Shedeur Sanders has flaws in his game that need to be addressed to truly be considered a first-round NFL Draft talent.

The quarterback position, at all levels of football, will have a heavyweight look and a bright spotlight on it. It is one of two positions to, on a typical play, touch the ball (along with the appropriately named center). Even a play that requires nothing more than a handoff to a running back requires some effort into it, whether the QB uses his voice, receives the ball in some way, or at least moves his feet in a predetermined manner. Think about what matt saracen I’m going through.

It’s not just the physical requirements (height, weight and arm strength) of the position that increase. As the levels increase, the spotlight gets bigger, as do the basic requests and requirements (along with every other position in sports, but I’m focusing on gunslingers here). Playing quarterback and playing quarterback Well, require more than a strong arm. Going deeper into understanding the position helps speed up and cleanse the physical side. Understanding pass protections, route footwork, adjustments and coverage rules (and rule breakers) leads to speeding up the mental checklist, which speeds up footwork, which speeds up time to launch. This trickle-down effect leads to that overused word “anticipation.” It’s the anticipation of not only where the quarterback’s teammates will be, but also where defenders will move before they even do so. Throwing with touch and well before the catch point creates margin for error, new ways to push the ball down the field, and those tasty pie-shaped “layers” of the ball that open up new angles and opportunities in a passing play. .

When studying Colorado quarterback Shedeur Sanders, the physical attributes are easily evident. He has good size (6-foot-2, 215 pounds), he is a solid athlete and a viable runner. He can increase his arm strength and hit shots up the middle and down the field.

Sanders throws a beautiful deep pass and can drop the ball when he has the right feet and his process doesn’t feel interrupted. That last point must be emphasized because it comes up often when studying Sanders, which I must emphasize means studying Sanders. until nowbefore his next (and likely last) season in Boulder begins.

(All data in this breakdown comes from TruMedia unless otherwise noted.)

Those two pitches in the tweets embedded above are flashes of Sanders’ game. He can drive shots and even shows good ball placement on underneath passes.

The frustrating part about studying Sanders is that you rarely see him take shots down the middle or pass the sticks when he’s in rhythm. Colorado’s offense, especially as the 2023 season progressed, often felt out of place, an explosive play sandwiched between a quarterback under pressure and pre-snap penalties. Sanders was sacked on 10.2% of his dropbacks in 2023, a high figure compared to the FBS quarterback average of 6.1%. It’s a mark that only three quarterbacks selected in the first three rounds have surpassed in a single season: Jayden Daniels, Will Levis and Malik Willis.

Sanders ended up sacking at an unsustainable rate to achieve consistent success in 2023, which was often attributed to Colorado’s poor offensive line that was comprised of transfer portal players. And while the Buffaloes’ line was nowhere near an elite unit, it was not the horror spectacle it was often portrayed as.

Sanders was pressured on 36.8% of his throwbacks in 2023, well above the national average and something that matches Colorado’s staff at the helm. But defenses’ hit rate when Sanders was under duress was higher than others who were pressured by roughly the same amount. Let’s look at comparable penultimate seasons for the last few recent draft picks. Drake Maye was pressured on 37.1% of his dropbacks in 2022 and was sacked on 7.7% of his dropbacks, a figure that is too high but more palpable when looking at his pressure to layoff rate of 18.3 %. It’s a metric that has some correlation for quarterbacks jumping from college to the NFL. Caleb Williams was pressured on 33% of his dropbacks in his first year at USC in 2022, but was sacked on just 5.7% of his dropbacks, leaving an easily tolerable pressure to sack at a 16% rate. %.

Sanders’ push for a 25.3% sack rate in his first season in Colorado puts him in the red flag territory of players like Justin Fields and Sam Howell (that’s something I mentioned in my study on Jayden Daniels).

Some Much of this came on Colorado’s offensive line, especially against opponents like Nebraska and Oregon, who put Mandible Claw into Colorado’s protection plans with their blitz packages. But part of this depended on Sanders’ ability to create and operate when he was under pressure.

Receiving bags is not the end of everything. It’s more about how a quarterback mitigates potential sacks and creates positive, or at least neutral, plays rather than an overtly negative one. A sack doesn’t have to be a deal-breaker if the quarterback or offense can create explosive plays to overcome it. Sanders throws down the field with good ball placement to open up the offense, but too often works the ball underneath. That’s fine in ball control situations, but it would often lead to a feeling of suffocation with Colorado and the fear that a negative play would prompt an emergency timeout in an offense trying to hit the speed limit.

Sanders will season pitches and give his teammates room to work by throwing underneath, but he prefers to throw the low option in “high-low” concepts most of the time. That approach leaves yards and first downs on the field for a safer, easier response. In simple baseball talk, it’s an attempt to make contact and hit a single rather than leaning your shoulder back and letting the bat fly.

This type of style can work! But, with Sanders, it is to the extreme. His average passing yards to the sticks was -1.6 yards in 2023. Only Bo Nix, a quarterback I viewed as more of a third-round talent, had a lower number in a single season (and he had two of them) than any FBS quarterback. selected in the first three rounds since 2020. When combined with Sanders’ propensity to take sacks, it can lead to a lot of uphill progress and an unsustainable path to success.

The habit that Shedeur Sanders must break to improve

And let’s go back to those sacks, because they weren’t entirely on Colorado’s offensive line.

Sanders has some things to clean up next season, something he can hopefully do with another year of experience. Looking back at 2023, Sanders’ eyes would drop during the pass rush and he would drop back in the pocket. If his first reading wasn’t clearly open, Sanders would constantly go into chaos mode, and not with overwhelmingly good results.

Step by Step above In the pocket, in the teeth of the defense, he’s like a boxer leaning in to take a punch. Going backwards is a habit all quarterbacks must break. It’s non-negotiable and a damning trait in the NFL. It creates easier angles for the edge defenders, the best athletes on the entire field, to run around the offensive tackles. It also creates more difficult shots, alters timing, adds distance, and gives defenders time to get closer to the ball.

Even the threat of pressure tended to derail Sanders’ operation. When he had confidence in his pocket and what the defense was about to do, he stood up and delivered. When he started guessing why his first option was taken away from him or sensed that a pass rusher was about to win instantly, the negative plays and stalled drives began to pile up.

While Sanders threw just three interceptions in 2023, he still has negative plays to shore up in his game. And even those interceptions indicate some of his lack of aggression on target, another area of ​​improvement. The lack of a quick trigger on his throws would also cause him to be a bit late, something that could be exacerbated by his elongated throwing motion that doesn’t allow him to take advantage of his arm strength. When throwing fast-play concepts, that longer motion and split-second delay would result in frequent hits (2.8% of his passes were batted down; no NFL quarterbacks selected in the first three rounds Since 2020 it has exceeded 2%) and more disputed. sacks due to extra time for defenders to recover. That elongated motion also speaks to how rigid and robotic Sanders can look when throwing, which can lead to consistent mechanics but shortens the path to success because he doesn’t take advantage of more flexible and creative arm angles.

There’s also the game operations component that Sanders and Colorado hope to clean up in 2024. Last season, Colorado’s offense suffered 29 false starts, the 10th most in the country according to PFF, sometimes in consecutive instances. Remember what I said about even on running plays, the quarterback has something to do? Cadence is usually a good indicator of how clean the quarterback’s (and the offense’s overall) operation is.

Again, this was all a review of Sanders in his first year on a new show with new actors (emphasis plural) and dozens (hundreds?) of new faces. But for Sanders to be considered a top-five or even a top-32 NFL Draft prospect, he must have a firmer grasp of the other aspects of the position. He has to develop answers to the problems defenses present, answers from a schematic and physical standpoint. Sanders needs to unlock more creativity and appear less rigid in his movements and operations.

it’s about playing attacking player instead of “football thrower,” anticipating not only the throws but also how to make those attempts. Those are plays Sanders might have to stay in the pocket, take shortcuts to secondary and auxiliary answers, or wait until the last moment to find that late burst down the field.

All players and prospects, no matter how good they are or how highly regarded, have room for improvement. Based on 2023 alone, Sanders has much more under construction heading into the 2024 season than has been sold so far.