Tag: deep passing

Dak and Dunk? More like Dak soaring 2 feet above the rim and dunking

Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott is again among the league’s best in terms of deep passing.

For people unfortunate enough to wander into a comment section on the internet about Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott, they’ve surely come across a stranger saying he is nothing more than a game manager. He can’t throw deep. He’s a dink and dunk player that should be paid pennies on the dollar. Dak and Dunk.

The only kind of dunking Prescott has been doing is on these people’s heads. In 2019 he was, according to Next Gen Stats, the best in all of football at winging it downfield.  So far in 2020, he’s not at the top of the mountain, but he remains in the top five with the best yet to come:

Prescott is another quarterback who is finding success by not playing favorites down the field. Six of his 12 deep targets have gone to Michael Gallup, producing 133 yards and a score, while four other deep targets have been intended for Amari Cooper, resulting in two catches for 86 yards.

Their new big-play threat, rookie CeeDee Lamb, has yet to receive a deep target, which tells us the Cowboys’ ceiling has yet to be reached in the passing attack.

Greater use of play-action might further unlock Dallas’ offense, too. Only one of Prescott’s 12 deep attempts has utilized the run fake, resulting in a 58-yard completion to Cooper.

For those keeping score at home, and the Cowboys Wire certainly is, he’s been ahead of the highest paid player in the league, Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes both years. If the Dallas front office thinks they’ll be getting any kind of bargain in contract negotiations come 2021, they’ve got another thing coming.

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Drew Brees ranked 22nd in the NFL for deep-passing performance

New Orleans Saints QB Drew Brees was graded harshly by Pro Football Focus for his scarcity of deep throws during the 2019 NFL season.

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There isn’t much to complain about how Drew Brees plays quarterback, and for good reason. The New Orleans Saints living legend has shattered records, and won a Super Bowl championship for a city that few dreamed would ever see it happen.

And he’s gotten better with, continually raising the bar for accuracy. But there’s one area of Brees’ game that has trailed off in the twilight of his career: throwing deep, typically defined as 20 yards or more down the field.

While he’s made it work despite taking fewer and fewer shots downfield each year, Brees’ performance on those big-time throws might be a weakness opponents can exploit. According to a ranking put together by the team at Pro Football Focus, the Saints quarterback was effective when he did go deep, but his lack of attempts in stretching the field are cause for concern. PFF’s Sam Monson wrote:

Few players throw a better deep ball than Drew Brees when he’s at his best, but as he ages, his effectiveness and frequency of deep passing has declined. Only Garoppolo threw deep less often, even adjusting for the games he missed injured, and by late in the year his arm looked alarmingly weak. Does Brees still have this string to his bow? The Saints likely need it if they are to win that elusive second championship.

Brees posted one of the better completion percentages (48.4%) and passer ratings (107.2) you’ll see on this list, but his average yards gained per attempt (13.0) was pedestrian. That suggests that he wasn’t creating chunks of yardage in the way that, say, Patrick Mahomes (18.1) or Deshaun Watson (15.1) were. Interestingly, Teddy Bridgewater averaged 15.7 yards per attempt on his throws deep downfield.

Now that he’s had more time to establish chemistry with seam-threat Jared Cook and added a few new weapons (like Emmanuel Sanders, Adam Trautman, and Ty Montgomery), Brees should have more opportunities to test defenses out past the first-down marker and beyond. Whether his arm will hold up late into the season remains to seen.

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