mav1234

For the Saints, the their passing offense has generated 1565 yards (38 by T. Hill) and their rushing offense only 643 over that span. They have 7 passing TDs by Shough (1 by Hill) and 4 rushing TDs (2 by Shough). So Shough has accounted for 9 of their 12 TDs in that span (%75) and 70% of their total yards. For a rookie that is pretty impressive. Bryce is definitely contributing, though I think he's also part of why the offense as a whole struggles, given our rushing yards are pretty good, and we've all seen Canales inexplicably stop rushing near the goal line. As of the last 7 games... Panthers run game has been weaker than its height, but 3 consecutive 100 yard games and an average of 130 over the last 3 bodes well. We had a rough patch there vs the Saints, Falcons, and 49ers, but hopefully it's back on track.

It's true that we are not scoring at a much higher clip than the Saints. They're averaging ~18.4 with Shough and in that same span we're averaging ~19, so pretty close, despite Bryce having better TD numbers over that period. Both our teams are a far, far cry from the NFL average of 23.3...

I think the Saints have some pieces but are overall weak. Last week or the week before their OL was 30th in pass block win rate through the season... But QB play can change a lot there because some of that is assignments for blocking. I don't think Shough is anywhere near Stroud. If it came off that way, that wasn't intentional. It's one thing to look goodish for 7 games, be above average in some categories. Another to do it all year. And yet another to have one of the best rookie seasons of all time (Stroud). I think maybe what you're seeing is some folks trying to build up Shough to show how bad Bryce is... Not my intent. I like seeing rookies do well, though I really hope he's fools Gold because of who he plays for. It does sound like we see Shough similarly in objective ways just use different adjectives and focus on different strengths vs weaknesses... Which is fair.

I'd edited to be more clear where he was ahead of league average, but realize it was easily missed, sorry. I do hope he falls off a cliff production wise because if he actually continues at this pace it's highly likely the TDs come and then he'll be a real problem. Anyway, to the stats... Shough is substantially better than the average in completion percentage, YPG, and INT% (68% vs 64.4% and 237 vs 215 and 1.7 vs 2.2). He is pretty close to the average in Y/A (7.14 vs 7.1) and rating (91.63 vs 91.8). He is a bit below the average in TDs per game (1.3 vs ~1.5, which is hard to average exactly due to the number of players that are part of this stat), QBR (51.54 vs 54.7) and quite a bit below in TD% (3% vs 4.7%). In advanced stats, he's above the league average in intended air yards/attempt (8.1 v 7.7) and on target % (76.8 vs 74.6), while barely below is in bad throw % (16.1 vs 16.0). This jives with what I've seen - decent young player, playing at a level that looks like a veteran starter, on a bad team. I've always said (and this is true of Bryce too, I even mentioned it this year) that I am less concerned with 30+ yard bombs than consistency at 15+ yards, because you need to be able to threaten past the sticks. Shough is doing that. Vs us in week 15 he had ~one third of his passes 15ish or more yards and he was money on them, and that wasn't really an exception, he has had some nice throws outside of that. All that said, dude is just super new to the league, and once film gets out, if he does have limitations they will be exploited. No way he can get OROTY. And thanks for the kind words - I am prone to hyperbole at times, but I'm also just impressed by Shough. We'll see if he can keep it up (I hope not, unless the Saints randomly trade him lol)

This is actually why I like these videos. He'll directly comment on other players often (I don't think he did much of that in this video), explain why how what they did was good etc. It's true we don't know the plays, so we can't definitively say "that was executed perfectly" but the reality is that if you assume most of the players are doing their jobs on any one snap, and you've seen a lot of NFL offenses, a lot of these guys can guess what the play is. Not necessarily in a way where I take PFF grades as some holy grail, but enough that they can say, "this angle vs that is unwise given x y or z"... which is what he did in this video, so I appreciate that.

It's really early but yes I agree Shough looks very impressive. I kinda hope he falls off because if he looks this good already it doesn't bode well for us, lol

Also note I am not saying he 1) deserves OROTY, or 2) is better QB than X, Y, or Z. I just am impressed by him so far. But plenty of players come in for a handful of games and look good only to falter longer term.

It isn't really fair to include his numbers when he was a backup when trying to look at his performance. His Y/A is at 7.1 in starts which is right on the league average. He is low in TD%, but he's also getting rushing TDs, and using his legs a decent amount - 1.3 total TDs per game isn't bad (Bryce and Mayfield are both at 1.6). His YPG in starts puts him at 10th in the league (he's actually 40+ yards above Bryce there, his YPG in stats is 237 vs 192). That said, I'm not "sold" on him. He looks better than a ton of QBs for his team and fact he's a rookie but way too early to say much. Edit: to directly answer your question, his YPG (237) and his completion % (68%) are way above league average, his YPA (7.1) is right at league average. His QB rating in starts is also right at league average (91.6). His INT% is also way below league average (1.7%)

This is a very weird take. The reason Shough doesn't deserve it is because he's only started 7 games. He's doing crazy well for a rookie and out playing plenty of vets with a worse roster. He's waaay above league average in a number of categories during his starts and he passes the eye test in game by making plays. Meanwhile Bryce Young had one of the worst rookie seasons of all time. Still TMac deserves it more. It's only been 7 games for Shough so he doesn't deserve any awards. Even if he gets to 9 he doesn't.

Yes and no - AT was slow as fug but he sure came down with anything thrown anywhere near him.

I don't see why the media would ever need to know that kind of detail. I think it's reasonable to say that the players didn't follow the play as expected but no need to call one guy out for the wrong technique... And it's his job to get his players prepared.

It was wild. He was so harsh on him. It made it hard to listen to sometimes.

I'm not sure, the way he railed on Thielen last year, lol...

IMPOSSIBLE

Yeah it may be. They need to win out and get help I think, right? Really heartbreaking season for them... And especially how it went down, I feel for Daniel Jones.

Yup. I mean it makes sense tbh. Guy has to make a living. But he has done games where he's been overall critical of Bryce (I think last year, though may be have been early this year).

We'll see if he has a playoff push in him

He's definitely done not great games, or at least games where he's pretty critical of the players decisions. But they're not super common, understandably - the market is smaller for that stuff.

Great stuff. Didn't realize how open TMac was on that awesome play to Coker too (not a criticism of Bryce)

I noticed that too lol.

I watch every one of our games and quite a few Saints games. I look at performance in aggregate and not that one time that a player made a play or sucked. Pass block win rate is irrelevant to how slippery Bryce is. Our OL is much better than the Saints overall (but is still not amazing at pass protection). Shough basically has half a second less in the pocket on average than Bryce has... So if you think Bryce is having to bail fast, well...

If the saints have good pass protection you must really like the Panthers pass protection given how much higher their pass block win rate is, how many fewer sacks they've given up, and how much more time our QBs have to throw. (The Panthers are about league average and the Saints are 30th in pass block win rate)

I think he's been playing injured for a few weeks now. He definitely did not look right.

We have a good rookie TE in relatively limited usage, a OROTY candidate in a rookie WR, a rookie made the game-ending pick, and a rookie got us the game winning points. This is more than just Scourton's play imo.

For CPOE, Bryce is still at -0.6 on the season, good for 23rd in the league. He's been good there the last few weeks but was terrible for the weeks before (-2.9, -0.7, +0.1, -6.6, -4.2).