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1.26 - Jordan Love [QB; Utah State] - QB1


CWood21

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Do football teams have analytics that quantify velocity and spin rates on throws, the way baseball does?  

Amateur and minor-league pitchers routinely have pitch-labs where exact velocity and spin-rates are measured very precisely.  I've got to assume that football must have something like that, no?  A bigger and more popular sport; football is larger and slower with more time in flight than a baseball; and the seams and markings are bigger so should be as easy or easier to measure spin rates and stuff.  Obviously pitchers throw the same distance from a fixed mound to a fixed plate, so having fixed cameras can work; with QB platforms always moving, maybe that makes it kinda impossible for technology to quantify for football as it can for baseball?  Still, just as the 40-yard-dash is kind of a standard speed measurement, you'd think there could be some kinda common QB throws in the combine and in camp.   

I ask this because for any baseball pitcher draftee, or minor-league prospect, you can have data, "he touches 96 with his 4-seam, and is average velocity on the 4-seam is 93, with average spin rate of 2500" or whatever.  Yet for a 1st-round QB pick, our analytics says "Love has a strong arm"?  Can't the Packers and scouts have precise velocity numbers for him on some standard throws, (maybe some of those throw-in-the-basket standard drills!) that they can compare Love to Rodgers to Kizer to Boyle, and to Trey Lance  etc. too?   

Just from seeing one throw-in-the-basket vids from yesterday, and from a couple of those last summer, super dumb-amateur-I-know-nothing me doesn't necessarily see exceptional velocity?  I see a really quick release, and yes a good arm; but I'm not sure in the Packers-practice clips, or in the Utah State highlight videos, that I see a "great" arm with "great" velocity that would put him in the top 15% of NFL starters for velocity?  

Boom-or-bust has a lot of truth to it, I think; but maybe the "boom" has some velocity-based ceiling, even if he's able to get the most out of his ability?  

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2 hours ago, craig said:

Do football teams have analytics that quantify velocity and spin rates on throws, the way baseball does?  

Amateur and minor-league pitchers routinely have pitch-labs where exact velocity and spin-rates are measured very precisely.  I've got to assume that football must have something like that, no?  A bigger and more popular sport; football is larger and slower with more time in flight than a baseball; and the seams and markings are bigger so should be as easy or easier to measure spin rates and stuff.  Obviously pitchers throw the same distance from a fixed mound to a fixed plate, so having fixed cameras can work; with QB platforms always moving, maybe that makes it kinda impossible for technology to quantify for football as it can for baseball?  Still, just as the 40-yard-dash is kind of a standard speed measurement, you'd think there could be some kinda common QB throws in the combine and in camp.   

I ask this because for any baseball pitcher draftee, or minor-league prospect, you can have data, "he touches 96 with his 4-seam, and is average velocity on the 4-seam is 93, with average spin rate of 2500" or whatever.  Yet for a 1st-round QB pick, our analytics says "Love has a strong arm"?  Can't the Packers and scouts have precise velocity numbers for him on some standard throws, (maybe some of those throw-in-the-basket standard drills!) that they can compare Love to Rodgers to Kizer to Boyle, and to Trey Lance  etc. too?   

Just from seeing one throw-in-the-basket vids from yesterday, and from a couple of those last summer, super dumb-amateur-I-know-nothing me doesn't necessarily see exceptional velocity?  I see a really quick release, and yes a good arm; but I'm not sure in the Packers-practice clips, or in the Utah State highlight videos, that I see a "great" arm with "great" velocity that would put him in the top 15% of NFL starters for velocity?  

Boom-or-bust has a lot of truth to it, I think; but maybe the "boom" has some velocity-based ceiling, even if he's able to get the most out of his ability?  

I’m not sure if this exists for the NFL but my question is what’s the value? Jamarcus Russel had the best arm I’ve ever seen but it didn’t amount to anything when it came to his career.

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36 minutes ago, deathstar said:

I’m not sure if this exists for the NFL but my question is what’s the value? Jamarcus Russel had the best arm I’ve ever seen but it didn’t amount to anything when it came to his career.

Yeah, QB is like a combination of pitcher and point guard as far as skills go.  There is a baseline of strength you need to be a pro, but processing and getting the ball in to moving windows is much different than throwing heat from the mound.

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Arm strength and velocity is a component of QB play, just like speed is a component of CB play.  40-time isn't going to make Stokes great, everybody knows that; but it's a component that factors. It's simplistic either to overemphasize or obsess about it, but it's simplistic to ignore it?  Everybody knows that velocity and arm strength is a component of QB play, that's why every scouting report includes some qualitative comments on any prospect's arm strength.  I just think it would be nice, interesting, and helpful to quantitate it.  

I also think quantifying it could also be helpful for development of mechanics.  In the pitch lab, a pitcher can work on his delivery mechanics, and analyze how tweaks and adjustments impact the velocity and spin rate, and accuracy too.  A lot of pitchers have gotten much better as a result.  Might not Love perhaps improve if he could tinker with grips, arm slot, delivery, stride length, etc. and chart the results?  And figure out what tweaks are helpful and which are not?  (Beats me, maybe something like this has existed for 20 years, and MM and Rodgers were already using something like this as Rodgers transitioned from Tedford to Packers, beats me.). 

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23 hours ago, craig said:

Arm strength and velocity is a component of QB play, just like speed is a component of CB play.  40-time isn't going to make Stokes great, everybody knows that; but it's a component that factors. It's simplistic either to overemphasize or obsess about it, but it's simplistic to ignore it?  Everybody knows that velocity and arm strength is a component of QB play, that's why every scouting report includes some qualitative comments on any prospect's arm strength.  I just think it would be nice, interesting, and helpful to quantitate it.  

I also think quantifying it could also be helpful for development of mechanics.  In the pitch lab, a pitcher can work on his delivery mechanics, and analyze how tweaks and adjustments impact the velocity and spin rate, and accuracy too.  A lot of pitchers have gotten much better as a result.  Might not Love perhaps improve if he could tinker with grips, arm slot, delivery, stride length, etc. and chart the results?  And figure out what tweaks are helpful and which are not?  (Beats me, maybe something like this has existed for 20 years, and MM and Rodgers were already using something like this as Rodgers transitioned from Tedford to Packers, beats me.). 

It's definitely an important and quantifiable metric to judge a QB, which is why I don't doubt they have it broken down with computer modeling, advance analytics etc.  In the end, it is secondary to communicating the right play, processing the defense and being able to create angles to accurately drop throws into moving windows.  That is harder to quantify in a lab and has to be looked at from live reps.  Even the weakest NFL arm can sling it compared to mere mortals but there are guys with cannon arms who won't even get a tryout because they don't have the other attributes.

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On 5/27/2021 at 9:14 AM, craig said:

 Boom-or-bust has a lot of truth to it, I think; but maybe the "boom" has some velocity-based ceiling, even if he's able to get the most out of his ability?  

It has more to do with his consistency overall as a player. When he’s on he’s really on, when he’s off it’s a disaster waiting to happen.

As to your point about velocity, it appears that his release has become a bit slower compared to what we saw on tape, though in all fairness that probably has more to do with the adjustment of reformed technique.

In the video a few pages back, it appears as if he has a much firmer grip on the ball given the adjustments he’s made to his throwing motion; though it’s not to say he was throwing a lot of ducks before, which is to his credit. The $64,000 question then becomes: can he retrieve that quick release we usually saw on the college tape adding the adjusted mechanics in which he clearly has spent a lot of time.

Of course, his velocity isn’t going to mean a hill of beans if he can’t fix his accuracy as we also saw his receivers having to adjust regularly to his throws.

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9 hours ago, Joe said:

It has more to do with his consistency overall as a player. When he’s on he’s really on, when he’s off it’s a disaster waiting to happen.

As to your point about velocity, it appears that his release has become a bit slower compared to what we saw on tape, though in all fairness that probably has more to do with the adjustment of reformed technique.

In the video a few pages back, it appears as if he has a much firmer grip on the ball given the adjustments he’s made to his throwing motion; though it’s not to say he was throwing a lot of ducks before, which is to his credit. The $64,000 question then becomes: can he retrieve that quick release we usually saw on the college tape adding the adjusted mechanics in which he clearly has spent a lot of time.

Of course, his velocity isn’t going to mean a hill of beans if he can’t fix his accuracy as we also saw his receivers having to adjust regularly to his throws.

It's 3am and I'm popped but if you're still on what Love WILL BE you need to let it go man lol you might be right but college prospects aren't static to the pros man

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21 hours ago, spilltray said:

A big problem with that is consistent velocity. In baseball, a pitcher is throwing the same direction and distance every pitch. A QB needs touch dependent on the throw, 

From the QBs perspective, he can be throwing directly up the middle of the field from where he drops back to a given spot, or he can have slid out right and thrown left for the same upfield gain, but the ball has travelled much further. Also, unlike in baseball, the loft on the ball can vary a lot too (from a 'frozen rope' to a hail mary play), which also hugely affects the distance the ball travels. The one thing you CAN get from a slow-mo camera tracking the ball is the rps (rotations per second).

There are serious challenges to recording the football velocity, distance thrown and spin rate together on a given play on the field. Though the velocity can change by a fair bit, a baseball pitch varies only a little (in direction and height) compared to a thrown football............ and virtually not at all, in distance.

In cricket, multiple cameras (with slo-mo) have had the ability to track a ball in space in three dimensions and predict where it will go, for several years. It is used for lbw's (ie was the ball on the way to hit the stumps when the batsman stuck his pad out in the way of the ball, rather than his bat).

So, the tech is there, but there are challenges due to the variations involved....... rps is (comparatively) easy to record, distance and loft, not so much. Where the ball leaves the hand on a football field is basically anywhere on that huge field, giving much more variance in the start position than in cricket or baseball where the point of origin of the thrown/bowled ball is more predictable*, allowing set camera positions.

*In cricket, you can run and bowl either side of the stumps, even over them, and every over (usually every 6 balls) the bowling team changes ends and bowls to the opposite wicket, but the variations are not as huge as in football.

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1 hour ago, OneTwoSixFive said:

From the QBs perspective, he can be throwing directly up the middle of the field from where he drops back to a given spot, or he can have slid out right and thrown left for the same upfield gain, but the ball has travelled much further. Also, unlike in baseball, the loft on the ball can vary a lot too (from a 'frozen rope' to a hail mary play), which also hugely affects the distance the ball travels. The one thing you CAN get from a slow-mo camera tracking the ball is the rps (rotations per second).

There are serious challenges to recording the football velocity, distance thrown and spin rate together on a given play on the field. Though the velocity can change by a fair bit, a baseball pitch varies only a little (in direction and height) compared to a thrown football............ and virtually not at all, in distance.

In cricket, multiple cameras (with slo-mo) have had the ability to track a ball in space in three dimensions and predict where it will go, for several years. It is used for lbw's (ie was the ball on the way to hit the stumps when the batsman stuck his pad out in the way of the ball, rather than his bat).

So, the tech is there, but there are challenges due to the variations involved....... rps is (comparatively) easy to record, distance and loft, not so much. Where the ball leaves the hand on a football field is basically anywhere on that huge field, giving much more variance in the start position than in cricket or baseball where the point of origin of the thrown/bowled ball is more predictable*, allowing set camera positions.

*In cricket, you can run and bowl either side of the stumps, even over them, and every over (usually every 6 balls) the bowling team changes ends and bowls to the opposite wicket, but the variations are not as huge as in football.

Cricket?  LOL .. it's gotten to the point now in the season where cricket comes up?  Hard pass.

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8 hours ago, Norm said:

It's 3am and I'm popped but if you're still on what Love WILL BE you need to let it go man lol you might be right but college prospects aren't static to the pros man

I was just commenting on the topic at hand, nevermind what I think about his potential. I mean...kinda went out of my way NOT to rip on him like I normally would and actually tried to be positive about him...

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4 hours ago, coachbuns said:

Cricket?  LOL .. it's gotten to the point now in the season where cricket comes up?  Hard pass.

Since I live in the UK, cricket is far more relevant for me than you............but I used it simply to describe where technology is, in other fields. 

(and as a by-the-by, I prefer the 5 day test match version of cricket, which some would find mind-numbingly boring..............but to each their own).

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3 minutes ago, OneTwoSixFive said:

Since I live in the UK, cricket is far more relevant for me than you............but I used it simply to describe where technology is, in other fields. 

(and as a by-the-by, I prefer the 5 day test match version of cricket, which some would find mind-numbingly boring..............but to each their own).

I wish I lived in the UK...America sucks and everything is so refined over there...

On the other hand, I'm quietly REALLY into Victorian antiques and traditional architecture so that kinda plays into it...

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