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And, as we've seen on numerous occasions before, you should never. . .ever. . .go full Bayless.
It appears that, with Tim Tebow out of the league, Johnny Manziel has become the new muse of ESPN personality Skip Bayless. So much so that he seems to be really, really angry that so many teams passed on him before the Cleveland Browns moved back up in the first round to take him.
Every team that passed Manziel as they fell into NFL sheep-think will regret it. How is Johnny not a Texan, Jag, Raider, Viking, Titan …
— Skip Bayless (@RealSkipBayless) May 9, 2014
This isn't even the funniest part of what Bayless said on his Twitter account. He thought it would be even better to single out the Vikings for having the nerve. . .the unmitigated gall. . .to select Louisville quarterback Teddy Bridgewater later on in Round 1.
Teddy Bridgewater will frustrate Vikings just the way Ponder did. Good kid, just not accurate enough.
— Skip Bayless (@RealSkipBayless) May 9, 2014
Look, I know that Skip Bayless is paid to be controversial and offer "hot sports takes" on various subjects such as these. However. . .holy hell, he couldn't be much farther off.
Allow me to direct your attention to the ESPN.com list of completion percentage among qualifying college football quarterbacks in 2013. Take a moment and find Teddy Bridgewater on that list. It won't take you long. . .he's really, really close to the top.
In fact, among qualifying quarterbacks, only one player completed a higher percentage of his passes in 2013 than Bridgewater did. That was Boise State quarterback Joe Southwick, who a) had less than half of the attempts that Bridgewater did, and b) averaged nearly a yard and a half less per attempt than Bridgewater. And he still managed to throw one more interception than Bridgewater did.
There were a lot of ridiculous criticisms of Teddy Bridgewater during the pre-draft process. . .level of competition, wearing gloves, Wonderlic scores, skinny knees, pointy elbows, yadda yadda yadda. . .but I'm pretty sure that this is the first time a guy that completed over 70% of his passes and had a 31-to-4 touchdown-to-interception ratio has ever been classed as "not accurate enough." In fact, I'm pretty sure that accuracy was almost universally accepted as one of Bridgewater's biggest strengths, even in the face of the other criticism.
Personally, I hope that Bridgewater continues to be this "inaccurate" for a long time in purple and gold. I'm sure that the overwhelming majority of Vikings fans feel the same way.