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Writer's pictureSteven Poss

With All Due Respect, Everyone Needs To Quiet Down About This Patriots QB!

An article being pessimistic about one QB’s NFL capabilities while simultaneously championing another as the future of the New England Patriots.

62 Touchdowns

62 Touchdowns is 62 touchdowns. Even though they were mostly thrown against defenders who would/will become doctors, lawyers, bankers, and teachers, it’s still an undeniably impressive feat. It’s an eye-poppingly high number of touchdowns and the recently-set record for most touchdowns thrown in a single season at the collegiate level. Couple that with the new FBS record for most passing yards in a season at 5,967 yards, and you have a truly impressive stat line from Patriots 3rd-string rookie QB Bailey Zappe’s 2021 collegiate campaign. What’s even more impressive, however, is putting up those numbers in a season where your team only manages to go 9-5.

That’s a combination of statistics you’d only ever see recorded at a collegiate level. College football is an entirely different beast than the NFL. Imagine any NFL team putting up 71 passing TDs and 7000 passing yards but somehow dropping six games on the season and finishing with a record of 11-6 (numbers adjusted to account for 17 games instead of 14). Somebody would be getting fired for sure. Statistics recorded in the world of college football simply mean little to nothing in terms of translatable NFL skills. In fact, they hardly mean anything outside of anything besides college football.

Let’s take a look at the top-10 list for players with the most passing touchdowns in a single season at the collegiate level.


Most Passing TDs – Single Season at Collegiate Level. pic.twitter.com/WF5VQj8yyz — Pat Keefe (@PatKeefe12) September 30, 2022

There is a ton of disparity in terms of NFL-level success between this group of players. The ceiling is somewhere around Joe Burrow, Sam Bradford, or Derek Carr, which, let’s be honest, is a great group of capable QBs that any team would be lucky to boast as a starter over a number of years. The floor, however, is very low, with a large number of these players struggling to ever establish relevance. Since we all know Patriots QB Bailey Zappe and Bengals QB Joe Burrow, let’s go over numbers three, four, and five on the list: Colt Brennan, David Klingler, and B.J. Symons, respectively.

3: Colt Brennan (58 TDs in 2006 with Hawaii)

The only name out of these three players I would have recognized before doing my research. Basically, everyone familiar with football will have heard his name whispered at least a couple of times over the years. I remembered watching a short video documentary about him recently on youtube, which I revisited in order to research this article further, and it’s a banger for sure. If you want to check it out, here it is:



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For those of you who don’t have time for a 10-minute video, I’ll give it to you short and sweet. After a tremendous collegiate career playing for The University of Hawaii, where he set multiple FBS records, Colt Brennan was drafted 186th overall in the 6th round of the 2008 NFL Draft by the team now known as the Washington Commanders.

He played a stellar preseason to open the 2008 season but unfortunately wouldn’t see a snap that year during the regular season. The next year before the start of the 2009 season, he would be placed on the injured reserve list for the year after injuring his hamstring and his hip and would be subsequently traded to the Baltimore Ravens by Washington. He was then released by Baltimore and later signed by the Raiders, whom he was also cut by without ever seeing a regular-season snap.

After his time in the NFL, he bounced around from the UFL (United Football League) to the CFL (Canadian Football League) to the AFL (Arena Football League), never really finding his footing quite as he had during his time with Hawaii. The rest of his life afterward was seemingly a downward spiral, culminating in his untimely death at the age of 37 last year on May 11th, 2021. It was a sad and unfortunate ending to a person who was at one time considered to be one of the best football players in the world.

4: David Klingler (54 TDs in 1990 with Houston)

Drafted 6th overall in the 1st round of the 1992 NFL Draft by the Cincinnati Bengals. David Klingler would go on to be considered one of the biggest draft busts in NFL history. He finished his NFL career with a weighted AV of 11, which ranks him as the 7743rd best player since 1960. In contrast, Tom Brady, the player ranked #1 in terms of weighted career AV, is statistically about 18x more effective as a QB than Klingler was considered to be with an AV of 184.

Klingler amassed a career record of four wins and 20 losses with the Bengals before going through what was essentially career-ending shoulder surgery, managing afterward to limp through a few additional seasons as a backup for both the Raiders and the Packers. He is now an “Associate Professor of Bible Exposition at Dallas Theological Seminary,” which, after doing some research, I found out basically amounts to him having learned an assortment of various ancient languages, which he uses to decipher and analyze ancient religious texts and scriptures.

Basically, he’s probably still searching for an answer to this day as to why god would allow him to perform so poorly at the NFL level after such a promising collegiate career. Fortunately, contradictory to my theory, it seems he is quite content and happy with how his life turned out, and he is quoted as saying the following during a short, mostly uninteresting interview and article about him in the July 2007 issue of Sports Illustrated:

“It doesn’t keep me up at night that it didn’t work out.” David Klingler. Sports Illustrated, July 2007.

5: B.J. Symons (52 TDs in 2003 with Texas Tech)

The previous FBS record holder for passing yards in a season with 5,833 yards in 2003. As one of the greatest single-season performers in college football, you’d like to assume that B.J. Symons would have reached some sort of level of success upon entering the NFL. But once again, that’s simply not the case.

Drafted by the Texans in the seventh round of the 2004 NFL Draft at 248th overall, Symons would never play in a regular season NFL game. His career is summed up with a couple of depressing sentences posted on Wikipedia:

“In the NFL Combine, Symons weighed 211 pounds, was 6 feet 3 inches, and ran a 5.20-second 40-yard dash. He was selected in the seventh round of the 2004 NFL Draft by the Houston Texans. After spending a season with the Texans, he signed with the Frankfurt Galaxy and was the backup to Akili Smith. He was then signed and later cut by the Chicago Bears in 2006. Symons then played with the Berlin Thunder for the rest of the season, until the NFL Europe folded. In 2007, he signed with the Tampa Bay Storm of the Arena Football League. He was released from his contract when the team went bankrupt in 2009. “ B.J. Symons “Professional Career” Section on Wikipedia.

A couple of good callbacks here in Akili Smith, another Bengals first-round QB bust. Also, the NFL Europe teams, which some of you like me might remember from Madden 2001 as the teams you would force a computer opponent to play as, in order to win with a score that was probably something like 99-3. Also, big shout-out to the now-defunct Arena Football League. Mentioned yet again as a landing spot for the various talents who didn’t quite have the luck it takes to succeed in the NFL. Of all the various football leagues I’ve seen over the years, the AFL was definitely one of them.

Overall, B.J. Symons was perhaps one of the greatest college football players of all time, but in the end, he was destined to become… an investment banker. Just like some of those poor defenders he was putting up gaudy numbers against, I’d bet.

Avoiding Patriots QB Controversy

Honestly, as far as my opinion is concerned, if the Patriots asked me to make the choice for some reason, and it was up to me… I’m starting Brian Hoyer this week. No questions. However, I don’t doubt Bailey Zappe as much as it seems like I do right now in this article. Nobody can really know what Zappe would be able to do if he is given an opportunity. There’s always a chance he could be the best QB the NFL has ever seen. I have learned never to doubt the capabilities of anyone, anywhere, basically. You never really know until you know, you know?

For now, though, I’m starting Brian Hoyer 100% for two or three weeks over Bailey Zappe, and Hoyer would have to put up a couple of super bad Nathan Peterman-type performances for me even to consider replacing him with Zappe.

As far as I’m concerned, letting Bailey Zappe play invites an unwelcome QB controversy into New England. If he played at even a somewhat serviceable level, there would indubitably be debate over his appeal as a starter over that of Mac Jones. The flashes of potential we saw last week from Mac Jones, especially in the department of a connection between Devante Parker and Mac Jones, should be enough to keep fans aboard the Mac Jones train for at least a couple of seasons. If Mac can sling it like that consistently, he’s a top-15 QB in this league every year, and that’s far better than I think would be fair to expect from Zappe.

As for Brian Hoyer, he’s not the greatest QB of all time; that’s been proven. He’s been mostly unimpressive during his various starts as a backup during his time with the Patriots. Still, throughout the years in which he actually started as a QB for other NFL teams, his stats were considerably better than one might expect.

During the 2015 NFL season, Brian Hoyer led the Houston Texans to a 9-8 (5-4 under Hoyer) record and a wild-card playoff berth after both losing and regaining his job to fellow former Patriot back-up QB Ryan Mallett that season. Those Texans would, however, lose in the first round of the playoffs to the Kansas City Chiefs, with a legacy-dampening score of 30-0.

Hoyer also found relative success during his stint with the Cleveland Browns. The Browns would go 10-6 with Hoyer at the helm over the span of his two seasons with the team. His time there was disrupted by an ACL injury during his first season, and the Browns chose not to renew his contract after his second year with the team, which was the same year they drafted his successor Johnny Manziel.

Let’s just for a second consider Johnny Football compared to Brian Hoyer. Knowing what we know now… Who would you pick to lead your football team?

Is it fair to say that Johnny Football was projected to be a multi-year starter at an NFL level and generally considered at the time to have far more potential than Bailey Zappe is currently considered to possess? Despite how things may have turned out, you can’t argue that these are the facts.

Despite his insane college numbers, Bailey Zappe didn’t even receive a percentage of the kind of hype that Johnny Manziel had coming into the NFL. There’s a reason for such a lack of hype most of the time. NFL analysts and media outlets infamously make mistakes based on this sort of thing all the time. Still, they’re typically spot-on with their assessments and can usually pinpoint exactly how proficient any player will be at the NFL level by the time they’re in High School.

We know what we’re getting with Brian Hoyer. We’re getting a .500 record and the ability to avoid a QB controversy, which could perhaps cripple the confidence and leadership capabilities of pro-bowler and future all-pro Patriots QB Mac Jones.

As for Zappe, we have no idea what we’d be getting. We could get the next Tom Brady, but all things considered, it seems more likely that we’d be getting the next David Klingler or B.J. Symons.

In my opinion, playing Zappe isn’t worth rolling the dice and throwing away all the possibilities that Mac Jones offers. We’ve seen this QB controversy thing before in the NFL a thousand times, and it hardly works out for the better (Tom who?). We must protect Mac Jones at all costs. Start Brian Hoyer until Mac Jones is back. It’s the only option.

Disclaimer

The preceding piece is purely for entertainment purposes only and isn’t necessarily a reflection of my opinion, as I always try to keep an open mind. I try my best to see every side of every debate if I can and consider each argument carefully. I believe myself to be in the camp of not having enough insider Patriots information to make a truly informed decision one way or another.

I defer my opinion on things like this to Bill Belichick. There is not a day in this particular universe where I wouldn’t consider his football opinion to be more qualified than my own. It is absurd to me how many people think they’re better NFL head coaches than New England Patriots Head Coach Bill Belichick. Once you’ve coached in the NFL for 47 years, get back to me. (Yes, 47.)


47 Years An Nfl Coach pic.twitter.com/jChQeueCPU — Pat Keefe (@PatKeefe12) September 30, 2022

I’m on a quest to bring you fresh ideas from unique perspectives. At times, that may mean offering differing opinions and stories than those you’ll hear echo throughout your typical organized sports media outlets and Patriots coverage. Should I ever write something that may offend you greatly, enough so that you feel the need to reach out to me and express your dismay, please feel free to let me know on Twitter @PatKeefe12.

To the random small assortment of people who have offered support and encouragement, I wish you a sincere thank you for doing so. Sometimes a small amount of effort to send a message of encouragement and kindness can mean more than you’d imagine it could. If this article seems negative, I apologize profusely, and I implore you to spread positivity when and wherever possible throughout your daily goings-on. Thanks for the love, everyone; sending it right back to you, and as always, Go Patriots!

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