Trapped In The Spyder Web
I was surprised how many folks didn’t immediately guess it was gonna be Washington. I guess several other teams are closer than I expected to the second place crown but to me, TEAM has been a horrible churn for a long time outside arguably the several years of Kirk Cousins, which I will get to.
I needed a good cutoff point to start the new hydra. I used 1999 as the start for the Browns because that was when they came back into existence. The Bears, while a QB disaster, don’t really have that “starting” point. The Bears have never really had a point where they actually had a franchise QB for years. Jim McMahon? His career got cut short thanks to a dirty hit. I’d have to go back to Sid Luckman or Ed Brown. The Jets also fell under this problem. Where do I start the Jets hydra? They haven’t had a franchise QB since like, Joe Namath or if you want to be generous, Chad Pennington, who missed plenty of games due to health issues. I didn’t want to just start at 1999 just because the Browns one did.
The Dolphins, another popular choice, do have a start point: the retirement of Dan Marino. However, Tannehill anchored a good 4 years without missing a game, and then played 13 games the next season. He also got a contract extension during that time period. As I explained in the previous post, I think getting the extension is a pretty good sign the team feels the answer has been found. The Dolphins never did anything meaningful with Tannehill, but it can easily be chalked up to mismanagement especially considering his blossoming in Nashville. I consider Tannehill the Dolphins last franchise QB. The Broncos, another dark horse choice I saw some people mention who had a good start point of John Elway’s retirement, had Peyton Manning for several seasons not too long ago and got two SB appearances out of him. That breaks the era in half. Neither of these teams quite fit.
So that left Washington. A disaster of a program with a very clear and obvious starting point: 1999, when Dan Snyder bought the franchise. Lets tackle the biggest question mark first: Kirk Cousins. Like Tannehill, Cousins actually anchored the team for several years. 3, in fact, with 5 games played the year before those. Unlike Tannehill, the TEAM never seemed to trust Kirk and never actually gave him that new contract he wanted. In fact, they famously bungled it, not paying him when he would have been cheap, franchising him two seasons in a row, making him impossible to keep, and letting him go. If Kirk Cousins for 3 seasons is the best you got, I think it’s fair game to start anew. Also, the TEAM is currently a giant question mark at QB, so we might get even more fun this season.
Just because I know someone is going to bring it up because they don’t trust Baker Mayfield and don’t think I should have retired the Hydra, yes, Baker has started fewer games for the Browns than Kirk did for TEAM. But he’s already on track to eclipse Kirk by the end of the year. Barring catastrophe, he should easily top that this season. Jason Campbell also technically played more games for TEAM than Baker has so far, but seriously, does anyone remember the poor Jason Campbell era? I lived in TEAM territory during that time and I mostly felt bad for the guy. Tell you what. If Baker falls apart and doesn’t come back or eclipse Kirk, I’ll bring back the hydra and have both of these going at the same time. Maybe I can go a Phins/Jets/Bears one if I can find a good starting point.
So here’s the list of QBs that have been caught in Dan Spyder’s web, along with how many games they’ve started. Can you spot them all?
Kirk Cousins (53)
Jason Campbell (52)
RG3 (35)
Mark Brunell (33)
Brad Johnson (27)
Patrick Ramsey (24)
Sexy Rexy (16)
Alex Smith (16)
Tony Banks (14)
Donovan McNabb (13)
Dwyane Haskins (13)
Case Keenum (8)
Jeff George (7)
Shane Matthews (7)
Colt McCoy (7)
Tim Hasselbeck (5)
Danny Wuerffel (4)
Kyle Allen (4)
Todd Collins (3)
John Beck (3)
Josh Johnson (3)
Mark Sanchez (1)
Taylor Heinicke (1)
Can’t wait to see who they draft and ruin next. Everything Dan Spyder touches is poisoned. As was the case with the Browns hydra, I have exactly one rule: nobody gets added to the Web until they have officially started the game.
I miss FART
I’m just curious, why did you need a cutoff point for this? I think the Jets NEVER finding a solid qb after Namath is exactly WHY they would be the #1 choice. It’s almost 50 years in a cave just breeding mold. Sure, Mark Sanchez won some playoff games, but I think Butt Fumble ultimately undoes every good thing he ever accomplished. Pennington was just cruel torture. Had a good game? Injured the next. “Being a trainwreck for too long” seems like a benefit, not a setback. Unless drawing the 600 gazillion qbs on the team since Namath is too much work.
That being said, WTF is an absolutely big enough QB trainwreck to deserve this, and I agree that the Kirk Cousins hurdle can be cleared because it was a complete mistrust that put them in position to lose him.
I don’t want to do a team’s issues from the 60’s because the goal of the OG hydra was to illustrate just how many QBs the team has gone through in a relatively short period of time, and doing a team from way back is much bigger in scope. I’d rather confine it to a recent problematic era instead of *gestures at entire history*
Aha! I’m following now. I wasn’t considering the QB turnover in a compressed time period, only the slow belabored crush of madness. You’ve convinced me. No team better represents rapid multiple qb movement than WTF. XD
You could just take the Woody Johnson era for the Jets since he bought the team in 2000. Since then they’ve had I believe 18 starting quarterbacks (and that doesn’t even count Christian Hackenberg). Two of their QBs in that period won Super Bowls with other teams (Favre, Flacco). Meanwhile in that time, we’ve had to endure the Patriots with one GOAT (until the divorce) and the Giants in the same stadium with a lesser, but still quite effective, Manning.
The Jets are deserving of their own Hydra. Maybe for them it’s an airport terminal waiting area with everyone waiting for a flight to legitimacy.
Maybe a better way of looking at this is by an extended cluster of seasons where no individual QB started more than 11 games. Off the top of my head I don’t know if this was definitely the case with the Browns Hydra, but I had the impression it was not just due to never finding their answer pre-Mayfield, but that they’d usually have two or more QBs with multiple starts most seasons.
I don’t know for sure if WFT is the wrong answer here, but Miami still seems a better fit, Tannehill notwithstanding.
For the Jets I’d argue that while they’ve never found a firm answer that lasted five or more seasons, they’ve usually found adequate/let’s try to see if he’ll pan out medium term directions for a couple of seasons multiple times (Sanchez in the late 00’s/early 10s, Pennington in the Early 00s, O’Brien in the late 80’s (maybe into the 90’s too seemed like he was there a while).
This would be harder to find than you expect. Most seasons the starting QB would play like 12-14 games, and a Backup would fit in a few. It seemed pretty easy for QBs to hit 11 or so, even if the QB doing it was new every other year.
I really debated doing Miami and they are probably next in line for a Hydra but looking at their history, the Tannehill years really stood out as a large solid block and made it clear QB was not the problem during those seasons.
I came here all ready to complain that it wasn’t the Bears, but no. This is beauty.
I also didn’t immediately think of TEAM
but then I’m generally shit at guessing things to begin with, so that’s more of a factor…
I think my third guess was the Raiders. I completely forgot about the TEAM’s troubles.
I have every starting TEAM qb jersey since 2005. (This was written up in the Washington Post last year). And don’t worry. I have them all updated through Heinicke now…
Just so you all can mock me, here you go:
https://www.google.com/search?q=Washington+post+jerseys+redskins+sad&client=ms-android-verizon&prmd=nisv&sxsrf=ALeKk01OqcaD8c5QktuDVItZKP5O6CqjnQ:1615558105104&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiFxt_39qrvAhUjpFkKHR_BDDcQ_AUoAnoECAQQAg&cshid=1615558210290&biw=412&bih=782&dpr=2.63#imgrc=ilsTv5PWFqAdkM
This does work better than I’d have thought, as there are a lot more QB’s in that list than I realized. Plus, with their defense as good as they are, they’re unlikely to be in position to draft a franchise QB (and even when they are, they’ll probably get it wrong at least once or twice before they hit).
So the Snyder Web will continue to grow, reeling in Gardner Minshew in a trade to unseat Allen and Heinicke, going 7-9 and replacing him with a perceived veteran upgrade like Carr who looks decent for a while before crashing, but not catastrophically enough to avoid having to mortgage the future to trade up for a shiny new rookie QB like Spencer Rattler, who after a couple years does take a Team that has started bleeding defensive talent in free agency to the very top… of the draft, where they finally get to select a QB #1 overall! But then he busts and they’re back in the market. And so the Wheel turns.
YOU USED IT! THE TAG! SEXY REXY!!
Man, I miss the days of searching for the hidden Sexy Rexy in the comics
he never stopped. he just got better at hiding them.
Poor RG3 and Colt McCoy got freed from the Browns hydra just to be trapped in the WFT web…
Jason Campbell, too.
Brad Johnson is actually the QB coach at my HS…
So how’s he doing these days, the former Super Bowl champion
Cool.
Then there’s the anti-hydras, like the Packers and Patriots. Packers have Favre, Rodgers, Flynn, Tolzien, Wallace and Hundley since 1992. The Patriots have had Bledsoe, Secules, Zolak, Brady, Cassell, Garoppolo and Brissett since 1993.
Until last season, that is, for the Patriots.
The Bears also had Cutler for 8 seasons, though he only started all 16 games once in that time.
Washington is one of those extreme dumpster fires that no one actually thinks about until someone mentions it and you’re like “Woah, holy shit..” And their drama almost always stems from things that have little, if anything to do with the QB. So it makes sense that most people (myself included) didn’t think of them when discussing QB Hydras.
They also made the playoffs every few years, too. That makes it easy to not consider them.
Oh, God, 3 of those are Gators….So that’s our problem with QBs in the pros.
It wasn’t long ago where there were those who thinks the Giants should have traded Strahan for Brad Johnson before the Redskins got him. 1999 season made that idiocy worse until Johnson sucked in 2000 while Strahan had a bounce back from injury plagued season. This leads to another thing I wonder about, would the Vikings have been the one to play in the SB in 2001 had they gotten Strahan?
Still weird to me how people have already forgotten how recent the Broncos Super Bowl win was. People these days think of us as like a Cardinals level legacy of failure when we’ve been a pretty successful franchise overall since the 80’s and only very recently sunk into the duldrums.
The Bears starting off point is easy. Brett Favre’s first start as a Packer. The oldest rivalry and 2 QB extremes in the NFL that is brought up every game they play. Nearly 30 years of just Favre and Rodgers, with injury starts in between, vs. whatever you call what the Bears put up for starting QB. When Rodgers threw his 400th touchdown, they looked back to see when the 400th TD back for Chicago was and I believe it was somewhere around 2002.
I’m low-key disappointed Sexy Rexy isn’t wearing his cool shades.
Called it! Do I get internet points for getting it right?
WFT just signed Fitzmagic to be the starter, so it already needs updating
Fitzpatrick needs his own reverse-hydra… his single head with several bodies of the team’s he’s cycled through.
Glorious! Yes – I think Dave jinxed either TEAM or Fitzmagic. I… don’t know how I feel about this, plus doesn’t Fitz need to steal the life force of starting QB for 2-3 games of glory before gunslinger mistakes catch up with him?
I hate that it’s only been a little under two years and this is horrifically out of date.