Bob_The_Cat
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Baker did work his ass off his rookie year. Last year was a disaster of a season across the board, especially in terms of developing our younger players. Especially Baker. Freddie's casual, slacker approach infected the entire team. But this season, there isn't even a hint that Baker hasn't worked his ass off. Though the nonexistent offseason really hurt in terms of learning a new offense.
Allen was not good for two entire years under McDermott despite all that hard work. What kind of QB do you think Josh Allen would be today if he'd come here and had Hue and Freddie his first two years rather than MCDermott, and now was on his third offense with no offseason? What would everyone be saying about him?
It's hard to imagine a worst 2 first years of development than what Baker got here.
5 games and a single truncated offseason under Stefanski isn't remotely comparable to 2+ seasons under McDermott. As long as Baker's got his work ethic - and everything we've heard suggests he does - he deserves an equivalent opportunity to develop under a competent coach. This entire season would be a good start to that.
The nightmare scenario is that we finally drafted the right guy, but cut the cord too quickly and he becomes the franchise QB for a different franchise.
This is a bit of the reason this thread has somewhat become a circular discussion. It seems just as many people are concerned with cutting the cord too quickly as they are not cutting it quick enough and watching a talented offense not reach it’s potential.
I see the merits of both, and though I feel like I’ve discussed both points of view, I still need the full year to determine that.
I am concerned though with Baker’s ability to read a defense. Texas Tech and Oklahoma were always out of the gun and their offenses are fairly similar.
In his rookie year after Hue got canned, the offense was effectively scrapped and they went to an extremely simplified version that included a lot of what Baker did at Oklahoma. I’m not really sure what happened with Freddie and his monstrosity of an offense last year.
There were questions coming out if he could be effective when he wasn’t in the gun the entire time. We still don’t know the answer to that, and whether it’s because of coaching or not it somewhat doesn’t matter. We’ve already discussed pending decisions that will need to be made, and depending on where the defense is after the offseason our hand might get forced a bit.