statments?

6 hours ago, Goalie said:

It's the cfl... IMO unless you are down by 30 plus and it's under 3 minutes it isn't garbage time. Cuz seen it countless times... teams get up big... back off.... other team comes back and scores and occasionally even win the game. Winnipeg vs BC with Jyles is an ecample. Garbage time? Nope. It's the CFL. ... you play till the final whistle.  If a team backs off... you make them pay. Was it garbage time when Hamilton came back and beat Edmonton earlier in the year? 

To answer the question: no

However, there is no doubt that opposing D's used softer coverage, dropped back deeper and gave up short to medium passes more readily when they had a solid lead on the Bombers. Would they do the same thing for most of the final quarter or even the half against Collaros or Mitchell?  Probably not - because there is a greater chance it would bite them in the butt.  

Let's call a spade a spade.  Most of Drew Willy's yard were garbage yards.  If they weren't, he would still be the Bombers' starting QB.

Stats don't show how mightily Willy was struggling with the offence. His timing was bad he, held the ball far too long, and wasn't reading the field very well. Granted Bond has helped but Willy wasn't helping himself most of all.

I feel bad for the guy but the change needed to be made. I also think he can still come back to his previous form. Perhaps not here but somewhere.