I love watching the draft and how the fans react to their team’s pick. Oddly enough, with quarterbacks, it seems more like a crapshoot on how successful they will be, so cheering and booing always makes me laugh. Their success has so much to do with their coaching and their offense. Joe Flacco won a Super Bowl. Last year he was replaced by a rookie who provided more value with his legs than his arm. Baker Mayfield couldn’t get a college scholarship. He then was the No. 1 draft choice in the NFL. Tom Brady got selected behind 198 other guys in the draft. That said, football opinions drive the passion that so many have for it and I have some too for this incoming class of quarterbacks.
I consider myself pretty good with quarterbacks. I have been designing plays and calling them in games for about 20 years now. During those 20, I have had six quarterback seasons of over 5,000 yards for that quarterback passing. And 19 of the 20 seasons were for at least 4,000 yards. People will say it’s high school but football is football. If it’s that easy everyone would be doing it. Oh, I have been blessed with some great human beings at quarterback and I think that means way more than people realize. Their ability to push and grind through the mental part of the game while four, five, or six guys are trying to kill them to sacrifice for the team, is huge. That takes a different kind of person. Their desire to not let the team down, to get back up and keep going after getting hammered, fight self-preservation, and turn around and do it again 25 seconds later, is something very few can do.
I last wrote about third-year quarterbacks. I included their last year’s performance, where they ranked in a few analytically categories, and then what I saw with my coaching eyes. I evaluated them based on how they performed in the NFL last year. With rookies, we obviously have no NFL performance to study, so I will discuss what I think they need from their coaches, their teammates, and themselves to give them their best chance to have great years in the 2019 NFL season.
Kyler Murray, Arizona Cardinals
Murray was first among NCAA quarterbacks with a 91 QBR. I got to watch him play against my team in high school at a passing tournament and he impressed me then with his calmness in a big situation. His arm is incredibly strong for his size. He definitely had a great play-caller to put him in great situations, along with great receivers and run game as well. His offensive line was also very good. He will get two of those things this year at Arizona.
I personally think he will do pretty well and we will see him rank ahead of Josh Rosen, Sam Darnold, Josh Allen, and few of those other guys next year who are already starting ahead of him. Murray seems to know when to use his running ability and when to not. That is what I think poses the largest problem for a quarterback who has that ability. He can throw with his body in different positions and can hit receivers running diagonally away across his body. He puts the ball where they can run after catch (a highly underrated skill).
Murray is so fortunate to get Kliff Kingsbury as a coach. I think this could have gone super south in a hurry if he had gone many other places. From someone who runs a fast-paced offense, which it looks like the Cardinals will according to star running back David Johnson, it certainly makes life easier on the quarterback.
Teams sometimes are locked into periods of running one front, blitz, and/or one coverage. That simplifies it for a quarterback and allows him to play with more certainty while making it easier to process what he needs to do vs that particular defense. Kingsbury needs to avoid the Chip Kelly comparisons that will come when people talk about how the defense needs to be able to rest on the sideline and all that. The fast pace will also slow down the defensive line. It is amazing how much it will. And time for a quarterback makes even bad ones look good. It makes good ones great, and well, you know the rest of it.
Kingsbury needs to also spread the field differently than he did in college because of the hashes. They are twice as far apart in college as in the NFL. You can manipulate situations when you find a team that will play hash two high safeties or ball two high safeties. I read where he was worried about being able to spread the field nearly as much.
To do this, Kingsbury will likely use a lot of 10 personnel (four wide receivers and a running back). He used it the second most in college, behind only Mike Leach and Washington State last year. It really changes the box in the running game which helps David Johnson. A successful David Johnson will help Kyler Murray.
Finally, the Cardinals need to use their backs as receivers as much as ever. Warren Sharp and others have discussed how it helps analytically, especially compared to rushing attempts. Well, it helps on the field when linebackers have the true knowledge they have that to worry about as well as helping with receivers underneath stuff, blitzes, and who covers for who, etc. It simply makes them not as aggressive in every facet. It also is usually a running back against a linebacker in open space, which usually adds up to more YAC. David Johnson proved a couple of years ago he can catch the ball out of the backfield and do some things with it. The pounding physically that he takes from that is less than a rushing attempt so it is a safer way to get him the ball. He could have an awesome season.
Kyler Murray will help possibly double the win total for the Cards from last year. 4-12 to 8-8 is a stretch but possible if he shows any of the greatness he did in college that I believe is just him. Heck, depending on how well Kingsbury does in designing this offense, should I even allow myself to believe a playoff spot is possible? That last comment may come back to haunt me.
Dwayne Haskins, Washington Redskins
It looks like there may be a real quarterback competition in Washington between Case Keenum and Dwayne Haskins, and maybe even Colt McCoy. Haskins’s 86 QBR last year in college was pretty good, as he threw for 50 touchdowns and eight interceptions. He was playing in the Big Ten, though, where they all seem like they are in slow motion on defense. I saw a lot of great plays but saw a lot of bad ones in big situations. I just don’t know how you let Purdue beat you like they did (the offense managed 20 points) after they lost to Eastern Michigan, Northwestern, and Missouri. That in itself makes me question him (I know, don’t take one game and decide). Well, he only had 14 as the starter so I don’t have a ton to choose from.
For him, it would be best if he didn’t have to start immediately. I am anxious to follow this storyline. But for the Redskins, maybe it would be best if he did start eventually, but with a few games to watch first as Baker Mayfield did last season. I think that helped Mayfield more than he will ever admit.
If he does start, I think the learning curve for him will be a more difficult one for him than the other two quarterbacks in this article. Watching him play, it looks like to me that when he got a look on defense that he was sure about, he was really good. When he did not, he was hesitant or just made some mistakes. He was playing with completely superior talent for the most part as well and sometimes he could just rely on that. He won’t be able to do that in Washington. I wonder how much more that will make him uncomfortable.
Jay Gruden will have to help him by using a lot of play-action to slow down the rush, so Haskins does not get hit early. He also needs to have some go-to simple reads he can fall back on when things are not going well. All coaches should do this, but even more with a young quarterback. Finally, he better have the best array of efficient screens he can come up with because they will be his friend, maybe more than anything else.
I am not sold on Haskins as a good NFL quarterback early on in his career. I hope, for his sake, he gets to sit, watch, and learn first.
Daniel Jones, New York Giants
I think Giants fans are in for a huge letdown. Jones completed only 59 percent of his passes and had 29 interceptions with his 52 touchdowns. Forget all that talk that he didn’t play with high-end talent. He had a very high number of uncatchable balls and when I watched, used his feet way too much for the situations. I know New York is low on Eli Manning right now, but the grass is not always greener on the other side. That 71.6 QBR in college does not translate to a higher number in the pros, I promise you. Take away his bowl game and his coach touting him like he is the next coming of Peyton Manning, and in my opinion, his status might have rethought entering the draft.
So what can the Giants do to help Daniel Jones be successful? They can let him sit and learn. They can let him throw a million balls per week and get him more accurate. They need him to learn the system backwards and forwards and be super comfortable to check in and out of plays quickly and with confidence. He will have to be all those things to have any chance to be successful.
But let’s say Jones does have to start at some point this year. Speeding up the pace will help. But they won’t do that. Throwing to backs out of the backfield will help, and they will do that. They need better routes for Saquon Barkley out of the backfield depending on the route combos by the receivers than what they did last year when too many of his passes were meaningless and came behind the line of scrimmage.
I think they need to draw up some plays to move the pocket for him as well. Those who say cutting the field in half hurts the offense because the defense then only has to cover half the field are dummies. The defense doesn’t know that before the play starts so they still have to cover it. But it certainly shortens what the quarterback has to look at and helps a lot. They certainly won’t have to do this for Manning and he might not be physically capable of doing it much anyway, but the Giants need to have some of this ready for a comfort fallback plan if Jones does play.
I think the Giants also need to go watch every successful play he ran in college and see why and what it is about those plays that worked for Jones. Then they need to find a way to be creative, put their egos aside, and incorporate them into their offense. See Freddie Kitchens and what he did to transform the Cleveland Browns offense last year for help if you need to do so.
