CORTLAND, N.Y. -- When Mark Sanchez sat down to evaluate his performance in Saturday night's intrasquad scrimmage, he started by dividing his notebook paper into three columns: Footwork. Decision. Throw. With quarterbacks coach Matt Cavanaugh leading the session, Sanchez was graded -- plus or minus -- in each category on every pass play, their usual postgame routine. He was grilled by Cavanaugh, who hit him with rapid-fire questions as they broke down each play into sequences. Are you ready to throw the ball here? Are your eyes where they need to be? Is this a read that requires a hitch and reset or two hitches? If you step up in the pocket, how much does that affect your time clock? Sanchez passed the test easily, earning unsolicited praise Monday from Rex Ryan. "The thing that I'm impressed with about Mark is his presence in the pocket," he said. "I think it's so much better. ... The way he moves in the pocket, this is the best that I've seen him." An early-August scrimmage won't make or break his season, but it was a positive step for Sanchez, whose mechanics were a mess by the end of last year. He worked hard during the offseason on his fundamentals -- footwork, in particular -- and he believes it will make him a better quarterback. "We've had a good feeling in this building for a while," he said, reflecting on the offseason. The process started immediately after the season, when Sanchez met with Cavanaugh. It was a difficult time for Cavanaugh, whose future was up in the air. He didn't know if he'd be retained after Ryan decided to revamp the offensive staff, but he wanted to leave his quarterback with a message. "He said, 'I might be here, I might not be here, just don't forget you're judged on footwork, decision and throw,'" Sanchez said. When Sanchez returned for the start of the offseason program, he and Cavanaugh -- retained by new coordinator Tony Sparano -- broke down every dropback from the past two seasons, analyzing his footwork. There was some good, some bad. Obviously, it was bad at the end of last season, when he threw seven interceptions over the final three games. Footwork is vital for quarterback play. Everything on offense is timed -- the quarterback's dropback and the receivers' routes -- and if the quarterback takes a seven-step drop on a pass play that calls for only five steps, the entire play is out of whack. So they studied it. And drilled it, literally taking it step by step. "It's so technical," Sanchez said. "Once you get those reads and concepts down, it should look like a teaching tape to Cav. It's an intense deal. It takes a lot of work on his part, so you know he's not getting a lot of sleep." Here's an example of a practice drill for one particular play: Sanchez takes a seven-step drop. He sets his feet. He looks to his first read, the tight end. A teammate, playing the tight end, yells "No!" Meaning he's covered. Sanchez resets his feet, looks to the second read, the flanker. The flanker yells, "No!" Sanchez resets again, looks for his No. 3 read, a running back -- and throws the checkdown pass. Bang. Bang. Bang. Over and over and over. In the mid-1980s, Cavanaugh was a backup quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, where he learned a lot of his football from the legendary Bill Walsh. The 49ers' offense was based on precision and rhythm, and Joe Montana orchestrated it to perfection. "His feet are taking him to his throws," Sanchez said of Montana. "He didn't have the strongest arm in the world with Montana, but his feet were so fluid and he had such a good base under him that everything flowed." Proper footwork is easy when the pass rush isn't "live" -- i.e. the scrimmage. The trick is maintaining the fundamentals when you're getting hammered, play after play, which is what happened to Sanchez at the end of last season. It was chuck and duck. It's only natural to get antsy in the face of an intense rush, but Sanchez said, "You have to be supernatural." He used a military analogy, saying you can't deviate from the plan no matter how the circumstances change. "You have to be robotic," he said. Cavanaugh is a tough grader. He believes every pass play should be evaluated in three stages -- the footwork, the decision and the actual throw. One "minus" grade can ruin a play. To improve, the key is repetition, which is why the quarterbacks begin every practice with bag drills, an agility test that simulates movement in the pocket. They also use soft baseball bats to help with ball security -- a drop-back drill in which the quarterback gets whacked with foam bats. The idea, of course, is to force him to keep two hands on the ball. That has been a problem for Sanchez, who has 29 fumbles in three seasons. Sanchez also has placed an emphasis on learning Sparano's pass-protection schemes. Some are man-to-man, some are slide-protection schemes. It's important for the quarterback to know what's happening in front of him. If he knows where the windows are located, he can find room to slide in the pocket and deliver an unobstructed pass. "I feel like he's made strides in that area," Sparano said of Sanchez's footwork. "You have to realize that if there's a problem, you have to be open to criticism. Mark, from day one, has been very open that way and allowed us to coach him." Sparano said they took a back-to-basics approach in the offseason, adding, "Sometimes you have to go back to go forward." There was a moment in the scrimmage when all the hours in the classroom, all the drill work on the practice field, reaped a dividend. Under pressure, Sanchez slid to his left to buy an extra second, knowing exactly where his No. 3 read would be. He found running back Bilal Powell for a 5-yard touchdown pass. Sparano liked that play. "It's still early in the process," he said, "but I've seen the improvements with Mark."
I haven't really heard anything negative about what Sanchez is doing. That's a good sign. I noticed every once in a while Cimini threw in a negative. -.- BTW, it wasn't a good idea to put "Cimini" in the name of the thread. It will lower the amount of people who will look at the article.
It was actually the opposite for me. Cimini saying something positive about Sanchez ? I had to see it to believe it
This article seems like a good reminder as to why it's hard to find a great quarterback: it's a tough gig.
We'll see what happens. What I got out of the article is that Sanchez is doing a lot of thinking as the play develops and that's never good. It's gotta be a natural combination of movement and reads, not a checklist he's running down in his head on every play. Not that it's better if he doesn't do the checklist but the Giants didn't change much with Eli over his first 5 seasons. He just finally got it and the Giants evened out the personnel around him and his performance improved enough to make him a good QB instead of a shaky one. When I read "back-to-basics" the first thing I thought was the basics are going to be different for every coach and every QB. They're the things you learn in high school and then develop in college and early on in the pros. If they've reset Sanchez at square one it really doesn't bode well for his development. It either means the coaching was bad the first three seasons or Sanchez is bad.
Its the same guy coaching him since day one in the NFL. It wont be going back to basics that hurts Sanchez/Jets in 2012. It will the questions marks all over the WR position.
That's kind of my point though. If Matt Cavanaugh had to take Sanchez back to basics after having him for 3 years, well that doesn't say much about his ability to coach, does it? Either that or Sanchez is just bad and had to be taken back to basics because, well, I don't know why they'd take him back to basics in that situation. The WR's are going to be the coup de grace here but keeping Cavanaugh so that he could take Sanchez back to the basics he was supposed to have taught him in year one is just not a very promising sign for the season. Add in the offensive line is likely to have gaps again but the WR's are the weakest unit on the team? Does anybody in the Jets FO have a clue at this point?
sometimes thats all it takes is the basics, read the D, hike the ball, drop back, set feet, hit the open man, get back in the huddle K.I.S.S- keep it simple stupid Sanchez will likely improve this year, we'll see what he has on Friday
Sanchez and Cavanaugh went back to basics because like the article said, over the course of last season he was taking a beating and seldomly had more than two passing plays in a row where he could go through his drop back and progressions without being harassed. Drop back, read, throw. Seems like an appropriate role for a QB coach.
Or maybe Sanchez started to develop some bad habits because he was running for his life all season and rather than just ignore the problem, they were proactive and did all they could to correct the situation. As for the Giants never doing something like that with Manning ... ... ... http://espn.go.com/new-york/nfl/sto...li-manning-benefiting-rigorous-offseason-work Are you just making things up as you go?
Explain how going back to basics with the same coach who supposedly reinforced them in you in the first place is going to help? That's the hopeless part. Same QB, same QB coach, back to basics = ?
After every season, QBs go back to the basics. They start from square one and keep adding on. It's a way of keeping your QB calm and not overwhelming him at the beginning of the season.
Oh my fuck, dude...what are you not understanding about this article? They're reinforcing the fundamentals, footwork, reads, etc. I don't see how ANYONE could take that as a negative when his footwork was so atrocious last season. That second Dolphins game should be shown by college coaches as the perfect example of terrible footwork and reads. If anything, this is good, they're ridding him of the bad habits he picked up and are making sure he can actually execute during gametime. Something it seems like Schotty didn't give a shit about.
1. I don't know if I agree with you necessarily on this issue. Every QB goes back to the figurative 'square one' after each and every season; they go through the game tape to see which they did well, and which they didn't do well. They continually correct the mistakes in their throwing mechanics, from footwork to sight adjustment to coverage reading. I don't see what is a sign of further trouble, or how. 2. What you are describing IS what Sanchez was doing in that instance - read 1, check off, read 2, check off, read three, dump off. It is probably much longer to describe in words, but the actual progression would have been something like look - look - throw kind of motion. And... this is what nearly every QB does in any given passing play. Now the job is to devise a play with progression window in such way that it eases the read of the QB - i.e. the QB does not have to come back to the direction he has looked earlier. Usually the progression takes off from side to the middle (or middle to the side), or deep to shallow. Thus, typically the progression is devised in such way that, on playing side, the QB has a panoramic reading tree, and on the other side, the split end (or flanker) runs a time-consuming route - so that when all else fails on the playside, the QB can look and throw the ball away. So... just what is your gripe on this one, br4d? I don't see much to complain about in this article, frankly.
My gripe on this one is that Matt Cavanaugh should not still be coaching Mark Sanchez after the blow-up at the end of last season. I think asking Cavanaugh and Sanchez to do better is a mistake and it's a very costly one. We all saw Sanchez regress at the end of last year under pressure. Part of that was the talent around him. Part of it was the pressure-cooker locker room, Part of it was Sanchez just not performing very well by that point. But a big part of it was on the coaching, which let all of the above happen. The Jets should have swept Cavanaugh out with Schotty. Instead they cut the middle and as a result probably swept Sanchez out after this season.
Well - that I have to agree with somewhat; I was hoping for Dan Henning as a QB coach, frankly. (Vinny thrived in E/P under Henning's guidance as QB coach, and Pennington did exceptionally as well.) If at all, Cav is a WCO QB by training (as a backup at 49ers during Walsh's heyday), and Coryell QB by practice. I don't know how that will mesh with E/P offense. It MIGHT work, but then it might not. That said, however: I cannot fault what they are doing. They are doing fundamental things that are all necessary to be a good QB.
