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More thougths on A-Day, after a more detailed rewatch

Scuff

First Round Draft Pick
Gold Member
May 29, 2001
19,947
15,811
113
Since Aday was the last chance to actually over-analyze everything for the Spring, I thought I’d go through each play of Aday and see what I could find. One thing I did is a QB performance in terms of good/bad decisions. It’s far from perfect, because we don’t know the play calls and assignments/reads/etc. But you can reasonably tell if a QB throws the ball too low to catch, or a missed block, etc. The observations are just that. If you’re not interested, scroll.


QB/Plays/Positive%/Negative%

PT---16---75%---19%

HG---13---62%---23%

HB---12---75%---17%

WW---19---53%---26%

You can read those numbers as Thorne had 16 meaningful plays, and he appeared to make a good decision/play on 75% of them. He appeared to make a poor decision/play on 19% of them.

Other observations that might not have been obvious:

Thorne only had 2 bad throws, and they were his first 2 throws. There was one later on where he threw behind Lewis, but you can see Lewis squatting down like a button route, then taking off inside just as PT releases the ball. That was a route/read issue, not a throwing issue. No idea who read it wrong. Thorne also had a few that were not placed great, but they were good enough to be caught.

Coleman and Hunter both had an egregious missed block that blew up an otherwise successful run. Or at least, each of them ran by a guy (different plays) who came in untouched and blew up a run.

Pass blocking was rock solid; almost all pressures/sacks were given up by backups. I only saw 1 against the starters.

Cam Brown is now coming back for the ball, rather than standing there waiting for it to come to him. He’s still catching it in his breadbasket and not getting much separation.

Sam Jackson is already better than many of our receivers from last year. I didn’t expect him to play that well, but I can see why he’s running with the first team right now.

Jay Fair still cannot handle a contested catch. The TD pass he missed (JC Hart covering) and the TD Coleman caught were very similar balls. Both were tough but very catchable. Coleman did, Jay didn't.

It’s obvious, but Coleman rips the ball out of the air – our other guys try to receive it when it gets to them. I hate generic statements like “he just wants it more”, but with contested balls, it fits.

I expect to catch grief for this one, but… like it or not, Dylan Gentry is getting open when he’s in there. The kid is finding space. With better passes, he could have been the 2nd leading receiver.

Jarquez Hunter seemed slow. Freeze even commented on it at one point, that he wasn’t getting through the line fast enough. Alston and Cobb were much quicker overall.

Wade struggled some at guard. I’m hoping the experiment there works.

We have about 9 great DBs that are ready to go. The room is stacked.
 
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