Kory Lichtensteiger in Senior Bowl and QB Wrap Up

First, Kory Lichtensteiger is playing in the Senior Bowl today. That's quite an honor for our team MVP, and I hope he showed good things in practice this week and I hope he can generate an NFL career. His Falcon career was simply marvelous.

Second...

On November 1, I blogged about a QB controversy in the Falcon nation, spawned by a team that had lost 3 of its last 4 games and seen poor QB play from Tyler Sheehan. Fans wanted Anthony Glaud (who is now gone).

I found the concept laughable...and now I close the case. Coach was saying that Tyler had not been healthy for the four games....and the stats certainly bore that out when I compared the first four games to the second four games. Now, I look at the last four games.

First four games 127 of 190, 1304 yards, 10 Tds, 4 Ints, 10 sacks, 66.8% and 6.9 yds/attempt
Second four games 76 of 136, 848 yards, 5 Tds, 6 INT, 14 sacks, 55.9% and 6.2 yds/attempt
Third four games 86 of 131, 971 yards, 8 TDs, 1 INT, 3 sacks. 65.5% and 7.4 yards/attempt

Clearly, this bears the theory out. Sheehan was healthy starting with the Akron game, and he was very productive in his final four games. A percentage comparable with the first third of the season season, with better yard efficiency, only 1 INT and only 3 sacks.

There are a couple stories inside the numbers.

• Tyler does tend to hold the ball when he's in trouble, and he avoided sacks.
• I also think our season offensive line really put the hammer down and protected the QB.
• You'll note that the number of attempts was way down from the pass-happy first part of the season, and somewhat down even from the dark days of October. That's because the last third of the season coincided with the emergence of Anthony Turner as our TB, and with a running game in play AND a healthy Tyler, the passing game became lots more efficient. This probably helped on the sacks, and maybe on the INTs, too.
  

I stick with my previous opinion. Tyler is our QB of the future. Since he is not a dual threat (very much), he will need a strong RB to compliment him. If he has that and if he's healthy, he is perfectly capable of leading us to a MAC title.