Giving Vince Young a Fair Shake

I don't particularly like Vince Young. I haven't made this a secret. I think his mechanics are vomit-inducing, I hate his side-arm arm slot, he relies too much on his legs, and he, like his predecessor Vick, is a product of too much hype. Iggins!, however, loves the sonofabitch. We made a bet on draft day in 2006, wherein I said that Matt Leinart of all people would be a better NFL quarterback than VY. The best part of it all is that I didn't think that highly of Matt Leinart and still don't. This year will be the first time that both go into camp as the starters for their teams since 2007. Leinart by default, since Kurt Warner retired, and Young because he earned his job back after an impressive late season surge by the Titans under his direction. Since Vince played fairly well (although an 82.8 rating is hardly world beating), I've decided to give him another look. Here is the video of Vince's 99 yard game winning drive against the Cardinals last year, who were ironically being led by Leinart while Warner was out with an injury (Leinart was a respectable 21-31 for 220 yds, 0 tds, 0 ints):

I'm going to go ahead and see what Vince does well, and what he still needs to work on.

At 0:24...his first pass is a good one. He shows really good pocket presence here. Many quarterbacks have a tendency to panic when backed up in their own end zone (see Orlovsky, Dan), and mobile quarterbacks especially tend to feel the need to try and gain some breathing room with their feet. Vince does a good job of shuffling, resetting his feet, and getting the ball to his receiver and giving him a chance to get out of bounds. Golf clap.

At 0:41...his dropback and his footwork are good, but he leads the receiver too much. I still think that damn side arm release of his tends to pull his ball slightly to the right. But I'm nitpicking.

At 0:49...that pass just went too far low and away. My guess there is he needs to get the ball out sooner. Britt initially had a step on his DB. As Bill Walsh would say, when throwing a slant, "throw [the] ball to middle of receiver and above his waist - if anything slow him up to catch it." Sometimes you can get that ball out far enough to lead the receiver and let him run after the catch, but the most important thing, especially in this situation, is to complete the pass.

At 1:13... the 4th down play is a nice read of the coverage. The DB is clearly playing the receiver, so VY did a good job of simply putting it in a spot where Britt could make a play, although he's showing a lot of faith in Britt, because that's not an easy catch at all.

At 1:29...this is just pure luck. The batted pass is the exact reason why I hate that arm slot of his. A guy that's 6'5'' like Vince shouldn't have any trouble clearing the line of scrimmage. By dropping his arm down like he does he negates a few of those inches. The read was okay, as Scaife was open on the crossing route, but he also had Chris Johnson wide open with room to run. I think I'd have liked to see what CJ could do with his speed after you got him the ball in space like that. I'd be willing to bet he'd gain more than Scaife did.

At 1:54...meh.

At 1:57...good read, good ball, good run after the catch. Nice play.

At 2:10...his footwork here is good. I can't see whether any of his other receivers were open, so I don't know if he made a good read or not, but he did a nice job of putting the ball where his receiver was going to get it or no one was.

At 2:18...nice run. He kept his eyes downfield, too, and the decision to run was obviously his last recourse. Nice job to pump fake and freeze the defender long enough to get out of bounds and stop the clock.

At 2:34...good job getting rid of the ball.

At 2:44....this may be his best pass of the drive. Great read..ball comes out quickly and smoothly and the receiver has plenty of time and room to get to the sideline.

At 3:04...another good, quick release. Surprising that the Cardinals didn't try harder to deny the sidelines.

At 3:12...the ball needed to be out sooner. Washington was open, if he brings that ball down a bit and zips it without getting so much air under it..that ball could get there before the safety comes over the top.

At 3:30...another good pass on the crossing route. He's really improved on throwing the ball over the middle of the field.

At 3:50...that was just a bad pass that could have been intercepted if the safety was quicker. His receiver in the right corner of the end zone had a step on his man. If Vince throws that ball towards the right sideline the game could be over right there.

At 4:11...bad decision to run. The pocket wasn't collapsing and the hole wasn't big enough. With just 12 seconds on the game clock you need to throw that ball out of bounds and conserve as much time as possible.

At 4:34...he rushed this throw. I'm not sure why. He set himself up in the pocket well, he had time, and he just rushed it. That ball could have easily been intercepted. Again, I'm not even sure it was the right read. The guy in the right corner of the end zone seems to have a step again. He's not going through his progressions here. He's trying to force it to the middle of the field. Again, I suspect that it's because his accuracy to the right sideline isn't all that great.

At 5:15....the game winner is just an outstanding play by a player who has definitely matured. He had room to run. Not enough to get the touchdown, probably, but enough that two years ago he'd have probably tried and lost the game. He fakes the defense just enough, though, that he can pull up at the line of scrimmage and make a great throw to Britt. It wasn't the easiest ball for Britt to catch, but all you can ask of your quarterback in that situation is to just give his receiver a chance, and that's what Vince did.

Looking over this, and I realize it's an extremely small sample of the 10 starts he made last year...I can really see some actual improvement. His pocket presence is drasticall improved from years past. His footwork is probably the area where he's advanced the most. His decision-making has gotten much better, and he seems to have reached that zone that a guy like Michael Vick never did, where the run is always the last option. He made one hasty, ill-advised run, but that's it. All in all, he's becoming a quarterback.

However, I still see some things here that could be exploited. His arm release will still get him into trouble. If team's really clog his passing lanes he could see a drastic increase in tipped balls, something that's not supposed to happen to a guy his size. I'm also not convinced that he can really make a quick, hard, accurate throw to the right sideline with consistency. There are definitely weaknesses in his game, but nowhere near as many as there were before his benching.

My final verdict? He's going to be better. He may actually be a legitimate starter this year. Granted, I certainly hope not, as I'd like to win my bet, but since that's looking like a longshot anyway, I applaud Vince for actually taking his time on the bench to improve his game.

Juice Williams, the Next VY?

The Cubs have once again reverted to suck, and I'm desperate for football season to start, so I'm gonna go ahead and do some bold predicting about this guy:

The man pictured above is Isiah "Juice" Williams, about to enter his fourth year as the starting quarterback for the Illinois Fighting Illini. Now Juice was highly touted as the next Vince Young coming into college (and was heavily recruited by Texas for that fact) and Illinois fans were ecstatic when he arrived on campus. His first three years have seen a 2-10 season, a Rose Bowl trip, and a 5-7 roller coaster of disappointment. Each year Juice has progressed as a passer and next year, in my opinion, will be a huge year for him under new offensive coordinator Mike Schultz. Schultz, formerly the highly successful offensive coordinator for Texas Christian, replaces Mike Locksley, who left to coach New Mexico. I'm sure Schultz will find it hard to replace Locksley's brilliant gameplan of Option Left, Option Right, Deep Ball!, Option Left, Sweep, Offensive Penalty, Sack, Punt. I for one expect Juice to improve under Schultz. But how much improvement? For the basis of my theory I turn to a comparison with the aforemention Vince Young. Here's how the two stack up after three years as starting quarterbacks in college:

Juice
Passing-

2006- 12 G, 8 GS. 103/261 (39.5%), 1,489 yds, 5.7 ypa, 9 tds/9 ints, 124.1 ypg, 91.9 rating

2007- 13 G, 13 GS, 153/267 (57.3%), 1,743 yds, 6.5 ypa, 13 tds/12 ints, 134.1 ypg, 119.2 rating

2008- 12 G, 12 GS, 219/381 (57.5%), 3,173 yds, 8.3 ypa, , 22 tds, 16 ints, 264.4 ypg, 138.1 rating

Rushing-

2006- 154 rushes for 576 yds, 2 tds, 3.7 ypa, 48 ypg

2007- 165 for 755 yds, 7 tds, 4.6 ypa, 58.1 ypg

2008- 175 for 719 yds, 5 tds, 4.1 ypa, 59.9 ypg.

Vince Young
Passing-

2003-12 G, 6 GS, 84/143 (58.7%), 1,155 yds, 8.1 ypa, 6 tds, 7 ints, 96.3 ypg, 130.6 rating

2004-12 G, 12 GS, 148/250 (59.2%), 1,849 yds, 7.4 ypa, 12 tds, 11 ints, 128.4 ypg, 128.4 rating

2005-13 G, 13 GS, 212/325 (65.2%), 3,036 yds, 9.3 ypa, 26 td, 10 ints, 233.5 ypg, 163.9 rating.

Rushing-

2003- 135 rushes for 998 yds, 11 tds, 7.4 ypa, 83.1 ypg

2004-167 for 1,079 yds, 14 tds, 6.5 ypa, 89.9 ypg

2005-155 for 1,050 yds, 12 tds, 6.8 ypa, 80.7 ypg

Now, looking at those two lines you can draw a couple conclusions. The most obvious is that Vince Young is clearly better than Juice Williams and you might be quick to jump to the conclusion that I'm a moron. Vince clearly was much more effective when he chose to pull the ball down and run with it, although I can assure you from watching both Texas during Young's career and Illinois for most of my lifetime that Illinois' offensive line has not been anywhere near as effective for Juice as Texas' was for Vince. As for the passing numbers, however, if you throw out their freshmen years, where Vince split playing time with Chance Mock on a 10-3 Texas squad and Juice learned under fire for a 2-10 Illini team, and only look at their sophomore and junior years (Vince left for the NFL before his senior year), it breaks down like this:

Juice-

372/648 (57.4%),7.6 ypa, 4,916 yds,35 tds/29 ints, 130.0 Rating

Vince-

360/575 (62.6%),8.4 ypa, 4,885 yds,38 tds/21 ints, 148.5 Rating

Again, Vince's numbers are still better but the two lines are similar in most areas, with Vince's better completion % being the greatest difference.

All of this brings me to my point. While some feel Juice has progressed slowly or has failed to live up to his hype, in many ways his career progression when compared to a quarterback with a similar skill set in Vince Young seems to have set him up for a hell of a senior year, assuming certain things go his way. These things include:

1. The offensive line. Last year Illinois had one of the youngest offensive lines in the conference, and it showed. They failed to open up rushing lanes for Juce and running back Daniel Dufrene, which put more pressure on Juice to win games with his arm. They also allowed Juice to be sacked 25 times and forced him to hurry throws in many other games (not to mention that since college football subtracts yards lost on sacks from rushing totals for some inane reason, they may have cost Juice up to 163 yards rushing). If the Illini get better play from the offensive line this year, an active running game would take the pressure off of Juice, he'd have more time in the pocket to improve his decision making and accuracy, and he'd be able to rack up more of his own rushing yards. It's not impossible that this could allow Juice to become the third college quarterback with a 3,000 yd passing/1,000 yd rushing season (Vince Young in 2005 and Central Michigan's Dan LeFevour in 2007 are the other two).

2. If Danny Dufrene (or the other backs) step up as well. I realize I blamed a lot of the runningbacks' struggles last year on the line, but much of it was their fault as well. Dufrene was inconsistent at best last year and failed to show the burst that he had shown as the change of pace back to Rashard Mendenhall in 2007. Dufrene or one of the other backs must step up and become a consistent threat in order to prevent other teams from gameplanning solely around Juice.

3. Better offensive playcalling. As I sarcastically noted above, even though Illinois ranked 19th in the nation in total offense (but certainly not scoring, as a team like Iowa scored 30.3 ppg to Illinois 28.7, despite the Illini gaining nearly 65 more yards per game), far too often the Locksley/Zook brain trust seemed hellbent on calling the option at all costs, even when team's like Iowa and Wisconsin stuffed the ever-loving shit out of it, and their passing acumen seemed limited to chucking it up for grabs somewhere near Arrelious Benn or swinging it out to Dufrene. Hopefully Schultz can call a much more effective game.

4. An improved defense. The Illini struggled mightily on defense last season. They allowed 26.6 ppg, good for 9th out of the 11 Big Ten teams. They were a mediocre 6th in total yards allowed per game with 350.3, they were also 6th against the pass, 7th in sacks, and tied for dead last in interceptions, with 6. There is room for hope though, as the team was among the youngest in the conference on that side of the ball, and they return most of their starters on defense. If the defense can actually hold teams in place next year and take the pressure off of both Juice and the coaching staff, that will go a long way in determining the season Juice and the team will have.

Obviously those are four huge "ifs," but all four are attainable and have significant potential to improve this year. With those improvements in place and Juice stepping up in his senior year, he could generate a great deal of buzz and finally play up to his enormous potential.

Then what would happen next? Well with his rocket arm and outstanding mobility surely a great senior year would at least place him in the conversation about the first round of the 2010 NFL draft. Some team will most likely pick him, tantalized by his talent, and here he will truly live up to the Vince Young comparisons by showing off his horrible mechanics and decision making, forcing throws, and eventually being benched for a racist journeyman.