Stanford starting quarterback Andrew Luck has earned almost unanimous accolades. We say almost unanimous because there will always be doubters among us who want to see more before we're ready to anoint him.
Phil Simms is one such person. Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk filed this report from an interview Simms did on radio.
"But the one thing I don’t see, I just don’t see big time NFL throws. I don’t care what anybody says. I’ve watched a lot of him. He never takes it and rips it in there. And you can say what you want but, man, you’ve got to be able to crease that ball every once in a while. We see it every week in these games. Hey, he can develop it but even in the USC game, you know, he’s very careful with it, guides it a lot, Rich. That’s what I see. There’s not a lot of rotation on the ball and there’s not a tremendous amount of power. Not that you need to have that power arm. I’m not saying you’ve got to have that exclusively but, man, it sure helps when you can do that because there’s four or five plays a game it is about arm strength. And sometimes quarterbacks who don’t have it, they pass those plays up. Why? Well, they go, ‘I don’t know if I can make that throw,’ so they throw it short. That’s why I’m a little more reserved in my judgment than everybody else."
While it's probably not a popular opinion for people who really want the junior Cardinal signal-caller, I doubt Simms is trying to be a hater here, but is just trying to say that Luck shouldn't be considered the salvation for the woes of any moribund franchise. People need to be patient and let him develop before believing that he can immediately come in and knock out home runs week-in, week-out.
He could very well be a good quarterback, but right now people need to temper their expectations a bit. Because even when he gets to the NFL, he might need to do some developing before he's ready to lead a team to great things.
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