Tracking every dropback by Drew Lock - Part 2

The first part can be found here. This will have the data from all five of Drew Lock’s starts. A spreadsheet with all of my data so that you can check my work if you wish is here. I will include a table that shows every pressured dropback (all 56 of them) in this article.

So I looked at every dropback from Lock in 2019 - all 185 of them - and determined whether or not Lock was pressured on the play. Obviously if he was hit or sacked he was being pressured, but there was some grey area on plays where the defender got close. I had to use my judgement as to whether or not I saw Lock rushing the pass because of the proximity of the defender. If, in my determination, the defender caused Lock to rush his throw, I called it a pressure. PFF defines a QB pressure as “any time the quarterback is disturbed from his normal throwing motion from set up to release”. So while that should be fairly easy see that on the film, what about when the QB is able to complete his normal throwing motion but is hit immediately afterward. To me that is a pressure, but by PFF’s definition it would not be. PFF is not transparent with this information, even behind their paywall. I am going to be completely transparent. If you want to use the free access that is currently available to everyone at NFL GamePass and rewatch all five of the last games, you can. You can also re-do my study if you wish and come up with your own determination on each play (use the coaches film, it makes life easier).

After determining whether or not Drew Lock was pressured on a passing play, I then assigned blame. As a former center in college, I am pretty good at knowing who should be blocking whom on a giving passing play (in many offenses the center is responsible for calling out the assignments). There are some instances (you will see this in the chart) where Lock was pressured and no blocker was a fault. These are instances when the defensive scheme outmatched our blocking scheme - such as overload blitzes or all-out blitzes. I also did not count as a pressure, plays where the pressure on the QB was by-design such as screen passes.

So I have parsed this to show the offensive lineman first. I have also included a snaps per pressure column so that you can see the relative performance level of our offensive linemen. Now, here is a table with all 56 pressures. If you don’t want to go back and rewatch whole games, you can use the play tracking within NFL GamePass, to literally just watch these plays. Again, I am more than happy to discuss a play where I have assigned blame to one player and you think it should be assigned to two or anything like that.

There was literally one play vs Jokeland Loss Vegas where all four defensive lineman met at the QB at the same time for a sack. I blamed that on the whole offensive line. You should also note that if you add the blame column it does not sum to 56. That is because I didn’t include Lock in the chart. There were a few plays where he holds onto the ball too long and gets pressured but at four or five second after the snap at which point he should have already made a decision to either throw the ball or scramble.

For those who keep pointing to Garett Bolles’ PFF score from these five games (which was something like 88.9 - second best in the league over this time-frame), this data would tend to back that score. Bolles was better than any lineman besides McGovern in terms of not allowing pressure (Leary was good, but he only played 47 snaps during the final 5 games). There will be discussion of results versus process on the next cover-2-Broncos (where I will be a guest host along with Joe R. and Jeff). Garett Bolles was getting good results, but it was not because he had changed anything he was doing. His technique now is the same as it was while he was in college. That will allow you to get by against poor edge rushers, like Dion Jordan (who is currently out of the league), but quality edge rushers will take your lunch money on a regular basis if your pass sets are as consistently bad as Bolles’. Scroll to the right to see the blame column and my notes.

We should also note that Dalton Risner was not very good in the final five games. He had hit the “rookie wall”. I fully expect him to play at the high level that he did in the first part of the season for the entirety of the 2020 season, assuming we have one.