- wandler20
- Nov 13, 2002
-
How many Championships?
|
Someone post the TLDR of all the QBs who are going to be drafted tonight.
Here's the long version:
Tier 1 of the QB prospects effort post. I will probably adjust my reads of these guys over time, but this is my usual starting point for when I start looking at prospect comparisons. A reminder—calling someone Josh Allen as a prospect <> Josh Allen now.
Coleridge Bernard Stroud - Ohio State
Full disclosure, I have watched every single snap of his college career.
I like to start these with positive notes, so let’s consider his best attribute first. If you are trying to build a vertical stretch offense that uses your sidelines as a constraint, he might be one of the best prospects you’ll see. Of the big 4, he’s the only one that can throw deep to any third, with anticipation, at any speed necessary. Every other QB in the class struggles with at least one of those. If you look at some of his work in Mills, Scissors, or the Deep post, he is downright surgical in maximizing a receiver’s range and putting a ball where a defender may be close but not really able to contest. Watch the rose bowl, Michigan state games, or some of his throws against Utah to see what I mean.
Similarly, he unquestionably has an NFL arm. He’s never winning long throw or hard throw, but he’s more than capable of giving you speeds and angles in the Rodgers/Murray range. He’s shown those speed and angle changes within his release without having to change arm angles which indicates he’s very conscious of his release point and feels the ball well.
So what gives? Rare vertical ability without arm talent caveats of being a fastball guy or moonballer should theoretically mean he’s capable of doing the single hardest thing to do from day one. Well, there’s a question of the things he doesn’t do that makes me question how he works from day one.
First off, let’s talk about processing. For those who don’t remember my stupid effort post from last year, the Ohio State passing offense is a bit of an odd duck because of the parts it merges. Ryan Day is Kelly guy who loves motion and optionality to essentially guarantee any play can morph into something workable if the initial coverage would win. Think the option routes of the run and shoot, where you get away with it through superior pass blocking and receiving talent and don’t have to do things like half roll your QB to keep him alive. As such, his QBs tend to hold the ball a while by design. Fields was the most pronounced at this, but Stroud has the same eye discipline of staring downfield where he knows he will eventually have an opening, which he usually reads correctly and does.
Now, he makes good anticipation throws off those reads but even a nominal “failure” of holding the ball and reading is better than staring down a receiver or blindly throwing. Those both are decent percentage plays that won’t put your team in a bad position. That said it’s a play concept that is executed differently in the league. Tag/option routes are a thing, but the overall tendency is that you change things at the line and read things before the snap based on tendencies to simplify things and guarantee you’re on the same page with a receiver then apply that post-snap read in addition. Telling them to make a slant work depending on what coverage they see is a lot simpler than telling them to decide if a slant or sluggo is a better move—think of it as finding a hole or space. Usually the guy who gets the option routes in an NFL offense is an Amari Cooper or JaMarr Chase who runs clean and can attack at any field portion—you’re more willing to let other receivers specialize or run specific routes with the knowledge they should adjust them. So, that in mind, we need to consider that his work pre-snap is more important now while acknowledging that his post-snap reads get the ball largely to the correct spot. The problem is, what happens if your pre-snap work is wrong?
In big games and short yardage situations (red zone/4th down), CJ flatly misses obvious reads at the line. Watch Penn State or Notre Dame and you’ll see him get blitzed in moments where the pressure is obvious, but he’s too locked in on a space to change and doesn’t feel the pressure until it’s too late. I hesitate to call this failing under pressure, because it’s not a situation where he suddenly misses wildly or makes huge mistakes and often still makes great throws, but you don’t get extra points for making things harder on yourself. He compounds this by being a dude who absolutely hates checking down over the middle, which looks like a mixture of holding the ball long enough for inside defenders to crash and looking for the big play, despite the fact that just checking to the flat every time is less likely to get yardage than throwing the check when a guy hasn’t had a defender crash down. My theory is that he’s likely treating these situations with a QBs first lesson in dealing with blitzes—throw into the pressure. The problem is, that’s one of the easiest traps to set for a defensive coordinator, and it’s something that you theoretically should help solve for with protection calls so you can keep your receiving options instead. Sometimes, he gets around this by accident by just depending a drop or turning something into a half roll. The deep drop tends to work better just off of his ability to keep his body in a line, but the half roll is frustrating because his unwillingness to grab easy yardage means guys cheat backwards in scramble situations and make receivers work back.
This also brings me to my final major concern—what those checks at the line indicate. Remember, there are essentially two types of calls at the line: change the protection and change the play. If he’s missing protection calls, maybe he’s making audibles at the line to get favorable route combos in the vacated space to hit the constraint. Well, he somehow has fewer responsibilities there than Fields did. The coaches have openly said he only has limited audible control at the line and frequently send in “check with me” calls instead of letting him make the calls himself, which means they frequently run far too much play clock and get behind. This didn’t happen with Fields, or even Haskins for that matter. Those guys had near full audible control and were known for making quick glances pre-snap to take a favorable matchup or box. Maybe it’s a factor of reducing things to keep CJ loose or Day being a control freak, but it’s very very odd to me that a guy who is this good at narrow window throws and pattern recognition just isn’t trusted the same way as his predecessors at the line, especially when he has so many motion and shift controls that the offense has picked up which he clearly is told to key on.
From a purely physical profile, he probably needs to work on his feet as well. If you watch him miss long throws or feel pressed to get downfield, he will miss high more frequently than not. Two mechanical issues cause this. He will occasionally throw his own release point off by planting his back leg and dropping too far compared to his front leg (the Dwayne Haskins back foot special). Similarly, because he is aware of when he’s leaking power, he will wind up more than he needs to and do a half circle going up to his shoulder. On the Tebow scale, it’s about 1/3 of a Tebow, but it does make him occasionally predictable in the vertical game and cost him some rhythm and timing. Relative to other QBs, these are fairly small, I think he actually handles his steps and pocket footwork very well with just occasional overstepping leading to some of those back leg problems, but it is worth noting that he probably has a few extra MPH he could get on the ball without much work.
So what do I see as a good fit for him? Flatly, I would love him with someone in the Arians tree. He can handle the verticality and post-read work, maybe even some drop back play action to take advantage of his accuracy there. Just get him established in proper pre-read procedures and keep him from overthinking things. The McVay system gets credit at times for being training wheels, but it’s reliance on spacing the middle and cluster sets isn’t going to simplify things for a guy who hates checking down and is at his best throwing vertically—that system is predicated on horizontal stretches to create alleys that later turn vertical. Maybe you could consider something like what the Lions do iterating off of Payton’s stuff to let receivers work and take advantage of tag routes to avoid needing some of the tweener personnel. Alternatively, something like the Titans system that use motion and personnel to essentially create gravity in a passing game with odd pieces like TEs or RBs might make sense because he’s the type of QB who can actually do something with it long-term, even if it’s less user-friendly at the start due to the time it takes to develop feel on the narrower margin windows. Basically do anything to keep him away from Shannyball and the offense entirely predicated on 6 yard balls over the middle.
As a prospect, I like him as a more physically put-together Tua post snap—same type of point guard post-snap recognition mixed with bizarre lack of trust pre-snap and occasional self-inflicted difficulties from looking downfield or missing checks. I would also compare him to Derek Carr on some levels where I see his downfield and sideline ability as something potentially special but don’t love what he does in the first 5 yards of the field and worry that he falls in love with the 10+ yarder too much. Both of those guys came from a position of confidence and trusting their arms enough that they threw some rough picks in early in their careers, Carr from too tight of windows, Tua from too narrow for his soft moon balls. Carr has done better at cleaning that up but also has more margin inherent in his velocity. Stroud’s arm is in between those guys (if closer to Carr), but I do worry about that same initial correction when he doesn’t have utterly dominant receivers and has to adjust. The dolphins essentially had to retrain Tua to look at the middle and then realized even that wouldn’t work and grabbed some receivers so far you could just throw moon balls and play the hits. Carr, they just started letting him rip and realized turning 50/50 into 60/40 downfield would develop space elsewhere and gave him reps to figure it out. Stroud’s smart enough to figure it out, but those are important moments for patterning your game long-term. Definite first round guy, not worried about him as a first 16 prospect because he’s not any riskier than anything else we’ve seen there.
Bryce Young - Alabama
Do you remember Doug Flutie? Not in the sense of “designed QB run” but the guy who in the hands of a competent Madden player would scramble right and then throw downfield because anyone can get open after 6 seconds or escape downfield if you played blanket zone. Bryce comes as close to inspiring the antsy, annoyed feeling as any QB I’ve seen in a while. He’s more elusive than most running QBs not named Kyler Murray but not as deadly as Lamar, and he has just an uncanny ability to make fringe plays in space that feel like he’s always getting away with something. Dude has a lot of plays that he absolutely should have taken and been dead on (Texas) where he got away with it and made a big play. That is, in a sense, his entire game in a microcosm—getting away with a handful of things that should kill him because of game sense.
So let’s talk for a minute about escapability. For years, this was a roundabout way of saying a scrambling QB was less valuable because they took obvious hits in the open field and overused the ability to “give up” on reads as opposed to reading all 4 receivers on Spider Y Banana. “Oh what happens when someone makes him throw?” The answer for Bryce has historically been “he’s probably fine???” He routinely makes timing throws over the middle and at the sticks where I’m impressed at his ability in and out of the pocket to see and throw things that other QBs with his height disadvantage just haven’t done. Teams that contained him learned that he can step up and hit a seam or mesh guy. Teams that flush him learn he can figure out if the sky or hook defender doesn’t have the range to close the receiver on his side. If Stroud has a tendency to feel like a guy who has studied all the post-snap film, Bryce feels like a guy who studied all the pre-snap and breakdown plays. He even recognizes the vertical game, though I think the offense this year may have created some bad habits. You can see it in the year over year look at the offense, where the receivers go from having two extremely gifted space eaters who know when to sit down or beat a guy versus a bunch of physically talented receivers that just can’t put things together or improvise. In that sense, we should probably talk about Bryce as an individual before we start trying to assess his performances.
When I watch a guy who runs this well, there’s an immediate check you make: “what do his feet do when he stops to throw”. The mobile quarterback stereotype is the guy who foresakes planting his feet and form for moments where he makes a team choose what they’re going to defend. Bryce, to his credit, looks like he tries to gather his feet when he can, particularly when he looks deep. He does the shuffle/hop step and pretty much always either gets a plant foot down or has learned the type of cruise missile release where he can overcorrect for a lack of plant and arc a ball. I think the fact that he’s a better agility runner than pure speed helps a bit—guys like RG3 did a lot but ultimately wanted to run in a line and make minor cuts. Bryce looks for space laterally, and he’s got the ankle and knee work to somehow keep it all going. That works if you have the arm to push a ball on limited motion and it’s even better if you can get your feet down and into a ball on a dime, which he has shown an ability to do.
So let’s talk about his ball placement. When you watch him with Williams and Metchie, it looks like he’s borderline psychic inside the numbers and just feels where they’ll end a route from before the snap. When you watch him with anyone else, you realize immediately that he plays in an offense that is predicated on a level of execution that doesn’t work with most college receivers. If you watch guys like Brooks, they will be two steps slow of the timing route on an in or round a flag route in such a way that a corner catches up. Bryce is good enough that this usually just means it becomes a 70/30 ball, but a lot of his bad or multi pick games look like situations where a receiver is out of sync and lets a corner surprise them. With better receivers, he objectively throws these guys open—we’ve already seen it on tape. You do question if he necessarily needs receivers of that caliber to maximize his ability which hints at some of my concerns. It also doesn’t help that they don’t really run the ball well anymore so no one respects their play action anymore.
So what bugs me? Bryce has exactly one rap to beat—how’s the arm strength? I have very good confidence in his air; he’s not Mahomes but he can objectively lead guys or get a ball up when he needs to which is the difference between being Kyler or modern Russ. What worries me is his ability to rip the ball. When you watch his deep balls, he loves to lead guys on a carry but doesn’t always throw the ball hard, whether to an open guy or just hitting a vertical window. I’m of the mind that I think he has the arm to do it but has picked up some bad habits from borderline needing to run the scramble drill this year to keep that offense in the game. If you scramble, you can open a window and chuck it downfield. A lot of guys use that to get away with soft, arcing throws. The best NFL QBs at this point are able to create 80% of that receiving space but make a faster throw where a guy can get RAC as opposed to catching a ball and getting thrown down. When you throw to Jameson Williams, this doesn’t hurt. When it’s jacorey brooks, it does. He has to learn when to call the scramble early and maximize his throwing windows.
Additionally, we do have to have the small quarterback dialog. First off, he’s probably 5’10 if I had to guess. Can’t be more than 190, maybe 180. At that size, I don’t want him taking hits, especially with his frame being more slight than most slot receivers. I don’t see evidence of the sight line issues that Russ has. When his body breaks down though, what happen? His arm, when maxed out, torques pretty violently like Mayfield. Is that sustainable for him at 30? Is it reasonable to think he does much more than improve his velocity with footwork? Probably not, considering there’s just only so much mass he can throw at the ball when he’s maximizing his own acceleration in his arm. I’m not sure this is enough to say no to him, but it’s a knock that is unique to him in this class, and it will impact his fit with some teams.
People will compare him to Kyler. I flatly think Kyler was a better prospect. More consistent velocity, similar ball placement, similar running ability, less slight of frame. I do think he can give you a similar offense without much additional work, at least in the short term. To me, Bryce looks like what we got out of Watson in the passing game, right down to the bizarre picks, but his ball arc and movement look more like something between Kyler and Ryan Tannehill. He’s another guaranteed first rounder to be, but the longer this goes on the more I feel like he should be QB2.
Will Levis - Kentucky
Remember when Jamarcus Russell was a huge prospect because he had Josh Allen’s arm before Josh Allen? He basically never showed anything more than gunslinging to extremely talented receivers in open windows, but we all got so enamored with the tools that we didn’t look at his actual tendencies. He basically soured an entire generation on “tools” guys because why wouldn’t you have your poo poo together before you get to the league. Reader, I am very worried that Will Levis is going to be that player for “mechanics” guys.
Let’s talk for a minute about “ideal” mechanics and where that’s evolved. We’ve essentially grown in the last 40 years from there being “1 perfect mechanic” to “can you repeat it consistently, and how accurate/on time is it?”. We have never had this many bizarre or unorthodox style throwing motions since the days of Joe Namath and people not caring about throwing motions because throwing means you’re losing the game. The flip side is, this has essentially ruined our brains into questioning what the “best” set really would be if so many things make it work for so many guys.
Enter Will Levis. His wrist and arm look like he’s been in the league for 10 years while in the throwing motion. No hitch. No exaggerated elbow pull. Just ball at ear level, pull around, exit angle determines the arc. Need touch? He can soften it up with his shoulder or his wrist. Need a short curl? He will release the ball in front. When he is kept clean in the pocket so he doesn’t have to think about his feet and actually steps perfectly, he has shown the most speeds and angles of anyone not named CJ Stroud in this category. He has a Rodgers/Fields caliber arm, both in velocity and ability to take something off. Zero concerns about if he can theoretically hit NFL throws.
But the game isn’t played in a clean pocket, especially when you are going to get drafted to a team that is drafting high. His tendencies under felt pressure are to essentially bail right, throw a wide check down, or lock in on a read? Sound familiar? Yes, in many ways he behaves like CJ Stroud on paper but without the rationale present of “my guys will beat you downfield”. In fact, they both even get the deer in headlights “completely missed a protection call” look, but despite having a faster release, Levis will either get sacked or fall backwards into an even worse sack. He does not throw the ball away right now, largely because he still thinks of himself as a running quarterback. This extends to somewhat mailing in his play action work because he’s always thinking he can move on and scramble from the read with the space generated by the fake handoff.
Which brings me to his biggest issue, ball placement. As I look at his tape, it seems like he has decent feel for where his receivers are. Despite that, he throws high A LOT. Watch him against Florida or Tennessee and you’ll see a guy who is hitting open receivers but making them jump and lose momentum over the middle because he keeps throwing off his back foot or falling off the ball. People will call this an overthrow, but it’s really just him over striding and failing to feel how far back he’s going to get his foot back around. Same thing when he runs wide, never gets his foot around/in front, falls off the ball, misses high. It’s uncanny that his shoulders, arm, and wrist always look so consistent and good yet get let down by his feet this much.
So let’s talk then about the offense and the way he handles things. Prior to this year, they had Liam Coen—McVay disciple—running the cluster/bunch set passing game. For those unfamiliar, you create miserable pre-snap alignments and run things like wheels, mesh, shallow cross, anything that gets you running towards other receivers on your way to space. When you watch Levis at his best, it’s single coverage on our breaking or fading routes putting a ball on a line or over a receivers shoulder where he can run to grass. At his worst, he’s hanging balls in the post or seam and giving safeties a chance to erase him for giving a receiver a chance to catch a high ball. The biggest problem with his game right now is that it’s incoherent. You don’t want to make him a pure sideline/cluster guy because a high ball can be picked easily in the league from there, and his accuracy leaves when he moves. He’s too inconsistent with his feet and decisions downfield to be a vertical guy given how often he misses the existence of safety help and softens up too much. Right now, he just has an inability to be consistent. Granted, his offensive line was bad this year, but you should theoretically be able to run a brutal quick game with him and they still didn’t because of his inconsistency with his feet.
Additionally, his pre-snap reads are weird. The offense couldn’t block this year, but he’s missing extremely obvious pressure sets and them looking for illogical receivers on throwbacks or other hard throws trying to out-think a blitz. Doesn’t even really do the “throw where the pressure was” consistently, nor does he seem to acknowledge obvious alleys from
the coverage shell in favor of just picking a matchup and staring. I legitimately think someone can kick his rear end with some weird zone calls and blitz traps right now with everything he’s out on tape.
So who is he? To start, a great answer to how Zach Wilson would’ve been treated without an OL made of 30 year olds in college with bad protection calls and absurd overconfidence in his arm. His ability to move yet sudden loss of accuracy with his feet looks a lot like Tannehill did coming out. Somewhere between those two is what we’re looking at. He’s probably going to get picked by a team on the McVay tree that’s comfortable with his grasp of their offense, but I would really really like to see him in something like Daboll or the Cardinals offense with an opportunity to create natural space off of matchups and try to enforce the other team to play man coverage so you can maximize the odds his footwork and inconsistent reads don’t hurt you in the short term. If you can fix his feet, which is at least easier than the upper body, he could easily turn out to be a top 10-15 QB in the league—I’m just not sure about a guy who is inconsistent enough that he can’t make an offense more threatening than this. QB3, maybe 2 if you’re utterly terrified of protecting Bryce.
Anthony Richardson - Florida
Man someone get Josh Allen an edible arrangement for all the money he’s getting tools-y quarterbacks who are dynamic as players but not as throwers when they’re prospects.
Right off the bat, let’s discuss a few things. 1. He is not Josh Allen. Allen had bad receivers, no talent around him, and no history in the QB development pipeline that everyone who comes out of major high schools and colleges out there. 2. He is not Cam Newton. Despite being a similar freakish athlete with raw tools, Cam demonstrated touch, accuracy, and feel for throwing lanes that Richardson has essentially never demonstrated to this point. 3. He is not Patrick Mahomes. Mahomes had 800 different speeds and angles in his arm and needed time to re-learn some footwork and learn an offense that allows him to maximize his own variability.
So, now that the mouthbreathers have been satisfied, why is this guy being talked about as a first rounder? For one, borderline unlimited arm talent. He hits 50 yard balls on a line that essentially Stroud and Levis have shown but needed considerable more effort and footwork to his. He’s probably a 4.5/4.6 runner who can punish soft man coverage and push things up field. He has a feel in space and in the pocket for guys coming up to him and when he needs to extend a play.
So what gives? The man has exactly one speed, and it is FASTBALL. Goal line fade? Hit the receiver in the eye on an upward trajectory. Shallow cross? Better get thrown so hard it breaks a finger while getting tipped to a linebacker. Curl? Throw the ball so hard that it gets to the stands if the receiver mistimes a jump. He has no, and I mean no, ability to consistently take something off or even soften up beyond some type of deliberate shove work. I don’t know how this happens when he’s played quarterback since 2016, but just no one has gotten him to figure out how to change speeds.
So let’s talk about his mechanics and what’s behind this. He winds up, more of a pull straight back than down or overly torquing his shoulders. It shows up on a number of throws particularly deep and on play action, for apparently no reason. My hypothesis right now is that it’s a timing thing—he’s waiting for the guy to open and not consciously trying to put more on it so much as maximize his odds of hitting a spot. Honestly, I don’t worry too much because the ball gets there at an appropriate time regardless. His footwork is surprisingly decent for a guy who moves like he does as well. He steps in to most throws and only consistently shows an error in dropping his back knee too low which flattens balls out at times. This could actually get worse in the nfl when he fees pressure more consistent and can’t run away as simply, but we’re projecting here a bit. Regardless, off-platform throws are not a problem here in him looking significantly worse than throwing within structure from a mechanical standpoint which is nice.
What scares me beyond his touch is his reading and ball placement. First off, he doesn’t really ever read coverages well. Part of that is the offense relying on RPO/Power read looks that give him immediate pick and roll type reads, but bringing out coverage rotations and odd man principles is enough to frustrate him right now into either forcing a ball or just tucking. Coming from Mullen, I’m a bit shocked by that given that Mullen’s guys usually at least know what they see, even if they can’t do anything about it. More or less confirms why he was in Dan’s dog house despite being better than Emory Jones. Napier clearly didn’t believe in his reads or the guys around him either given how hard they leaned on using the option to create any other offensive stress on the field. Beyond all that, he just always puts the ball on a straight line, regardless of the route. That works with slants and hard curls, but this turns you into a predictable thrower for an NFL defense. If I tell my guy to always bail and be ready for the hard throw at the guy’s head, I can set traps for you even in man. You HAVE to be able to soften up just to punish corners who try to cheat for fast ball placements.
I’m also not 100% sure he does anything pre-snap beyond pointing at the read target and saying hike. His current offense isn’t asking him to do protections, and he did it poorly enough to make Mullen pick a subpar option. He could have a natural feel for it given his spatial awareness in the pocket, but it’s just another thing to add to the list of items he needs to work on.
So, let’s discuss his future. If he fixes everything and developed even a top 15 mental game, Richardson could be a pro bowler on the tools he has. He is maybe 10% less in the raw arm strength than Mahomes/Allen/Herbert, but he is a better runner right now than any of them. The question is, do you have a fanbase that can handle the growing pains? Do you have a coach who will give him 2 years to show any growth? Is the light every actually going to come on for a guy who has played the position for 8 years, had quarterback coaching this whole time, and isn’t coming at this from a lack of knowledge? I don’t know. I think he reminds me a lot of Allen or Herbert where the misses on tape are so bad I just can’t get past them, but his immediate running ability probably buys him more initial time than he would otherwise have in a league that tolerates growth for guys with his ceiling. I struggle a lot to think of an adequate comparison even with those two. He’s a worse passer right now than either, and the adage of guys rarely improving their completion percentage in the NFL comes to mind. On the other hand, he literally only has one speed and should have so many more options than this with just some really obvious drills and work. The sky is the limit here, but he’s in a position where he could be called a legitimate Josh Allen prospect or just a Terelle Pryor where he never puts the arm to work. Don’t think of this as a test of what prospect he best resembles—think of it as a test of character for the NFL team that wants to try to make this work. If you get him in the 2nd, roll the dice. If it’s a 1st but you’re replacing a starter in two years, maybe. Otherwise? There’s a lot of red flags here that say to me he’s not going to have the sudden growth Allen or Herbert did because it’s not like he was undiscovered or misused in college. QB4 as is with potential to make assholes of us all
Quick hits on the guys without first round potential to come.
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2023 16:39
