For the general numbers: Average yard per attempt is illustrative of the team offensive philosophies. Daniels (9.7 yards per attempt), Maye (9.2) and Penix (8.7) all really pushed the ball downfield. Williams was on the low end at 7.4 but look how low Nix was at 5.9. It clearly shows how horizontal and quick hitting that Oregon offense was. Interceptable percentage is all pretty tightly bunched, with Nix being an outlier on the low end (1.5%) and Daniels being an outlier on the high end (4.5%).
On to the situation-specific numbers:
First read vs. Beyond: Williams is elite at 75%. Daniels is the only other player over 70 (70.2). McCarthy at sub 60 (59.8) is shockingly low. 2nd read and beyond shows not only progression skills and speed, but footwork and mechanics to reset and reload. Maye did excellent, setting the bar with 58.3. Williams and Nix right behind at 56.3 each. McCarthy again is shockingly low at 40, as is Penix at 40.4. One other thing that jumped out at me is how far Daniels falls off from 1st read to 2nd and beyond. He’s 70.5 on the first read and only 46.3 after that. That’s a red flag.
In pocket vs. out of pocket: Again, Williams is elite in-pocket (73.3) with Nix (68.5) and Daniels (67.1) right behind. Maye all the way down at 61.7 was a surprise. Also a surprise is that he’s somehow better out of pocket (65.5). The only QB with a negative split like that. Daniels is also excellent out of pocket (64.3) followed by Williams (63.5). McCarthy again shockingly bad at 39.6, a 20.8% dropoff from his already low in-pocket figure.
Clean vs. pressured: Again, Williams is elite when clean (79.5!). The rest are tightly bunched in the 60s with no one else above 70 and McCarthy the lowest at 60.5. But another strange negative split. McCarthy goes from the worst of the 6 with a clean pocket to the best of the 6 when pressured (62.9). He’s 2.4% better with pressure in his face. Daniels did well at 60.9, followed by Williams 58.3 and Maye 55. Nix really disappoints, all the way down to 51.5 and Penix… WTF man (45.8).
Clear throw vs. tight window: A broken record here, but Williams is elite. Best at both the clear and the tight window (75.1/54.1). Daniels is 2nd in both (70.2/51.6), then Nix (67.8/50) and Maye (66.1/51.5) are close in the middle with McCarthy and Penix at the bottom. McCarthy has the largest fall off between clear and tight window, from 65.5 clear to 43.4 tight and unsurprisingly ranks last in tight window.
Lastly, let’s look at what they do with pressure:
Penix and Nix are by far the most likely to stand in the pocket and deliver the ball at 71.6% of the time for Penix and 68.9% of the time for Nix. At the other end of the spectrum, Jayden Daniels only stood and delivered (aka the Jaime Escalante) 36.7% of the time. Williams was on the low end at 43.4%, McCarthy was 45%, Maye 55%.
This is also a clear delineation on pct of sacks taken. The two pocket passers also had the lowest sack pct with Nix at 5.4% and Penix at 6%. Daniels had the highest with an eye-watering 23.3%, followed by McCarthy (18.3), Williams (16.2), and Maye (14.7).
Next, I’m going to group “escape” (meaning evade to throw) and “scramble” (evade to run), specifically to compare those two numbers. Daniels scrambles to run at the exact same rate as he scrambles to throw (18.3%). That’s by far the highest scramble to run rate, with McCarthy being the only other one even in double digits (11.7). Williams, by contrast, scrambles to throw more than 4 times more than he scrambles to run (21.2 vs 5.1). McCarthy is about 2:1 (23.3 vs 11.7) and Maye a bit less than that (15.6 vs 9.2). Nix showed more mobility than I expected with rates of 13.3 and 7.8. Penix hardly ever moved (6 vs 1.5).
Last is the “pct thrown away.” Predictably, Penix leads this at 15.3%. He’s a stand in the pocket QB. If the throw isn’t there and he’s under pressure, he’s going to throw it into the 3rd row and live to fight another day. The most surprising figure to me was Williams at 13.1%. For someone that moves around as much as he does, that’s a very high total. Nix is 3rd at 6.7, then Maye at 6.4, Daniels at 3.3, and McCarthy only at 1.7. To me, that shows that Williams has a good feel of when he should and shouldn’t be going for the hero shot vs. moving to the next play.
Conclusions:
-Williams looks even better than I expected and I had an already lofty opinion of him. He’s elite at most metrics, but I do have pause on him being just ok or average at under pressure percentage and he takes more sacks than I’d like. You have to love the accuracy numbers and the evade to throw percentages, though.
-Maye looked better than I expected, especially 2nd read and beyond. He was the only QB better out of pocket than in-pocket but shows general inconsistency with accuracy. He’s 4th best of 6 in first read, in in-pocket, in clean pockets, and with clear windows and 5th at overall pinpoint percentage and under pressure percentage. As good as he is on 2nd read and beyond and out of the pocket, he needs to improve his evade to throw vs. evade to run percentage to be great at the next level.
-Daniels performed well on first read, on time, clean pocket, clear window accuracy faring 2nd or 3rd in all of those. That all breaks down a bit when the first read is not there, or he’s pressured. These numbers certainly suggests that if he can’t get that first man, he’s dropping his eyes and looking to run. When you have the skills that he has with his feet, that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but NFL defenses are going to eventually take that away from you and make you win from the pocket (see Fields this year). He’s going to have to learn to go through progressions, cut down on the sacks and reduce that very high interceptable percentage.
-McCarthy fared much worse than I expected. Last in both first read pct and 2nd and beyond pct. Last in out of pocket accuracy. Last in clean pocket. Last in tight windows. 2nd worst in sack percentage. He’s surprisingly best when he’s pressured, though. The only QB better under pressure than not.
-Penix was also much worse than I expected. I never thought of him as a super accurate player, but these are alarmingly bad, especially for a QB that doesn’t scramble. There’s not really any area at which he excelled in these metrics except sack avoidance.
-Nix was better than I expected. Some of the accuracy scores will be inflated slightly due to the shorter average yard per attempt, but he was still quite good across the board. He can quickly process and is accurate through his progressions and doesn't throw the ball where it's going to get in trouble (lowest INT%). He has a significant drop off when pressured (he goes from 2nd best when clean to 2nd worst when pressured), which is something to keep in mind.
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