I sent him a DM yesterday after listening to that saying his assessment that Underwood sees the field better was half assed and careless, and evident that he only is basing it on a surface level watch. He actually responded and we had a somewhat lengthy back and forth (lengthy given the format). I didn’t get him to come off of his opinion but here is why he’s saying those things:
- DR averages only a few yards a pass
- Holgo’s offense is predicated on quick “this or that”
- therefore DR is a one read guy
We basically just agreed to disagree but was surprised he even responded to me after I came out calling him careless. He was most offended by me saying he is basing it off of a passive single watch. Sort of calling his integrity on the topic into question I suppose.
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For us all, DR sees the field pretty darn well as evident by his completion rate, TD/INT, and yards thrown through basically 3.2 games having sat out a lot against Akron and HCU.
What he does before the snap is uses the pre snap motion to get basic read on man v zone, he checks for numbers advantage and adjusts play side for both run and pass, he moves how the line blocks and where they get help, and from what I’ve heard, we think he has a pretty good pre snap adjustment hit rate. That’s a lot.
After snap he works through progressions which is why we see him check down so much. The RB who chipped is a check down, likely third option.
And going back to adjusting play side… with a pass, I recall a play in Cincy where the play side based on design was going left to right, 1. RB running to flat, 2. TE running stick, 3. Back side slot running slant. Based on pre snap read, DR saw them showing cover 2 zone and pressing, so he flipped his progressions to right to left, 1. Does the corner fall back into cover 3 or stay shallow so I can throw the ball between corner and safety, 2. Slot running slant, 3. TE on stick.
Again, this is heady. He’s not perfect but he understands the game very well. His largest area for improvement is in hitting the deep ball (he overthrows them too much, and likely is why he has stopped throwing them as much this year). And I have a feeling the other area is trusting his WR. That he isn’t taking a risk that they drop the ball in traffic so moves onto his next read too quickly.
