2018 Draftable QB Discussion

[Kiwibrown]

30 minutes ago, freakygeniuskid said:

This makes sense, but also doesn't. In that, while it's something to think about, I don't think it's something to put huge weight on, not for QBs at least. Because you can't really guarantee continued progression. So, if Mayfield was 28 and Darnold/Rosen 20, that would be a huuuuge difference, for sure. But 23/21 isn't that big of a deal to me. If anything, I can tell moreso exactly what Baker will be than Rosen/Darnold just because I have so much more tape on him and evidence of progression and improving year to year. Whereas with Darnold for instance, the only evidence I have on him is that he got worse year one to year two. So while I suspect that will reverse itself, I can't be sure. Whereas with Mayfield I can look at his year over year growth and see that he works on getting better and fixing issues year to year.

So yeah, something to keep in mind, but far from a deciding factor for me. 

Definitely it is a balancing act in evaluation with younger and older players. 

Darnold and Rosen both seem like guys who are going to develop mentally and they seem like guys who are not going to check out mentally. 

I think you draft a QB for years 5-7 not years one and two. Baker will be the best in the right system years one and two, but I think Darnold will be better latter on. 

Darnold to me also seems like the type of guy who can fit multiple systems of play. He has the arm to play a vertical game, he could fit in a system where he has to move. He could do a little zone read. 

I like that in Cleveland cos we may have multiple systems a head of who we draft. 

I like Sachi’s last draft cos it was future focused and that is how I think we should draft players. 

 

But it I hear you.

[LETSGOBROWNIES]

I love drafting the younger players.

If a guy is 20 in college and competing and perhaps dominating, what might he be doing in 2-3 years?

There are obviously exceptions, but in general, I’ll take the young guy.  Especially if we’re talking football wink.gif

[Kiwibrown]

2 hours ago, LETSGOBROWNIES said:

I love drafting the younger players.

If a guy is 20 in college and competing and perhaps dominating, what might he be doing in 2-3 years?

There are obviously exceptions, but in general, I’ll take the young guy.  Especially if we’re talking football wink.gif

Da truth. 

 

Nick chubb no earlier than the 4th or 5th don’t need old running backs

[FGK]

Alright, Ian Wharton finished doing his catchable passes charts for all of the top 7 guys this year. I'm not going to put the pics of each in because that would be insane. But here are the tweets with links to all seven. 

After looking at them for awhile, here are my thoughts (color coded in case you just want stuff on one guy, Mayfield/Darnold/Rosen/Allen/Rudolph are their school colors, Lamar is purple because I ran out of shades of red and Falk is puke green because he's baaaaad):

Mayfield's accuracy isn't overrated. Top 20 (of 50 top QBs in the last 7 years) in every single accuracy category by range. The one weakness I see this info implying is that he tries to play hero and force things. Leading to his throwing 4 of his six picks on 3rd/4th down (3 of 6, a full half of his INTs, on 3rd/4th and 10 or more), as well as to his having a very high number of unforced sacks (sacks where he held the ball too long as opposed to sacks where a free blitzer or rusher took him out before he had a chance to throw.)

Darnold and Rosen's OL didn't do them any favors. They both had 20+ forced sacks with only 6 unforced sacks. 

Darnold really does do his best work outside of structure. I don't know if that's a positive or not, I mean, Manziel did his best stuff outside of structure too (not equating them, just saying it can be good or bad). This is evidenced in his doing his best on 3rd and 10+ rather than 3rd and 9 or less, as well as his being the 9th most accurate (of the 50 evaluated) on plays where he was being actively pressured.

Darnold is a project. I think he has elite upside, but if you start him early his rookie year he's going to be bad. His accuracy #s were in the bottom 15 (of 50) on every category except 1-9 yard throws, his TD and INT rates were bottom 15 as well. And all that while his receivers were actually helping him as far as their hands were concerned (8th lowest drop rate of the top 50, by comparison, Mayfield had a middle of the pack number, 4.4% or so for Darnold, 6.2% for Mayfield).

Darnold's mental game just isn't there yet. Of the 12 picks that were his fault (not including tipped to a defender by a WR), 9 of them were because of bad reads, only 3 were because of inaccurate throws. He also had 7 dropped picks (bottom 10 again), so it could've been even worse. In comparison, Rosen only had two dropped picks, and Lamar only had one. This is BY FAR my biggest concern about Darnold. Because this doesn't always get better with time. It might, but some guys just never learn how to read a defense as quickly as others.

Rosen's intermediate accuracy is insane, but his deep accuracy is horrific to the point where they just didn't take deep shots unless they had to, he had fewer deep shots than any of the other 6 guys this year. Now, how much of that is the previously mentioned OL? I don't know.

QB fact not from this chart: Rosen threw 8 of his ten picks when losing. Darnold threw only 4 of his 13 while losing. Rosen's picks tended to be more from forcing things when he needed to come from behind, where Darnold's were more general bad reads of the defense.

Lamar - One dropped INT, so while guys like Mayfield and Darnold have some deflation to their INT numbers because of ones that were dropped, Lamar was crazy unlucky. He also had the worst hands on his WRs among the group (almost 7% of his passes were dropped, as opposed to about 4% for Darnold). In addition, 3 of his 10 picks were tipped to defenders after hitting WR's in the hands. Dude just had awwwwwwful WRs/TEs.

Josh Allen, oh he of the deep ball cannon arm, had the 4th worst accuracy numbers on 20+ yard throws of all 50 QBs. It's nice to have the arm to get the ball downfield, but you gotta at least have an IDEA where it's going when it gets there.

Mason Rudolph is thoroughly okay. He doesn't have any one area where it's like "wow!" but he doesn't have any where he's awful either. Luke Falk on the other hand is bad at pretty much everything.

Conclusion - Really fun numbers here. I think they cemented me as Mayfield/Rosen as my preferences, okay with Darnold if we have a vet for him to sit behind for a year. Excited for Lamar if he goes to a creative OC and stays healthy. Think Rudolph should be over Allen for #5 spot honestly and much higher on him (Rudolph) as a long term, high level backup than I was going in. Luke Falk shouldn't be drafted until the 6th-7th and should go way behind guys like Kurt Benkert and Kyle Lauletta.

[TheeRealDeal]

@freakygeniuskid I was meh on Rudolph when I started my reasearch as well. Didn’t like or dislike him. I’m only part way done but I feel like you Rudolph should be much more highly thought of, I’d not only put him over Allen but Jackson as well.

[Kiwibrown]

I wouldn't mind taking Darnold and rudolph in the draft if we have the chance. 

We would have to somehow sneak one of jnr QB's onto the injury reserve cos none of them make the PS> 

[Mind Character]

@freakygeniuskid Awesome stuff, fgk! Thanks for posting.

Too many hate on Baker just b/c they want to defend their guy.

...And Lamar Jackson is going to be the apple of the eye of some team in the draft. There's so much to love.

----------------------------------------------

I love data almost more than anyone as a trained statistician.

However, it bears mentioning the meaningful and substantive qualitative realities that the numbers just can't capture.

The qualitative context ultimately gives meaning to the numbers as not all 10, 15, 20, 25, (etc..) yard throws are comparable.

 

For example the some of the following Qualitative Realities Must Be Taken into Account to Understand the Passing Reality:

1. Where was the ball placement? (i.e., Back Shoulder,  away from the Defender, Pinpoint or not, did it hit the WR in stride, was it a tight window throw, over a defender?, between the safeties...)

2. Was it thrown with timing and anticipation? (i.e., Was it thrown before the WR uncovered, was it thrown to a spot or to the man?)

3. When does the ball come out of the QBs hand relative to the back drop? (i.e., Does the ball come out when the back foot hits or Does the QB need to see it develop open more and hold onto the ball)

3, How does the QB work through progressions (i.e., is the ball going to the first read, can the QB process through progressions, does the QB lock on to WRs)

4. Was the pocket clean, and/or was the ball thrown accurately with pressure in the face or on the edges?

5. Generally speaking, how many throws would be considered a "big-time" pro throw? (pace, velocity, touch, placement)

6. Is the QB misdiagnosing and unaware to defensive scheme threats in the passing game, was the ball thrown out of QB panic?

7. What is the QB being asked to do, or what are the route concepts and drops being used? (i.e., does the QB have to wait for longer developing route concepts, is it 2 steps ball out, or 4 and 5 step hitch and throw)

8. Was the throw against man, tight zone, or soft coverage, and what was the quality of the throw?

9. What's the throw quality under inside pressure versus zone blitz?

10. Was the throw against man, tight zone, or soft coverage, and what was the quality of the throw?

11. Play Action throw?

------------------------------------------------------------

From a purely analytical perspective, last year Cordrea Tankersley was the number 1 CB in the draft.

However, the combination of parsing the data and using that as 1 part of understanding the prospect along with traditional play scouting analysis led scouts and personnel people alike to the realization that Tankersley was a later round prospect. There are so  many examples, QB or another position wise where this is true.

From a purely analytical perspective, Baker Mayfield is arguably the clear number 1 QB option.

Beyond just the pure numbers, for me Josh Rosen and Sam Darnold relative to Baker shine brighter when one's evaluation takes in both the the data of analytics and the data of traditional play scouting assessment.

Darnold and Rosen's play answers the qualitative reality questions/assessment more emphatically than does Baker's play.

This is not to say Baker is terrible or shouldn't be considered at the top....it's just Darnold and Rosen's film readily answer those qualitative questions in ways fitting of a potential elite NFL QB.

 

 

[Kiwibrown]

8 minutes ago, Mind Character said:

@freakygeniuskid Awesome stuff, fgk! Thanks for posting.

Too many hate on Baker just b/c they want to defend their guy.

...And Lamar Jackson is going to be the apple of the eye of some team in the draft. There's so much to love.

----------------------------------------------

I love data almost more than anyone as a trained statistician.

However, it bears mentioning the meaningful and substantive qualitative realities that the numbers just can't capture.

The qualitative context ultimately gives meaning to the numbers as not all 10, 15, 20, 25, (etc..) yard throws are comparable.

 

For example the some of the following Qualitative Realities Must Be Taken into Account to Understand the Passing Reality:

1. Where was the ball placement? (i.e., Back Shoulder,  away from the Defender, Pinpoint or not, did it hit the WR in stride, was it a tight window throw, over a defender?, between the safeties...)

2. Was it thrown with timing and anticipation? (i.e., Was it thrown before the WR uncovered, was it thrown to a spot or to the man?)

3. When does the ball come out of the QBs hand relative to the back drop? (i.e., Does the ball come out when the back foot hits or Does the QB need to see it develop open more and hold onto the ball)

3, How does the QB work through progressions (i.e., is the ball going to the first read, can the QB process through progressions, does the QB lock on to WRs)

4. Was the pocket clean, and/or was the ball thrown accurately with pressure in the face or on the edges?

5. Generally speaking, how many throws would be considered a "big-time" pro throw? (pace, velocity, touch, placement)

6. Is the QB misdiagnosing and unaware to defensive scheme threats in the passing game, was the ball thrown out of QB panic?

7. What is the QB being asked to do, or what are the route concepts and drops being used? (i.e., does the QB have to wait for longer developing route concepts)

8. Was the throw against man, tight zone, or soft coverage, and what was the quality of the throw?

9. What's the throw quality under inside pressure versus zone blitz?

10. Was the throw against man, tight zone, or soft coverage, and what was the quality of the throw?

11. Play Action throw?

------------------------------------------------------------

From a purely analytical perspective, last year Cordrea Tankersley was the number 1 CB in the draft.

However, the combination of parsing the data and using hat as 1 part of understanding the prospect along with traditional play scouting analysis led scouts and personnel people alike to the realization that Tankersley was a later round prospect. There are so  many examples, QB or another position wise where this is true.

From a purely analytical perspective, Baker Mayfield is arguably the clear number 1 QB option.

Beyond just the pure numbers, for me Josh Rosen and Sam Darnold relative to Baker shine brighter when one's evaluation takes in both the the data of analytics and the data of traditional play scouting assessment.

Darnold and Rosen's play answers the qualitative reality questions/assessment more emphatically than does Baker's play.

This is not to say Baker is terrible or shouldn't be considered at the top....it's just Darnold and Rosen's film readily answer those qualitative questions in ways fitting of a potential elite NFL QB.

 

 

thank you confirming my bias for Sam Danold. I needed it, i hate being double minded. 

[hornbybrown]

I’m completely ok with Mayfield, Rosen or Darnold. If we draft Allen there will be a fist sized hole in my TV. Allen is going to be a bad QB in the pros 

[bruceb]

2 hours ago, Kiwibrown said:

thank you confirming my bias for Sam Danold. I needed it

Mine, too.

The 12 (two "3") qualitative criteria need another: A hard noggin and a strong body.

I take Darnold over past and future injury concerns with Rosen.

[Kiwibrown]

48 minutes ago, bruceb said:

Mine, too.

The 12 (two "3") qualitative criteria need another: A hard noggin and a strong body.

I take Darnold over past and future injury concerns with Rosen.

You are moreinto him that I am Bruce. I guess you would of loved Brady Quinn as well? 

[bruceb]

1 hour ago, Kiwibrown said:

I guess you would of loved Brady Quinn as well? 

I screamed in ultimate suffering when I heard the Quinn pick announced.

[H2ThaIzzo]

1 hour ago, bruceb said:

I screamed in ultimate suffering when I heard the Quinn pick announced.

no offense, but I picture your scream sounding like Rizzo. Yes you remind me of Uncle Tony Rizzo. 

[bruceb]

Just now, H2ThaIzzo said:

no offense, but I picture your scream sounding like Rizzo. Yes you remind me of Uncle Tony Rizzo. 

More like that of the Man in Black.

Ask my family.

We were heading out the door for dinner when the pick was made.

I remember it vividly.

[Kiwibrown]

9 minutes ago, bruceb said:

I screamed in ultimate suffering when I heard the Quinn pick announced.

good job. 

I was about22 and i remember Charlie Weis calling him a combo of manning and brady. I thought we had 3 great picks in that draft, thomas, Quinn and Wright. 1 HOF tackel, 1 bust QB and a mediore CB