A critique of Darnold through 4 games

[LinvilleGorge]

2 minutes ago, Aussie Tank said:

Mate you’ve hated him from the get go and waited till we lost to start bashing him. Just be honest and say you don’t like the bloke and never will 

Did you read the initial post? I said he's far exceeded my expectations. I think this is an issue that can be fixed. All of this was outlined in the initial post. You just got triggered anyway despite the trigger warnings.

[L-TownCat]

4 minutes ago, SBBlue said:

Teddy had 2 years in this offense before he played for us.  Sam has had 5 months.  Sam is also much younger than Teddy.  Sam is going to get better.  

(Sarc)

 

[Adb6368]

I noticed several of his sacks were when he actually had *decent* protection and didn’t make a decision. whenever the pressure was immediately on him he improvised pretty miraculously to get the ball out. 

Interesting observation. Gotta be where his mind is with the protection he’s had throughout his career. 

[Mol3m4n]

17 minutes ago, LinvilleGorge said:

Don't get triggered now. Read through it all if you're going to react. I'm going to try to be fair.

So far, Darnold has far exceeded my expectations. He's looked good under pressure. He's been much more of a threat with his legs than even his most ardent supporters would've expected. Sam Darnold running the football has shockingly been our biggest red zone threat, though that's something I would look for defenses to take away from us going forward now that it's established - but, that should also open up other opportunities forcing defenses to account for Darnold running.

Now for the triggering... Sam Darnold has processing issues in the pocket. I said it in the game thread today, it's weird but he actually seems to play better when pressured into making a quick decision. It's when he gets a clean pocket that the issue shows up. He's slow to process when given time and has a tendency to make a bad decision and/or throw when given time. I don't know why. It's weird. Just think back to today's game. He had two open downfield opportunities. Both from a clean pocket. Neither were even close. His two INTs and one should've been INT all came when he had time. The danger ball he tried to force to (I think Marshall) came when he had time. Almost every time when he threw to a blanketed WR (the throw to Robby on the near to the camera sideline comes to mind) came when he had time to scan the field. My observation has been that the better the protection and the more time he has, the worse he tends to play. His worst throws came when he had time. Oddly enough, our shoddy OL seems to actually be helping Darnold in our offense by forcing him to unload the ball earlier than he would like to on a lot of our passing plays.

All of the above are just my knee jerk reactions watching the games. So, I went to look at the numbers to see if they told the same story.

Darnold is ranked 25th in average time to throw at 2.87 seconds (Teddy's average time to throw last year was among the league's fastest at 2.6 seconds). That's wild considering how often he's forced to dump it off quickly due to immediate pressure.

And it's not because he's going down the field. He's ranked 23rd in average intended air yards at 7.9 yards per attempt. He's also 23rd in the league in average air yards differential at -2.5 indicating a lack of success on deeper pass attempts. He's 17th in the NFL in air yards to the sticks on 3rd down with his passes on 3rd down coming up an average of -0.7 yards short of the marker (Bridgewater's number here was -1.7 last year for comparison, so he's still not nearly as bad in this department as Teddy was last year much to our chagrin causing much teeth gnashing).

If we're going to have more consistent success on offense behind this porous OL we have to find a way to speed up Darnold's processing time. When he isn't pressured, he's simply too slow to read the field. I think he can do it. Like I said, oddly enough he seems to play better when early pressure forces him to make a fast decision. We just have to find a way to get him to make these decisions without the defense forcing his hand.

 

I think the assessment is accurate. Say anything in the GameDay thread and it's poo'd to oblivion. 

[AU-panther]

He has struggled when kept clean in the past.  Some of us posted a tweet earlier in the year that talked about his accuracy being one of the worst in the league with a clean pocket.

Here is another article talking about him struggling with no pressure:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/sam-darnold-2021-outlook-evaluating-panthers-new-qb-and-how-he-can-revitalize-his-career-in-carolina/amp/
 

 

[Monrowed]

8 minutes ago, LinvilleGorge said:

No. He's not. He's one of the slowest QBs in the league to throw. That's not gonna get it done behind this OL and it's not because we're going down the field. Hence the thread.

Honestly unless the bottom falls out of the season we are not going to be position to draft one. So which free agent should we target?

[The NFL Shield At Midfield]

Dude was barely old enough to drink a beer when he made his first start for the Jets.  He's still got plenty of learning to do.

[TLGPanthersFan]

6 minutes ago, SBBlue said:

Where are you getting you're time to throw stats?  
 

I agree with this.  These last two games it feels like he is taking longer than the first 2.   Its not to excuse the line, they've looked bad the last two games, today was BAD.

Teddy had 2 years in this offense before he played for us.  Sam has had 5 months.  Sam is also much younger than Teddy.  Sam is going to get better.  

You can keep telling yourself that if it makes you feel better. Sam has been an NFL QB for almost 4 years. If I kept making excuses like that in my job I’d get fired due to incompetence. 
Sam may or may not get better or it is just who he is. 
Eventually people are gonna need to stop making excuses. 
But Sam still has 13 more games to do something but I have a feeling he is who he is. A QB that flashes occasionally but for the most part isn’t a long term starter. 

[LinvilleGorge]

2 minutes ago, Monrowed said:

Honestly unless the bottom falls out of the season we are not going to be position to draft one. So which free agent should we target?

If Darnold progresses throughout the season we should go all in on OL this off-season. 

[onmyown]

Meh, this team will never be relevant with the oline unless they find the next P Manning, doesn’t matter who the quartback is. I see are some going to cling onto the whole ‘buT wE r 3-1!1’ much like they did 3-0 before the game today. Fact is, Panthers won’t beat a good team.

I don’ really see a point in debating the qb with the worst oline in the league, we’ve seen since inception of the Panthers, and quite possibly gunning for the NFL record books as a whole.

Edited October 4, 2021 by onmyown

[SBBlue]

1 minute ago, TLGPanthersFan said:

But Sam still has 13 more games to do something

Are you saying he hasn't done anything?

[jayflip]

I didn’t read. Lol. You are a tired act. Now ban me and delete my posting history like GJBC you clown. 

[LinvilleGorge]

Another positive? He didn't fumble today. That's something he needed to work on. He didn't even come close to fumbling today. That's an improvement.

He has 9 TDs on the season. Only 4 through the air, but 5 on the ground. Honestly, I don't care how the ball is crossing the goalline just that it's crossing the goalline. 9 TDs through 5 games equates to 38 on a 17 game season. I'll take that all day long.

[LinvilleGorge]

1 minute ago, jayflip said:

I didn’t read. Lol. You are a tired act. Now ban me and delete my posting history like GJBC you clown. 

You really should have because this post really makes you look bad.