I've been sifting through all the articles about our franchise QB.  Before I post these stats, I want to remind everyone of 2 important facts:

1)  The ARZ game was bad.  Really bad.  The worst game of Jake's career.  Monday's game was not nearly as bad.  The ARZ game, Jake had time to make passes and forced things into double coverage and didn't read the defense very well. 

2)  The O-Line failed miserably Sunday and, as Jordan Gross said, maybe only Michel Vick in his prime could have escaped the pressure play after play on Jake.  He only made a few mad decisions in that game.  The first INT was double tipped (line and Smith tipped it), the fumble was ridiculous fail by the O-line, the second INT was a forced pass to Smith, a good play by the CB, and Jake just trying to put the game on his shoulders and make a play.  The third INT was Jake doing what the coach told him to:  complete a screen pass to D-Will.  The problem is the rush was so quick and so many blitzed that not only was he hit in less than 2 seconds, but the actually blitzed D-WIll too, hence the pick. 

The last INT I blame Fox for.  We ran 2 long passes to Moose at the start of the game and Jake out-threw him both times because Moose is too slow for those.  That messed up Jake's timing--I promise.  The Smith deep pass he under-threw not because of his arm being weak but because he tried to lay off of it some so that he wouldn't over throw again.  In all honesty, that pass was 3-5 yards from being a 70 yard TD that could have changed the game.  I blame the stupid Moose routes messing up the flow of Jake's pass.


Ok, with that stated as what I believe, I have heard on multiple occasions that Jake didn't really have it last year, especially not after the Bye week.  I have heard he hasn't had it since the NFC Championship game in '05 too.  To avoid a long post, here are the FACTS on how Jake did last year:

http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/players/gamelog?playerId=1693&sYear=2008

He had 6 games last year with a Passer Rating higher than 100, and 4 of those were 120+.

He had one really awful game against Oakland.  If you take that game out, his rating for the year goes up from 85 (which is one of the best in the league FYI), to 89.53.  If you take out the first TB game, which the entire team struggled, not just him, it goes up to 93.16!!!

That would make him the 7th best passer last year, just .6 points behind Aaron Rodgers for 6th place.

My point is that Jake had a pretty phenomenal year last year that he doesn't get proper credit for.  He had 1 super bad game and 1 bad game, a few mediocre games, and the rest were pretty incredible.  50% of his INT's in the regular season came in the Oakland game and the first TB game.  Also, he only had 15 passing TD's b/c our running game was so good.

Now, the media lie that pisses me off:  "Jake fell off the map after the bye week."  Did he?  Really?

The Oakland game was bad.  We won b/c of our running attack.  Period.  But Jake rebounded after that and was a Top QB.

He followed that up with games of ~86, 97, 104, 74, 94, 91, and ended the season with an amazing 129.2 against NO.  So other than the 2nd Tampa Bay game in which he really played solid for us, he only ended the season with one game below 90 passer rating and 2 games above 100, averaging a 96.43 passer rating the last 7 games of the season.  Yea, he really fell off the map......

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THE VERDICT:   

Jake just doesn't play well with breaks.  He builds off momentum.  He generally doesn't open the season well either.  Since our QB, here are his season opening ratings:

2003:  77.5  W  (11-5 record, infamous Super Bowl run)
2004:  88.0  L  (We lost Smith in opener and had lots of injuries)
2005:  65.5  L  (11-5 record, Pro-Bowl Season, loss in NFC Championship) 
2006:  56.1  L  (Jake was injured and Keyshawn disrupted the locker room)
2007:  125.4 W  (Jake started a career year, 3 games above 100pr b4 injury)
2008:  82.1  W  (Solid performance; 12-4 season...you know the rest)

Looking back historically, Jake never lights up the opener and we all know how he feeds off momentum.  He had 6 months between games and the O-line never gave him a chance to win back the trust of nay-sayers.

If he continues to suck into our Bye and hasn't come out of his funk by week 8, then yes, he is done.  But goodness alive, we are turning on a historically 8-12th ranked QB in the league and pronouncing the end of his career without analyzing the facts at all.

I just did more in 20 minutes of looking at stats than you will read in any stupid article by the AP, Pat Y, or anyone in the national or Charlotte media.  If you read the entire post, you should at least agree that it's WAY to early to tell if Jake has "lost it" and that history would indicate he has a SOLID game coming up on Sunday for ATL.