Bigjag57":3dkfg3z6 said:
If you have any questions about the team feel free to ask any time. Now my question would be first what do you guys think about Bradley and secondly I hear Flynn's got a weak arm, what is your assessment on him?
Thanks for the lowdown, Bigjag... here's my take:
With Bradley, it's hard to know exactly how he's going to do. When he started off here, our roster was full of overpaid, aging vets whose best years were behind them, and the performance of his defense backed that up. It was not a good defense by any stretch of the imagination. He wasn't performing any miracles with that bunch.
It does speak to his credit that Pete Carroll kept him around from the previous staff when he was hired in 2010. He is a Kiffin disciple, as is Pete, so that made the pairing work. That said, another difficulty in identifying how much of our defensive turnaround is due to Bradley is that he's been the DC here under two defensive-minded coaches. It's hard to separate what credit should go to Bradley versus what credit should go to Carroll (and also, what credit should go to our front office for going out and getting some outstanding players - upgrades at pretty much every position on D).
I guess in the end, most people here appreciated him working so well with Carroll and seeing the results of that combination on our D. But at the same time, not a whole lot of fans here are sad to see him go. The feeling is that this is Carroll's defense and that we shouldn't really see any drop-off with Bradley's departure. Plus, we had a pretty disturbing trend this season of dropping games when we had a lead late in the 4th quarter. On the road, we lost to Arizona, Miami, Detroit, and Atlanta when our defense couldn't prevent a late drive from an opponent it should have been able to stop. The Chicago road game also featured one of these late game meltdowns and very well could have been a loss had Seattle not won the OT coin flip. The Atlanta and Chicago games were particularly frustrating since we held a lead with under a minute remaining.
As to your second question, yes, Flynn is not known for his arm strength. He can't zip passes into small windows in the same way that a guy with a bigger arm can. That said, he can still get the ball downfield, and his accuracy is solid. He's a WCO guy who works best in a timing-based offense - I think he's a lot like Hasselbeck, actually. We only got to see limited evidence of his capabilities here, but I think he plays smart, efficient, safe, and uninspired football. He can likely be very, very good if he has a very, very good team around him, but I don't get the sense that he's the type of guy who will be able to take a team on his back and will them to a win. Bear in mind this is just my opinion from the limited evidence we have on Flynn (both from his GB starts and his Seattle preseason work).