joseephuss;2719516 said:
I agree. That was the weakest part of his game. There were other QBs playing at the same time that could throw better deep balls than Aikman. At the same time few of them could throw the deep out and slant as well as him. Not every QB can make every single throw. Most have strengths and weaknesses. Aikman's strengths outweighed his weaknesses and one of those weakness was the deep ball. And by weakness I don't mean he was exceptionally bad at it. He just was not exceptionally good at it.
I agree with this. I never really thought he threw a good deep ball. Not horrible, just not exceptional or even great.
I think it had to do with his mechanics. If you study the throwing motion of QBs who throw the ball with great velocity (outs and deep in routes, the mechanics are very different for those throws. It's said that Aikman would practice those outs for hours at a time on a daily basis. Now, I don't know if this is true or not but I know that he did practice those routes a great deal and it was to the point where he threw them perfectly. I can't imagine a guy who might practice those types of throws, like Aikman did, being very proficiant with the deep sideline throw because the motions for each of those throws is so radically different.
For example, you take a guy like Jim Plunkett of the Raiders. He threw a great deep ball. Very catchable, very accurate deep ball. He sucked with the deep out or deep in because he couldn't throw with that kind of velocity. He just didn't have it but he could get the ball deep and he had very good timing on his passes so he got passed a relatively weak arm by throwing routes he could throw well and good vision and anticipation. Aikman, he throw the ball flawlessly with those kinds of routes but he was not exceptional with the deep bomb. Especially the sideline throw IMO.
