Tag: review

2019 Saints Season in Review: Quarterback Taysom Hill

We continue our season reviews at Saints Wire with New Orleans Saints quarterback and pending restricted free agent, Taysom Hill.

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We continue our season reviews at Saints Wire with New Orleans Saints third-string quarterback and pending restricted free agent, Taysom Hill. In 2019, Hill saw an expanded role on the offense from his 2018 production, and continued to be a stalwart on the special teams unit.

Hill quickly gained with the fan base in 2018 when he was utilized in a utility-type role, rather than his conventional position. In 2019, that role became even more prominent earning him the nickname of “Swiss Army Knife”.

Level of play in 2019

Hill cannot be judged solely on his quarterbacking skills in 2019. If that’s the case, his 105 passing yards seem quite lackluster. Instead, what is most impressive are his receiving touchdowns on the season. His seven receiving touchdowns (including the playoffs) put him ahead of players such as Julio Jones, Julian Edelman, and Zach Ertz. It also proved that he became a legitimate weapon for Drew Brees to use on the offense.

On top of his scoring production, Hill was heavily relied upon in short-down situations, and was successful at converting first downs in those situations. Hill’s value is hard to determine due to the fact that he plays in nearly every facet of the game, aside from defense. However, New Orleans was able to utilize Hill in an incredibly unique role that did make the Saints offense more productive.

What to expect in 2020

Hill is a restricted free agent this offseason, which means there are plenty of options for him and the team. There are three different tender options which could be placed on Hill, and the fourth option is to just allow him to walk.

We did an exercise on Hill’s possibilities recently, and a second-round tender would make the most sense for New Orleans. With a second-round tender, teams are less likely to give up their second round pick for Hill, which would allow the Saints to keep him on the team for below-market value. However, there are a number of teams who may take a flier on Hill, which could allow New Orleans to recoup the second-round pick that traded last year.

If Hill does stay with the Saints, his role will likely remain the same. With Brees all but assuredly returning for another season, Hill will continue to fill gaps and play a utility role in the offense. Not a bad prospect considering his breakout 2019 campaign.

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2019 Saints season: Reviewing safety J.T. Gray

Our 2019 New Orleans Saints season review continues with special teams ace J.T. Gray, a backup safety who has chipped in impressive efforts.

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We continue our 2019 New Orleans Saints season review with special teams ace J.T. Gray. A safety out of Mississippi State, Gray went undrafted in 2018, and initially made the roster outright before landing on the Saints practice squad. His proficiency in coverage on special teams sold the Saints coaching staff on his skills, and allowed him to stick around in 2019.

While Gray may not be a household name at this point in his career, he played well enough to be recognized with second-team All-Pro honors this season. Gray was one of two Saints special teamers to make the cut All-Pros, along with fellow undrafted teammate Deonte Harris, who garnered first-team All-Pro recognition.

Level of Play in 2019

Gray had a phenomenal season on special teams, and perhaps his most memorable play was his blocked punt in Week 7 against the Chicago Bears. Gray’s high level of play was characterized by making sound football decisions, especially when asked to try and block punts or kicks. This allowed the Saints special teams unit to be one of the best in recent memory.

Gray should be credited for helping creating opportunities in the return game as well. Gray’s ability to block well on the outside during returns played an integral part in allowing Harris to become the league’s most feared return specialist. It was for these reasons that Gray found his way on the All-Pro list.

What to expect in 2020

Gray will be an exclusive rights free agent this offseason. After making just above league minimum in 2019, New Orleans will likely lock him up for 2020 and beyond. Gray has helped reshape the special teams landscape in New Orleans, and should continue to progress knowing he has a spot on the roster going forward.

Gray’s role in the defense could expand come the 2020 season. The defensive back played in three games this season on defense, but never played more than 15% of the snap counts in those appearances. On special teams, his 284 snaps played ranked fifth for the Saints, and nearly tied the total set by Taysom Hill (286). He is clearly a specialist in the kicking game, but he does provide depth to the Saints secondary. With an offseason to prepare, he could end of up competing for a backup role in 2020.

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Cowboys fortunate they won’t face progressing Dwayne Haskins

Things change quickly in the NFL. It was only a few weeks ago that Dallas crushed Philadelphia on Sunday Night Football, and took command of the NFC East. Despite weekly swings in emotions, The Cowboys mostly maintained control of the division, or …

Things change quickly in the NFL. It was only a few weeks ago that Dallas crushed Philadelphia on Sunday Night Football, and took command of the NFC East. Despite weekly swings in emotions, The Cowboys mostly maintained control of the division, or at least enough to control their own destiny. But Sunday’s loss in Philadelphia could be the end of the joy ride for the 2019 season. Now Dallas needs one final twist of fate, as they’ll be cheering for Daniel Jones and the New York Giants to accomplish what they were unable to against the Eagles. Before these results really matter though, the Cowboys will need to do their part and take down the Washington Redskins.

Things certainly would have been more straight-forward if Dallas had managed to pull off the victory last week. However, they did get one break heading into Week 17, as they’ll be facing Case Keenum rather than Dwayne Haskins. If you just look at the season averages in EPA per Dropback, Keenum has added .0778 EPA per dropback, while Haskins is averaging -0.176. But these averages don’t necessarily tell the full story. Haskins began with some abysmal showings, but has improved as the season has worn on.

Haskins has shown steady improvement with experience; an indication that is extremely positive for Washington as they enter the offseason and plan for the future. Unfortunately, he was unable to finish the contest against the Giants due to an ankle injury, and he’ll miss the final game of the regular season.

It’s somewhat difficult to determine how much of a drop-off in production we can expect from Haskins to Keenum, but pass location charts can help us pinpoint how the two differ stylistically.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, a large portion of Haskins’ downfield success has come down the seam. He’s been relatively efficient on these routes up to twenty yards downfield. When he attacks beyond this range, he’s primarily done so down the left sideline. Keenum on the other hand, has shown a propensity for short passes. It seems that he prefers to stretch the defense horizontally, as he uses the entire width of the field underneath. His longer passes have primarily targeted the middle of the field.

Stopping Keenum will require limiting yards after the catch, and owning the middle of the field. If Dallas can do these two things, it’s likely that Washington will need the ageless-wonder, Adrian Peterson, to carry the team to victory.

I wouldn’t have predicted Peterson to still be playing at this age, and I certainly wouldn’t have guessed that he’d produce at this level. While he’s not the game-breaking home-run threat he used to be (his longest rush on the season is 29 yards), he’s still able to churn out some impressive production on a below-average offense.

The chart above parses out a running-backs average yards before contact (X-axis) and the average yards after contact (Y-axis). The goal here is to contextualize how much of a running-back’s efficiency relies on the offensive line and situation rather than what he’s creating for himself. It’s certainly not fully indicative of a running-back’s skill, but it gets us a littler closer to the mark. The size and color of the points are related to the number of rush attempts a player has had.

What we see is that despite a lower average for yards before contact, Peterson is still above average in creating yards after contact. It may not always be pretty, but his freakish athleticism has allowed him to stay on the field and continue to produce longer than most.

Overall, the combination of Peterson’s grind-it-out running style with Keenum’s horizontal passing game would suggest that Washington will attempt to control the ball and clock, and hopefully limit Dallas’s opportunities on offense. After Dallas racked up 31 points in their first matchup, this may be the best strategy Washington could hope for.

A multitude of questions saturate the air around this Dallas team: Is this Jason Garrett’s final game as head coach? If so, who are the candidates to watch for? How will the contract negotiations proceed with Dak Prescott and Amari Cooper? In light of this, maintaining focus for a final game when Dallas doesn’t control their own destiny is anything but simple. This team has been difficult to predict all season, and it’s not out of the realm of possibility that they fall short again this week. That said, they’ve also been capable of magic. Perhaps they can find just enough for this final hurdle. Hope is a dangerous thing, especially with this team, but it makes for one heck of a journey.

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Pass interference review is the new catch rule

How soon we all forget. Only a few years ago NFL fans were plagued by the question of what exactly is a catch. What we thought we saw with our own eyes was was wrong – according to the NFL. It was a national nightmare. No one knew if a catch would …

How soon we all forget. Only a few years ago NFL fans were plagued by the question of what exactly is a catch. What we thought we saw with our own eyes was was wrong — according to the NFL. It was a national nightmare. No one knew if a catch would stand or not. Then the NFL came to its senses and simplified the catch rule. Sure, there are still some weird decisions, but the issue has been fixed for the most part. The league simply couldn’t have that, so now we have the new catch rule. It’s pass interference review.

The pass interference review was a reaction — or overreaction — to the infamously missed pass interference/blown call in the NFC title game between the Rams and the Saints. There were many ideas thrown around that would remediate the issue. The NFL seems to have picked the worst one.

Even though everyone was saying that the pass interference review would come back to only anger fans and confuse coaches, the NFL trudged onward. It was all fine in the beginning. It was fine only because referees — and the folks in New York helping out with reviews — simply refused to overturn missed pass interference calls. The burden of proof had to be so amazingly high that there wasn’t a challenge that could be overturned. If the call was missed on the field, it wasn’t changed on replay. Tough luck. Coaches adjusted and they knew that challenging for pass interference wasn’t a good investment when it came to their challenges and timeouts. There were some obvious missed calls — just google “Ravens Texans missed pass interference” — but that was life.

Then suddenly things changed. Some ticky-tack calls were being overturned — this happened in the Panthers-Saints a few weeks ago — and now we are exactly where we did not want to be. Pass interference reviews are nebulous. They are being reffed to a level where small plays are being overturned while other pass interference is being overlooked. Reviews are being broken down frame by frame and the intent of the rule is being lost. It’s the exact same issues we had with the catch rule a few years ago. Except, this time it’s totally worse because it’s a subjective penalty. Everyone knew — or thought they knew — what a catch was. No one really knows what’s pass interference unless it’s blatantly obvious.

So this is where we sit at Week 14 of one of the most exciting seasons in recent NFL history. We have storylines like Lamar Jackson, the crumbling Patriots dynasty, the rebirth of the Niners, and amazing playoff races in both leagues. We also sit here with the dark cloud of what important game will be decided by a pass interference review. If the league simply kept doing what it was doing early on in the year, it would make sense. They apparently didn’t want to do that. Now, “what’s a catch,” has turned into “what’s the burden of proof for pass interference?”

Rookie report: newcomers outperform expectations despite loss to Washington

The Detroit Lions had 11 rookies active in Week 12 and the newcomers outperform expectations, including Amani Oruwariye, who had his first career interception.

In the Detroit Lions’ 19-16 loss to the Washington Redskins, several rookies were able to see the field for the first time in their careers.

Due to a slew of injuries to key players, Detroit had 11 rookies active for this game, most of any game this season.

How did the rookies perform?

The most surprising performance of the day came from the team’s fifth-round pick: cornerback Amani Oruwariye.

His career had quite the rough beginning, starting with him dropping much farther in the draft than expected, and then not being able to unearth himself from the bottom of the cornerback depth chart.

The rookie out of Penn State, who had just nine defensive snaps prior to the game, ended up taking over the second outside corner role in place of the injured Rashaan Melvin. In his first career start, he had five tackles, two passes defended, and an interception.

Oruwariye outperformed any expectations of him heading into the game and could see extended playing time throughout the last few games of the season.

Seventh-round pick Isaac Nauta also showed some promise in his first NFL game. The rookie tight end served as the team’s primary fullback and delivered some key blocks in the run game. Though he didn’t show up in the passing game, he did prove that he could be valuable for the offense moving forward.

Safety Will Harris once again played every defensive snap against Washington and had a very up-and-down game. He made four tackles and made one pass deflection, but also showed the same struggles in coverage that he has all season. Hopefully, Tracy Walker returns soon, but Harris has provided some sustainable depth in his absence.

Pass rusher Austin Bryant played his first NFL snaps since being activated from injured reserve and showed some promise in his limited role. His name stayed clear of the box score for the most part, but he did record one quarterback hit in his 16 snaps.

T.J. Hockenson, Jahlani Tavai, Ty Johnson, and C.J. Moore all had relatively quiet games despite getting their fair shares of snaps.

Michael Jackson Sr. and Beau Benzschawel both were active for the first time in their careers, but neither contributed much. Jackson had two snaps on special teams and Benzschawel did not see the field.

With the way Detroit’s season is going, these rookies have more of a chance to see the field and show that they have what it takes to play in the NFL. With a hefty injury report heading into the Thanksgiving game against Chicago, expect these rookies to once again go above and beyond expectations.

Pete Carroll reviewing video of QB Colin Kaepernick’s workout

Although the Seattle Seahawks were unable to attend QB Colin Kaepernick’s workout, coach Pete Carroll is going to review the video replay.

The Seattle Seahawks were not one of the seven teams around the league who attended free-agent quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s workout over the weekend, although the original plan was to have a staff member at the event.

NFL clubs were given very short notice about the workout to begin with last week, but when Kaepernick and his representatives changed the location and time Saturday morning, many who had arranged to be present weren’t able to adjust their schedules.

“I’m disappointed, we had planned to be at that workout,” coach Pete Carroll said Monday. “It got changed around and we couldn’t work with it. Unfortunately, we sent somebody but couldn’t stay with the changes that happened, we missed it. We were real curious. I was real curious to see how the workout went. Just competing as always.”

Carroll would not name the Seahawks representative sent to the workout, save for calling him “one of our guys.”

The workout was open to the media and was streamed live via YouTube. Carroll said he’s already watched a portion of the tape.

“We’re looking at everything, always,” Carroll added. “I’ve seen some of it so far.”

Here’s a look at the full replay of Kaepernick’s workout.

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