Re: Burner's Burning Questions: Free Agency, Mocks, Camps, OTAs, Roster Predictions,
Don't know. His thoughts on Haskins' pocket movement and response/flexibility under pressure - I have read same on-line elsewhere. Hopefully, all the QBs hangin out at Redskin Park will school him well.
His lack of speed will have some impacts: fewer rollouts (a not uncommon playcall down by the goalline); LBs/DEs not having to worry about a mobile QB and therefore playing tighter assignments; less threat of QB run inside the 10; more sacks; more rushes. Brady has a similar limitation, so smarts, quick decision-making and accuracy can overcome a physical limitation DC's can exploit.
One thing is for sure: if the Skins don't develop a top 5 pass blocking O-line we are in for a rough hide. My opinion, of course.
Like Cooley - I've watched every second of every snap in the 2018 season. Haskins actually has pretty good pocket awareness and slides around pretty well. Could he improve? Of course. The 'footwork' criticism is more based on him throwing without his feet fully set. He's got a great arm and got away with it at Ohio State. It's a legit question to ask whether he can get away with it at the NFL level. And even if the answer was 'mostly yes' - why would you not want to work on better footwork. I think it's also going to be more important at the NFL level because he's going to be operating mostly under center. But as far as sensing and eluding the pass rush, he's better than most NFL QBs I've seen. It's a non-issue.
On the 'response to pressure' stuff, I'm not discounting it entirely. Again - what QB doesn't need to get better at recognizing and operating under pressure? But in addition to completing 70% of his passes, I think he threw 22 of his gazillion TD passes under heavy pressure. You don't hear that mentioned though. All you hear is 'he doesn't handle pressure well'. He was rarely intercepted, so that means (almost by definition) that his 'poor reaction' to pressure was getting rid of it. I'm not sure having some incomplete passes that sailed over receivers or hit the ground is really the negative it's being made out to be. He rarely threw a pick and didn't get sacked an inordinate
#of times. AND he hit on 70% of his passes. Good Lord - what more do we want out of a guy?
He has to do it at the NFL level. He's not slow. He's not unathletic. Those are mischaracterizations. He isn't a running QB like Jones or Drew Lock. That's not a bad thing. But he operated in a shotgun offense where he had to move, either to pass or dish off the ball, and he did extremely well.
Where he will really have to grow is learning to play under center, making play calls under center, and making adjustments under center based on what the defense shows, or based on previous game film study. He hasn't had to do a lot of that. But I think the reason we are hearing a lot of positive stuff from the coaches is that they're already seeing he CAN do it.
Agree on the OL. We added some talent there but I'm still concerned about some of the vets ability to stay on the field. But there are two things that might bode well for Haskins. First of all, he really does make quick decisions and gets rid of the ball. Secondly, he's going to have a pretty damn good RB stable behind him that's going to put defenses in a challenging position with a very accurate QB and RBs that have to be respected. Those two factors can make a borderline OL look a lot better.