By Lewis Gould
WFT coach Ron Rivera wishes quarterback Taylor Heinicke would be more of a game manager than an improviser.
“Yes, I’d like to see him do things in more of a game manager way,” Rivera said. “Sometimes that is really just taking what’s given to you. Go ahead and throw the checkdown, go ahead and throw the drag or the slant, as opposed to, okay, I’m gonna wait for the dig to get into that middle window, and then in the meantime everything is closing around me as the quarterback. I’m gonna go ahead and scramble out to my right and I’m gonna wait for the guy to come across, I’m gonna throw across my body.”
“Those are the things that you don’t want to see him do,” he said. “Take what’s there in front of him. Again, it might be a simple checkdown on third-and-8, and give the guy a chance to catch it, turn and run and see if he can pick it up. You don’t have to throw the ball to a receiver that’s beyond the down marker.
“And that’s some of the things that he has to understand as far as game management. We’ll make the right decision. Not the decision because it’s hard or the decision because it’s easy, but the right one. And if the right one is throwing the checkdown, we’ll live with the checkdown. We’ll live with the good decisions, the right decisions.”
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