Jason Campbell

Campbell will back up Brandon Weeden for the Browns.

Campbell was an important signing for the Bears, but barring an injury to Jay Cutler, he won't see the field much in 2012. However, Campbell's presence does shore up a much needed positional upgrade after the backup quarterback follies of the past couple years in Chicago.

Although he’s an underwhelming NFL starter, Campbell’s playing time seems relatively safe in Oakland. While he doesn’t show an ability to make plays as a passer, his athleticism and big arm have clearly won the intrigue of Al Davis. Campbell can be expected to post a quarterback rating in the mid-80s and make a few nice plays as a runner, but his touchdown percentage annually ranks near the bottom of the league, and his lack of big-play ability is compounded by the lack of established targets in Oakland.

Campbell avoids mistakes and sports a decent QB rating every year. Campbell has a big arm to match the Raiders' speedy receivers, including a promising playmaker in second-year-man Louis Murphy. Darren McFadden can be a weapon catching passes out of the backfield. TE Zach Miller is a playmaker who can control the seam area of the field. He’s an OK backup if you have a top-shelf starter, though, because he’ll never do the really stupid things that cost him a job or even cause him to get benched mid-game

He’s gotten a bum rap in Washington. Jim Zorn and the entire organization seemed eager to turn the page, flirting with the Broncos to acquire Jay Cutler and then trying hard to position themselves to trade up for USC’s Mark Sanchez. But Campbell is about where Eli Manning is statistically, albeit without the hardware. In other words, he’s shown some signs that he can develop into a championship-caliber QB. His 36 starts are half as many as Manning’s, and his QB rating is higher than Eli’s – 80.4 to 76.1. Both have averaged 6.4 yards per attempt. And Campbell also improved last year (84.3 rating), his first in Zorn’s system. The Redskins would do Campbell a favor if they played to his strengths and attempted more downfield throws. Last year, just 15.4 percent of their attempts were 11-to-20 yards from scrimmage; the league average was about 22.3 percent. This signals a lack of confidence by the coaching staff because Zorn was the quarterbacks coach for the Seahawks offense in 2007 when Matt Hasselbeck was league average in our FAS attempts. The focus on short throws is why Campbell was 30th in yards per completion (a pathetic 10.1). We like Campbell’s accuracy – just 10.9 percent poor throws, which is upper echelon. But the receiving corps is poor. Santana Moss stayed largely healthy last year, but seems to have lost some explosiveness as the big plays were lacking. Antwaan Randle El is a poor fit as a starter and better pegged as a slot-man/gadget guy. Second-year men Devin Thomas and Malcolm Kelly must make a quantum leap for this unit to be helpful to Campbell, and the odds of that are low even though both were second-round picks in 2008.

We expected improvement from Campbell last year, given his sound 2006 fundamentals and an offensive system that had turned lesser talents into fantasy assets. But Campbell never took off. Now the coaching staff is out of town, replaced by Jim Zorn, a proponent of the West Coast offense as the former QB coach under Mike Holmgren. Sherman Smith, a former Titans RB coach, will call the plays. We expect this new Redskins offense to be fantasy friendly for Campbell. The team put a lot of effort into upgrading a wide receiver corps that wasn't bad, drafting two big wideouts in the second round. They seem almost desperate to add an elite weapon at the position. This indicates their desire to emphasize the pass. Last year, nothing about Campbell's game was more than middling. His performance on first down, on 11-to-20-yard passes and in the red zone were all below average. He needs a weapon as you move close to the end zone when teams blanket tight end Chris Cooley. All the other Redskins receivers are too small. That's why he converted only 2-of-15 attempts inside the five into TDs.

Campbell did OK, but he wasn’t a rookie, having sat and watched all of 2005. We’re also not sure whose offense this is anymore. Yes, Joe Gibbs and Al Saunders are from the Don Coryell coaching tree. But Saunders has always been more run oriented than Gibbs, who many forget was the offensive coordinator for those explosive Chargers teams. The Redskins were very run oriented last year (54 percent of first-half plays). And they now have a two-headed backfield, so 500 rushing attempts seems likely to be the minimum. We have to mention the 10 TD passes in 207 attempts even though we don’t think this rate is sustainable for Campbell without a quantum leap in the rest of his game. Star wideout Santana Moss isn’t stout enough to be a go-to receiver.

Campbell will start training camp battling new arrival Todd Collins for the Skins backup QB job. By preseasons end he should be fully entrenched as the number two guy and quarterback of the future. Campbell has put in a lot of time this offseason with the coaching staff studying the playbook. He seems to have a strong understanding of the amount of work required at this level and just needs to get some playing time.

The Redskins traded three draft picks to move up and get Jason Campbell. He will spend 2005 on the bench learning while Patrick Ramsey starts. If Ramsey gets hurt or is ineffective Campbell will get the opportunity to learn on the fly, otherwise he is not expected to see many snaps in 2005.