Charts and Takeaways

Ball Placement Analysis

based on the work of Benjamin Solak of NDT Scouting

Benjamin Solak of NDT Scounting recently published a report in which they broke down every pass they could find for the top 13 QB prospects available in the 2018 NFL Draft. They sliced and diced it in a ridiculous number of ways to provide context to their passing numbers. One of the major breakthroughs of it is the distinction between throwing a catchable pass and a well-placed pass. The tables below summarize the findings regarding ball-placement.

Sam Darnold, Josh Rosen, Josh Allen, Baker Mayfield, and Lamar Jackson are all featured as are Mason Rudolph, Kyle Lauletta, Luke Falk, Kurt Benkert, Brandon Silvers, Mike White, Chase Litton, and Logan Woodside.

Tables are color-coded to quickly distinguish how good the prospect is relative to his peers. I’ve also provided a second table that shows their rank rather than their ball-placement percentage to make it even easier. Most of the categories that I chose to focus on should make sense, but a couple of the less clear ones:

• Clean = basically the QB got his feet set and made a throw with his normal mechanics
• Move = the QB threw it on the move
• Tight Window = the defense was tight enough that the QB had to adjust the ball-placement to get it around/through the defense.

The main takeaways for me:

• Holy Lauletta (though he has by far the least amount of film compared to the others)
• Mayfield and Rosen are also very good, as expected
• Based on these numbers, Lamar Jackson is one of the most accurate QBs in the draft but relatively struggles on passes behind the LOS.
• Rudolph is terribly average.

Splits Based on Opponent’s Defensive Rank

In this study, I focused on the game logs of the consensus top 6 QB prospects (Lamar, Darnold, Allen, Mayfield, Rosen, and Rudolph) and split up their numbers based on the rank of the opponent’s defense. The cutoffs used are defenses ranked: 1-30, 31-75, 76+ (lower number = better defense).

Some of the main takeaways that I had are:

• On average, nobody faced a tougher schedule than Lamar Jackson.
• In terms of top 30 defenses faced, nobody faced more of them than Baker Mayfield.
• Josh Rosen faced the easiest slate of opponents and was terrible against the lone top 30 defense that he faced.
• In terms of adjusted QBR, Darnold struggled more with 76+ ranked defenses than he did against either of the other two groups.
• Lamar didn’t struggle against top ranked defenses as much as people tend to believe.

Charts based on Pro Football Focus’ Numbers

Once again, the charts that follow are focused on the consensus top 6 QB prospects. This time, I gathered a lot of the numbers that Pro Football Focus publicly posts and organized it into easy-to-read charts.

There are essentially two tables here that I eventually dive a little more into, but the first is a summary table while the second is focused on adjusted completion percentage in different scenarios. For those that are unfamiliar with adjusted completion percentage, it basically takes a QB’s completion percentage, removes throwaways, spikes, and passes that are batted at the LOS, and then also adjusts for passes that were dropped.

Summary Tables

This table includes all six of the consensus potential first round picks.

Baker Mayfield’s numbers are such an outlier that it makes it difficult to discern the differences between the others, so I eliminated him from this table.

Josh Allen’s numbers are such an outlier in the other direction that I decided to remove him from this table so that you can see the differences between the remaining four prospects.

Adjusted Completion Percentage

Same drill as the summary tables; this table includes all six prospects.

Once again, Baker Mayfield is a massive outlier, so I removed him from the second table.

Again, Josh Allen is an outlier, so he’s been removed from the third table.