re: .

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and a losing record vs. a winning one,

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This is the crux of our disagreement.

It is your opinion that Cam should have somehow held teams to lower point totals so his won-loss record could be better. I disagree.

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Yes, really. That's why guys like Johnny Unitas and Otto Graham still get mentioned in the Greatest of All Time discussions. It's why Bart Starr is in the HOF when his numbers say he's a slightly less impressive Matt Hasselebeck 1.0, even accounting some for era differentiation.

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Which is a distorted view IMO.

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Turnovers do happen, but with Newton, the rate is simply far higher than it should be, if you are going to place him in elite company. I expect and hope that this will go down as he matures and learns, but it's not out of the question he has some of the same issues that plagued Cunningham and that still bother Vick. You write off the importance of turnovers far too quickly with a quarterback.

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I'm not writing it off. But I've watched him as much as possible this year. I also realize that not all of his turnovers are his fault. The two fumbles were both kinda "shite happens" plays IMO. Sucks, but these things happen to every QB at times.

Against Chicago, he threw a pick 6. In the boxscore, that's a disaster. Here's the clip:

LINK

Did he throw it into tight coverage? Sure. But great QBs can do that. Should the ball have been caught? Absolutely. Instead, it goes down as not just a turnover, but a pick 6... and they lost that game by 5.

To me, turnover count isn't as important as how the turnovers are happening. Tebow made an awful throw into the endzone Sunday that ended up being a pick 6. That's bad QB play. And that's totally different than a ball bouncing off your receivers hands, fortunately into the arms of a defender who then has a clear line to the endzone.

I'm not saying turnovers don't matter, I'm just saying that how they occur is very important.

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it is ridiculous to start crowning him as a member of the NFL elite.

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No one did this, I don't think, though.

I said I'd take him over Big Ben and Eli, but I don't consider either of them to be elite.

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You do take the bad with the good, but right now, the bad is worth noting, and not blowing off.

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Again, I'm not blowing it off, but there's a context to it. How did the sacks occur? Did Cam hold the ball too long? Did he not read the blitz? Did the OL just breakdown and give the rush a free path to Cam? Was it a coverage sack? Did Cam scramble into a sack? These things are important to me. I don't know how many of each all of his sacks are, but yes, I'm sure he's been the cause of some because he does like to hang on to the ball and extend plays.

But sometimes you take the good with the bad there too... a guy like Big Ben gets sacked quite a bit, but he also has a unique ability to scramble around so a guy like Mike Wallace can break free and hit huge plays over the top. That wouldn't be possible if Ben played like Marino and stayed in the pocket and let go of everything quick.

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Yet you don't provide any context there. Even dissecting your favored numbers, why is scoring offense lagging behind? You can see from your own numbers that the Dolphins outperformed their numbers by being remarkably effective at scoring the football.

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My initial inclination is that it's more statistical outlier than anything. In most cases, you don't lag in yards and score a ton of points. After all, it takes yards to get points. You'd have to look at the numbers. How many short fields did they have? How suffocating was their defense? How good was their return game? Those numbers all go into point totals, but don't ever get counted toward offensive yardage.



Anyways, spirited debate. We disagree on the win/loss debate, and I also do believe that Cam's numbers are comparable, though not better, than Marino's as a rookie.