Athletic - Sam Darnold Film Analysis

[hepcat]

https://theathletic.com/2635775/2021/06/07/sam-darnold-film-analysis-his-problems-and-strengths-what-the-panthers-are-getting-in-their-qb/?redirected=1

Great writeup with some film analysis of Sam Darnold and his struggles/successes on the Jets last year. Writer placed a lot of blame on Gase, a bad offensive line, and the worst WR corp in the league.

Quote

Darnold regressed statistically in 2020. The numbers are bleak. According to Pro Football Focus, Darnold’s yards per attempt (6.4) from a clean pocket ranked 32nd. His yards per attempt on out-of-structure throws (4.5) ranked 29th. He did improve his PFF passing grade under pressure to 47.8 but it ranked only 19th overall.

Looking at the numbers, I expected to see a much worse quarterback than I did watching his film. Darnold was certainly at fault for some bad plays, but he didn’t have a lot of help from a porous offensive line and one of the worst receiving corps in the league. The Jets haven’t had a Pro Bowler on offense in the past five seasons. To make matters worse, former Jets head coach Adam Gase was predictable and at times it looked like the defense knew his play calls.

Gase’s play calling was unimaginative. According to analytics expert Ben Baldwin, the Jets were second in the league at running the ball on second-and-long, one of the most inefficient play calls in football. This often leads to third-and-long and makes the offense predictable. Additionally, he called a lot of the same concepts like tunnel screens, “mesh” and “sail” over and over. Defenses knew what was coming, and late in the season, there were too many plays in which every route was tightly covered.

Quote

Darnold’s athleticism, anticipation, quick release and ability to make every throw on and off platform flash enough on film to hold on to optimism that he can salvage his career in Carolina.

Week 17, 1:45 remaining in the second quarter, first-and-10

Here, the Patriots looked to have a “box” call to cover the Jets’ bunch formation. The safety was responsible for the deep inside route, the cornerback was responsible for the deep outside route, the nickel was responsible for the short outside route and the outside linebacker for the short inside route.

After the pattern distribution, the cornerback played with outside leverage on the only vertical route. The safety stayed on top but didn’t match with a route because no one broke inside deep yet.

The vertical route broke inside, so the cornerback fell off of him. The safety had to cover the route but took too many steps outside and fell behind. Darnold quickly recognized the coverage bust and began his throwing motion as soon as he saw the space inside.

Darnold showed off his arm strength, throwing a strike between two safeties, but he made this play because he quickly processed the defense and threw with anticipation.

Quote

Week 1, 49 seconds remaining in the second quarter, second-and-10

Here, the Jets had a high/low concept called with a corner route and flat route underneath it.

The Bills initially showed a single-high look pre-snap but dropped into a Cover 2 zone after the snap. The high/low stress is on the cornerback, who slow bailed into his zone. Darnold likely thought he would have the corner route open behind him because of the slow drop from the cornerback.

As Darnold was in his throwing motion, the corner sprinted back into the passing lane and intercepted the pass.

These types of interceptions are the most disturbing because Darnold either misreads the coverage or misreads the position of defenders. Taking chances is in Darnold’s DNA. He’ll never be a quarterback who throws for five or fewer interceptions in a season. And that’s OK — there have been many successful quarterbacks who take chances, but Darnold has to improve his discernment and take “educated” chances and know which situations he has to take simple checkdowns.

 

[TheCasillas]

Going from towel ringer to gunslinger .... i will take it. 

[rayzor]

I'm excited. Can't wait to see him play.

[Black&BlueBubba]

It was a good article of both his good and bad points.   
 

One bad part was “An issue that shows up in Darnold’s film is that he doesn’t do a good enough job of getting to his checkdown. ”

He better work through that with CMC in the backfield.  And more likely it’s having CMC will help him get better at check downs.  
 

LIsn’t it ironic that we are going from one extreme to the other.  We just jettisoned “Checkdown Charlie” and replaced with a guy at the other extreme. 

[thefuzz]

4 minutes ago, Black&BlueBubba said:

It was a good article of both his good and bad points.   
 

One bad part was “An issue that shows up in Darnold’s film is that he doesn’t do a good enough job of getting to his checkdown. ”

He better work through that with CMC in the backfield.  And more likely it’s having CMC will help him get better at check downs.  
 

LIsn’t it ironic that we are going from one extreme to the other.  We just jettisoned “Checkdown Charlie” and replaced with a guy at the other extreme. 

I have an eerie idea that CMC won't really be the "checkdown" in reality.

He may be the first or second read on lots of plays.

[mccjeff]

It is going to be highly amusing to hear the cries of “He doesn’t check down enough! He sucks!”

[TheSpecialJuan]

Thanks for posting, great insight 

[Madwolf]

2 hours ago, thefuzz said:

I have an eerie idea that CMC won't really be the "checkdown" in reality.

He may be the first or second read on lots of plays.

I'm not so sure. We threw to the RB a lot less last year, and that's with Teddy throwing it to them as a check down more than we would have liked.

I understand CMC wasn't out there, but I'm just not entirely sure that throwing to the RB is going to be as big a part of our offense as it was under Norv Turner. The man helped make throwing to the RB an art form in today's NFL.

[kungfoodude]

14 minutes ago, Madwolf said:

I'm not so sure. We threw to the RB a lot less last year, and that's with Teddy throwing it to them as a check down more than we would have liked.

I understand CMC wasn't out there, but I'm just not entirely sure that throwing to the RB is going to be as big a part of our offense as it was under Norv Turner. The man helped make throwing to the RB an art form in today's NFL.

Agreed. I don't think we are going to return to seeing CMC targeted 130+ times in the passing game for a season. He is a PART of the offense, not the entire offense.

I would be pretty disappointed if Darnold isn't testing defenses deep at a substantially higher rate than Teddy did.

[rayzor]

30 minutes ago, kungfoodude said:

Agreed. I don't think we are going to return to seeing CMC targeted 130+ times in the passing game for a season. He is a PART of the offense, not the entire offense.

I would be pretty disappointed if Darnold isn't testing defenses deep at a substantially higher rate than Teddy did.

I don't want to see a Sammy that tries to play safe, mistake free ball throwing high percentage passes.

I want the scrambling gunslinger who's buying time to make the big plays wherever  they show up. That's a Cardiac Cats type of QB that makes it fun to watch. 

[kungfoodude]

3 minutes ago, rayzor said:

I don't want to see a Sammy that tries to play safe, mistake free ball throwing high percentage passes.

I want the scrambling gunslinger who's buying time to make the big plays wherever  they show up. That's a Cardiac Cats type of QB that makes it fun to watch. 

I don't think he is even capable of playing that conservative style of football anyway. He has always been a gunslinger. 

If we or he tried to change that, he'd probably be out of the league in a season.

We don't need to reinvent the wheel, we just need him to make progress as far as making progressions, making reads and not generally going full Favre.

[Jackie Lee]

For check down stuff hopefully it'll be CMC and/or Tremble off chip block options. Also DJ and Robby get way more separation than whatever the Jets were using as WR's. Gase really ran some lose/lose plays where Sams only option was to go backyard football

[kungfoodude]

3 minutes ago, Jackie Lee said:

For check down stuff hopefully it'll be CMC and/or Tremble off chip block options. Also DJ and Robby get way more separation than whatever the Jets were using as WR's. Gase really ran some lose/lose plays where Sams only option was to go backyard football

I am curious to see if that was the offense or Sam just leans backyard football when it all breaks down(which most gunslingers do) anyway. The one thing we can say about Teddy, is that he rarely ever went off script. 

I think he'll see plenty of pressure in 2021, so we will get a good side by side of what his tendencies are in this offense versus Gase's.

[Adb6368]

4 hours ago, Black&BlueBubba said:

He better work through that with CMC in the backfield.  And more likely it’s having CMC will help him get better at check downs.  
 

Would you check the ball down if it’s to a 67 year old Frank gore? The jets refused to play their younger RBs in favor of gore for some reason. He hasn’t been known as a check down specialist very much during his career.