I disagree with you. Love was horrendous the first half of last season and the season before that. And that was after he sat behind rodgers for a significant amount of time. I was convinced he’d never turn it around. And now that I’m seeing mayfield and geno have such amazing turnarounds, it seems pretty clear that they need more time to develop. We’re seeing that a bit with Darnold. The sink or swim mentality isn’t effective and it can take a long time for a QB to build back their confidence. Research also shows that people enter flow states more often when the tasks they are doing have a good amount of challenge. But when the challenge is too high, it actually becomes detrimental. We are seeing that with Caleb now. Athletes need to enter flow state because there is too much information to process. And everything comes at you faster at the pro levels. Practice reps, preseason play time, and garbage time snaps can help with that. Over time they can work their way up. Even Mahomes sat a year behind Alex Smith. Brady sat for a while. Those are the two greatest QBs ever.
Bryce Young is a good example. He was actually getting worse compared to last year even though he had better weapons and a stronger o line.
Love might have been doing this two years ago — maybe he just needed the experience.
Baker’s best season until last was his rookie year. And Peyton played and got destroyed as a rookie. CJ Stroud was good out of the gate. Mahomes’ sitting might have cost the Chiefs a Super Bowl — he was great in his one start in Week 17.
Geno was set to start for the Jets 10 years ago, but he got punched in the face and broke his jaw, Ryan Fitzpatrick played well and Geno never got the job back.
QB does take more practice than say RB, but IMO very few who got their confidence crushed ever would have made it.
Agree re the flow state, but being bad isn’t a death sentence for a rookie QB as long as he shows *some* signs and gets better.