All-22 Film: Reviewing Newton's 2016 Season Deep Throws

[Saca312]

Just now, Hogmolliesmaht said:

Cam can obviously make some fantastic throws and does great things with his feet, but it's not unreasonable to ask for just a little bit more consistency. He can put up a 65% completion average for the rest of his career if he just takes what the defense gives him more often instead of going 30yds downfield on 2nd and 5. That's all I'm asking for. We have the playmakers now so he shouldn't have to take as many chances.

This will be where he shines. We got legitimate threats all around him, whether it be Kelvin Benjamin, Shepard, Samuel, McCaffrey, or even Funchess (if he gets his act together). All these guys are proven upgrades and weapons Cam will be able to utilize to destroy defenses.

Our offensive line got an upgrade, and Moton may even be an upgrade over Williams, who was also an upgrade over Remmers. Cam Newton should have more time and space, and Matt Kalil has upside.

Cam Newton should break out and dominate real soon.

[Hogmolliesmaht]

Even before the upgrades though, there are times when he has ignored the underneath guys on early downs and there is no urgency to get it down field. I love Cam, but does need to work on that. There is nothing wrong with dinking and dunking a little bit more as long as you're moving the chains.

[Ball4life]

1 hour ago, Saca312 said:

Let's see where it all went downhill in a nice little analysis of one key play.

In the following GIF, Brandon Flowers of the Patriots murdered Matt Ryan in what would be a critical play of the Superbowl. Matt Ryan would step back further than normal and hold the ball longer than normal, indicating he was hoping for a deep pass instead of a safe play.

Believe it or not, he had enough time to make a quick progression and understand he would be facing a blitz. He had an outlet receiver wide open for the most part.

Unfortunately, Matt Ryan didn't look Freeman's way. Shanahan had a safe option ready to fire, but Matt Ryan botched it. A short dump off to Freeman would've gained a safe 1-2 yards or more, but Matt Ryan did not go his way. Right at this point the ball should've been in the air going right in Freeman's hands.

Thus, the result was a sack. Shanahan didn't call a run play, but he didn't leave Ryan without a guaranteed sure safe play. 

This is where Matt Ryan deserves more blame than not. Shanahan got a lot of heat for the playcall, but Matt Ryan didn't go for the safe play. Shanahan tried to give Ryan an opportunity for a possible big play WITH a safe option in store. Matt Ryan didn't go for his safe option, and the rest is history.

One play doesn't mean he is the reason the Falcons blew the Super Bowl. And looks like Mack getting beat who was playing through the broken fibula. 2nd team all pro and gave up 2 sacks. 

[Saca312]

58 minutes ago, Hogmolliesmaht said:

Even before the upgrades though, there are times when he has ignored the underneath guys on early downs and there is no urgency to get it down field. I love Cam, but does need to work on that. There is nothing wrong with dinking and dunking a little bit more as long as you're moving the chains.

Fair point. Part of it I believe is scheme itself and how Cam has been made to get used to the deep throws more-so than the short throws.'

I believe the addition of McCaffrey, Samuel, and Shepard will only help him get better in that regard.

[tiger7_88]

1 hour ago, Hogmolliesmaht said:

Cam can obviously make some fantastic throws and does great things with his feet, but it's not unreasonable to ask for just a little bit more consistency. He can put up a 65% completion average for the rest of his career if he just takes what the defense gives him more often instead of going 30yds downfield on 2nd and 5. That's all I'm asking for. We have the playmakers now so he shouldn't have to take as many chances.

Just out of curiousity, I went out and looked at Brett Favre's game logs in his sixth season in the league.  Here are his completion %'s:

Game 1 - 74%

Game 2 - 54%

Game 3 - 66%

Game 4 - 51%

Game 5 - 58%

Game 6 - 66%

Game 7 - 45%

Game 8 - 61%

etc etc

Interestingly enough, "gunslinger" QBs don't give you consistent, clockwork accuracy from week to week.  Cam, at least from the people I discuss things with on this forum, has always fit that "gunslinger" model.

Also interesting is that the numbers listed above are from a 13-3 season for the Packers, NOT a horrible losing season where your entire OL is decimated by injury.

[Hogmolliesmaht]

25 minutes ago, tiger7_88 said:

Just out of curiousity, I went out and looked at Brett Favre's game logs in his sixth season in the league.  Here are his completion %'s:

Game 1 - 74%

Game 2 - 54%

Game 3 - 66%

Game 4 - 51%

Game 5 - 58%

Game 6 - 66%

Game 7 - 45%

Game 8 - 61%

etc etc

Interestingly enough, "gunslinger" QBs don't give you consistent, clockwork accuracy from week to week.  Cam, at least from the people I discuss things with on this forum, has always fit that "gunslinger" model.

Also interesting is that the numbers listed above are from a 13-3 season for the Packers, NOT a horrible losing season where your entire OL is decimated by injury.

Fair enough, but I want Cam to be better than Brett Farvre.

[Saca312]

55 minutes ago, Ball4life said:

One play doesn't mean he is the reason the Falcons blew the Super Bowl. And looks like Mack getting beat who was playing through the broken fibula. 2nd team all pro and gave up 2 sacks. 

Cam Newton had Ryan Kalil injured most of the season, who has had 2 1st team all-pros; 3 total all-pro seasons, and 5 pro bowls.

Matt Ryan's situation was nothing in comparison to Cam.

[Ball4life]

39 minutes ago, Saca312 said:

Cam Newton had Ryan Kalil injured most of the season, who has had 2 1st team all-pros; 3 total all-pro seasons, and 5 pro bowls.

Matt Ryan's situation was nothing in comparison to Cam.

Uh I'm talking about the Gif you posted...not sure what that has to do with Khalil. Either way Ryan's numbers this year when pressured were top 3 in the league.

[Saca312]

5 minutes ago, Ball4life said:

Uh I'm talking about the Gif you posted...not sure what that has to do with Khalil. Either way Ryan's numbers this year when pressured were top 3 in the league.

Compare the average time Matt Ryan holds the ball to Cam Newton.

Then compare how often he dumps off and short passes to wide open receivers in comparison to Cam Newton.

Then compare the Falcon's OC and the Panthers OC.

Then compare the surrounding talent Ryan has in comparison to Cam Newton.

You'll see Matt Ryan has had a lot of help around him.

[Shocker]

I am not worthy.  Amazing post.  My input would be Cam cannot be the offense.  He has weapons now.  If he uses them the Hall of Fame is there.  This team will be awesome this season because of Cam but more so everyone else.

[Saca312]

19 hours ago, tiger7_88 said:

Just out of curiousity, I went out and looked at Brett Favre's game logs in his sixth season in the league.  Here are his completion %'s:

Game 1 - 74%

Game 2 - 54%

Game 3 - 66%

Game 4 - 51%

Game 5 - 58%

Game 6 - 66%

Game 7 - 45%

Game 8 - 61%

etc etc

Interestingly enough, "gunslinger" QBs don't give you consistent, clockwork accuracy from week to week.  Cam, at least from the people I discuss things with on this forum, has always fit that "gunslinger" model.

Also interesting is that the numbers listed above are from a 13-3 season for the Packers, NOT a horrible losing season where your entire OL is decimated by injury.

Hmm, pretty interesting.

So you're telling me Cam doesn't have to have a high completion rate to be considered as a top tier QB?

[TheRed]

20 hours ago, Hogmolliesmaht said:

Cam can obviously make some fantastic throws and does great things with his feet, but it's not unreasonable to ask for just a little bit more consistency. He can put up a 65% completion average for the rest of his career if he just takes what the defense gives him more often instead of going 30yds downfield on 2nd and 5. That's all I'm asking for. We have the playmakers now so he shouldn't have to take as many chances.

Is it Cam simply refusing to go underneath or is it a number of contributing factors? We are a running/downfield passing team. The problem was, we couldn't get the run game going due to the OL, and our play calling/design didn't help matters at times to compensate for that deficiency either. Nobody complained about this in 2015 when we nearly went undefeated. So what was the difference between seasons? It couldn't have had anything to do with our depleted OL could it?

Overall we shot ourselves in the foot too many times in 2016 in various ways. But the reality is the OL was at the center of our woes.

[falconidae]

On 5/25/2017 at 8:19 AM, Saca312 said:

@falconidae So you start off by fussing about Cam's accuracy on an outlet pass when you know full well Cam was about to get clobbered in less than a second by a Bronco defender. 

And threading the needle isn't an easy thing to do consistently. If throwing between 2 or 3 defenders centimeters away is supposed to be what average quarterbacks do, then I don't know what the NFL is anymore.

As far as when I say inconsistent, I meant that in a sarcastic tone. Essentially, I'm reaching out to an audience that says he's inconsistent and bad. I probably should change the wording at this point, but by no means is he inaccurate.

Once again, you seem to not understand the situation. If you do get that All-22, you'll likely be surprised at all of Cam's "inaccurate" throws. Most of them involve o-line acting like complete fools and WRs not getting separation at all.

The argument for this thread surrounds the fact Cam is a great all around QB with what tools he has. To be honest, it was a straight miracle he even got the passer rating he did with how bad the o-line and WRs are.

No, the argument for the article was that Cam was an accurate QB who got betrayed by the rest of his team. Cam is a really good QB, accuracy isn't his strong suit. He does things other QB can't do, he's never going to hit 70% of his passes on a consistent basis. And he doesn't have to to be incredibly effective-he was at less than 60% accurate in 2015, nobody was complaining about his play.

Kinsley is saying that Cam is accurate on deep passes, nothing about shorter ones. He also gave Ryan a higher grade on deep passes than Cam. Last 2 years, on the longest throws that a QB makes-41+ yards from scrimmage in air-Ryan has a better QB rating than Cam. Check out ESPN splits for both QBs.

Stand by my claim that the first gif in article about how accurate a QB is shouldn't be one where he almost overthrows an outlet pass. That's a throw QBs routinely make, whether or not there's pressure. Same with threading the needles and the rest-QBs like Brees & Brady do that routinely. 

Cam, by your own admission, does it sometimes, again, not his game.

"facts are he's an extremely accurate passer when he's accurate. "  What is he when he's not accurate?  You may mean that sarcastically, but you said this type of thing repeatedly through the article, it's an admission that as much as you'd like Cam to be reliably accurate, he just isn't.

What really gets me is there's no blame for Cam at all. No mention of sloppy mechanics, no bad decisions on his part-it's all somebody's else's fault- OL, WR, OC, HC. Yes, of course, all the other factors matter, but Cam isn't blameless. He loves waiting for the deep shot to open up-don't blame him, he's really good at the deep pass and it's just more fun to get a 40 yard completion. Sometimes though, you just need to drop it off to your back/TE and play another down.

Cam has the problem that many cannon armed QBs have. They never learned to throw a guy open. One of the reasons there's no separation is that Cam frequently  throws to where the receiver is, gives the DB a chance to make up ground.

Ryan throws to where the receiver will be, since he and the receiver know where that is, they have an advantage.

 

 

 

On 5/25/2017 at 10:56 AM, Darvinsun said:

Denver game Cam played good. You are looking just at stats.. that game should have been won...stays don't tell everything ... this is basically what the article is saying..that yes Cam can be inaccurate at times but aren't all qbs..Cam makes throws that no other qb does or even try or have to at times..which  alls for extreme accuracy..This is what this article is stating..that against all odds Cam continues to make shite look and smell good, but it is really a delusion our line , and receivers sucked before the injuries.

Cam is not perfect by no means, and the talent around him is subpar..That is why he was drafted number one and Cam has done 90% of his job the 10% is to win the SB.. We were a few plays away and a few calls..better talent around him and its done..a true threat outside of Olsen, and Cam. Stew was already hurt and hurt himself further by playing..No one was scared of butterfinger Ginn, superthin brown, and funkchess. ..a bunch of no names..Now lets see how Camdoes with his new toys!

Barely 50% completion, less than 200 yards, 1 TD and 1 pick is not playing good, it's just not. And, I watched that game. Yes, there were extenuating circumstances, but it wasn't a "really good game"

And, my whole point is that "Cam be can inaccurate at times". Never said he wasn't a very good QB, in fact I said that he was/is. 

 

 

 

 

And, I appreciate being allowed to stay here. On many other team messageboards, I wouldn't be allowed to post.

Thanks Jeremy

[RumHam]

This was a good breakdown.