Jump to content

Zach Wilson is the answer , I hope we win games to not pick Trevor


cookiemonsta911

Recommended Posts

14 hours ago, kdels62 said:

Wrong thread... but I love Zach Wilson. Arm talent is so obvious, movement in the pocket is also very good. Deep ball is very pretty. I’d take him over fields.

Few flags make me nervous.

  • 1 year wonder (was barely average last season)
  • Shoulder surgery
  • Doesn't have the strongest arm
  • Weak schedule this season

On the positive side, he's very accurate and having a great season this year, albeit against weaker competition than normal.

He just feels like one of those 'consolation prize' QBs you draft when you need a QB and the top one or two are already gone.  Now that's not to say he can't be really good (Watson was the 3rd QB taken in his draft) but I don't think you can hold him up against Trevor Lawrence in any meaningful way based on their respective careers.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, nycdan said:

Few flags make me nervous.

  • 1 year wonder (was barely average last season)
  • Shoulder surgery
  • Doesn't have the strongest arm
  • Weak schedule this season

On the positive side, he's very accurate and having a great season this year, albeit against weaker competition than normal.

He just feels like one of those 'consolation prize' QBs you draft when you need a QB and the top one or two are already gone.  Now that's not to say he can't be really good (Watson was the 3rd QB taken in his draft) but I don't think you can hold him up against Trevor Lawrence in any meaningful way based on their respective careers.

His arm is stronger than Lawrence’s. He flicks his wrist and the ball and gets speed and distance. Lawrence has a great arm but he needs the whole body motion to get the velocity that Wilson gets with just his arm.

The weak schedule is a problem but in terms of tools, Wilson isn’t lacking any. Let him sit for a season or even just a few games and there’s a real possibility he’s a top QB.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Good write up on Wilson's game vs. CCU: https://www.rotoworld.com/article/qb-klassroom/qb-klassroom-byu-qb-zach-wilson-vs-ccu

Any time, any team, any place. After a handful of wins to start the season, BYU started rolling with that slogan as more games started getting cancelled, postponed, and rescheduled in an effort to bolster whatever playoff hopes they had. They wanted to ensure they had a full, competitive schedule for their resume. Last weekend, No.18 Coastal Carolina, a fellow undefeated team, came a-knocking. 

Knocking BYU right out of the playoff picture, that is. Coastal Carolina upset the Cougars in 22-17 fashion, just barely hanging on by about a yard at the end of the game as a BYU receiver nearly crossed the goal line with time expiring. BYU came looking for a fight and they paid for it. 

Of course, the overwhelming narrative dump was focused on star quarterback Zach Wilson. Tied for the most touchdowns in the country headed into the evening, Wilson finished the night with just one score, prompting a storm of outrage suggesting he is an overrated player. While that may be fair to glean from the box score, it’s hard to watch back the broadcast and come away thinking Wilson was a problem, let alone the problem. 

Let’s break down all of Wilson’s incompletions, for starters. Wilson finished 19-of-30 in the box score, leaving 11 incompletions. One of them was on a hail mary before the half. Another was on a rightful throwaway while backed up in his own territory. Two were random flips to the running back on a scramble, both plays in which Wilson’s other “best” option was just a throwaway anyway. In two other instances, Wilson was charted with an “accurate” pass, but the wide receiver lost at the catch point after getting two hands on it. One more pass was just a straight up drop by the receiver. 

That only really leaves four of 30 throws where Wilson just outright missed. For the sake of fairness, let’s look at one of Wilson’s other incompletions and why it went wrong for him. 

Funnily enough, this was Wilson’s first pass attempt of the game. BYU have a 12-yard out from the #1 (outside) receiver to the trips side, which is generally a throw any quarterback will take against off coverage. The cornerback is playing with a soft cushion and wants to defend the deep ball, so a quick break off a vertical stem like this can be the devil. However, CCU bring pressure from the strong side, which winds up being a great call versus BYU’s five-man passing concept and weak (left) pass protection slide. 

Wilson has to know this ball needs to be out right away. Instead, he tries to read this out as if he has time. In turn, Wilson is not able to follow through all the way on this ball otherwise he would risk leaning into the free pass-rusher as the ball is coming out. Wilson tries to release high/early and the ball sails on him. In order to circumvent that, Wilson needs to speed up his process as soon as he knows pressure is coming. If he wants to still throw the 12-yard out anyway, that’s fine, but he has to then flip his hips and feet towards that immediately at the top of his drop, not set to throw to the slot bending over the middle (his first read). It doesn’t seem like much, but that split second of having to reset is the difference between Wilson’s release point being contested versus not. 

To some degree, this blitz is just a great call versus what BYU had schemed up on that down. It happens. If anyone could have fixed it, though, it’s Wilson, and his inability to streamline his process on that rep cost the team. That being said, many of Wilson’s incompletions did not look like this. Many were either outright the mistake of a teammate, an outstanding defensive play despite Wilson making a good throw or both. 

Perhaps this was the most frustrating of the handful of drops. BYU calls a pretty simple play-action concept in which the two outside receivers take vertical stems and the slot receiver runs a short post (“glance”). The glance player is the primary read. As intended, the middle of the field clears out underneath due to the play-action, as well as one of CCU’s linebackers “green-dogging” off the RB and/or TE staying in pass pro. Wilson delivers a good (albeit imperfect) ball, only for it to get knocked away by the defender. 

In a perfect world, Wilson puts this ball a smidgen more out in front and perhaps even down low to keep it away from the defender. This pass should still be caught at least nine times out of ten, though, and Wilson was unfortunate enough for this to fall in line with the remaining one out of ten chance. 

With regards to how BYU ended up losing this one, Wilson also got massively cheated by one of his receivers. In the fourth quarter, Wilson bailed the pocket a bit before finding a receiver near the sideline. The receiver could have stood pat and taken the four yards he was given, but tried to make a hero play . . . and lost 16 yards. 

This is a heads-up play from Wilson. BYU are running an RPO with a zone run into the boundary and the tight end to the field running a short “pop” seam. Oklahoma, for reference, has run some version of this for years now. Wilson is supposed to throw to the tight end after the pull, but realizes the low safety crashing on it and the play-side defender squeezing the throwing lane. Wilson bails to salvage the play and succeeds, finding the motion player near the right sideline. 

This should be a three or four yard gain to step up 3rd-and-medium, but BYU instead ends up in 3rd-and-doomed. Who knows whether BYU would have converted on the third down, at least they would have had a chance. 

Win or lose, Wilson did still get to flash the bonkers arm strength that helps make him an exciting prospect. In one instance, he launched the ball about 60 yards in the air and set up a good catch opportunity for his receiver. About as good as 60-yard passes get, of course. That still was not his best display of arm talent in the game. 

Wilson bails the pocket almost immediately on this one. Normally, quarterbacks will get berated for that, but on 3rd-and-15, a little chaos is often better than whatever the schemed call is. Defenses, like Coastal’s on this play, are usually playing passively and have to be beaten with some sort of strike on the move into windows artificially created by a scramble drill. 

That’s the exact kind of magic Wilson delivers. After bailing, Wilson eventually finds his man and rips this throw about 25 yards from his spot. Hell of a throw to bail out the Cougars from a brutal down-and-distance. 

In the wake of a loss like that, it’s easy to blame things on the star quarterback for not being better. Wilson certainly could have been better on a few plays, no doubt. For the most part, however, Wilson was playing his normal game and was simply bested by a CCU squad that played fantastic ball control and won the field position war. Couple that with some of the unlucky breaks Wilson got from his receivers and it’s not difficult to see how this performance looks worse in the box score than in reality. 

Come April, this game will probably do nothing to hurt Wilson. The loss sure does take the wind out of the sails on how fun BYU had been this season, but things will be alright for their signal caller. Wilson is still going to be a top-10 pick and this performance should not have anybody wavering on that. 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Watched The entire BYU/San Diego State last night and I continue to be impressed by Wilson. Actually, impressed would be an understatement. His accuracy had me mesmerized. He throws perfectly placed laser beams over and over again, even when under pressure. I’m not a scout, so what do I know, but I’ve watched him enough to think he could be an NFL star. I would not be disappointed if he ended up with the Jets instead of Lawrence. 

  • Upvote 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...