Good article by Iseman on Kaliakmanis's play and improvement

[PSAL_Hoops]

AK is more consistently accurate than GW was, but obviously not nearly as good a runner. AK's accuracy appears to become much more GW-like when under heavy pressure or, with a couple notable exceptions, when throwing on the run.

Our overall passing game this season is benefiting greatly from better OL pass blocking and much better WRs, especially in the past couple games. And MD's secondary was really very bad.

AK is also likely benefiting statistically from not having to play teams overflowing with elite DBs and LBs like the 3 teams GW faced last season (OSU, UM, PSU).

While I think that GW, with this year's OL and WRs, would have significantly better stats at RU than he did in 2023, I still think AK is probably the slightly better QB overall. But I don't think it's nearly the huge difference so many of our fans make it out to be.

I didn’t find the OL to be a problem last year. Not on run nor pass protection. The issue wasn’t that Gavin didn’t have time. He often had tons of time but just wasn’t accurate. He didnt avoid sacks by scrambling with his legs, rather he wasn’t even allowed to try to scramble. He was programmed to throw the ball away immediately if option one wasn’t there.

And again - AK has been playing with a knee brace for at least half of the season. I don’t know why folks are dismissing this as nothing. Take a look at Gavin’s rush stats when he came back from injury in Nov 2022 and was nursing a lower body injury. What do those numbers look like?

 

[mildone]

I didn’t find the OL to be a problem last year. Not on run nor pass protection. The issue wasn’t that Gavin didn’t have time. He often had tons of time but just wasn’t accurate. He didnt avoid sacks by scrambling with his legs, rather he wasn’t even allowed to try to scramble. He was programmed to throw the ball away immediately if option one wasn’t there.

And again - AK has been playing with a knee brace for at least half of the season. I don’t know why folks are dismissing this as nothing. Take a look at Gavin’s rush stats when he came back from injury in Nov 2022 and was nursing a lower body injury. What do those numbers look like?

We’ll have to agree to disagree about the OL and time to throw.

Sometimes we had it, many times we did not, What’s generally needed for a consistent passing game is consistent time to throw, combined with WRs consistently getting open quickly enough, combined with consistent QB accuracy.

What we had was inconsistent OL protection, inconsistent WRs, and inconsistent QB accuracy. This year, pass protection has been more and more consistent, and the WRs are becoming more and more consistent at getting open, and the QB has been more consistent with his throws.

The point is that each third of the passing package feeds on the success of the other two thirds. GW was less consistent, in part, because he had far less of the other two thirds than we have much of this season. And again, AK also has the benefit of not facing OSU, UM, and PSU this year.

 

[jtung230]

I didn’t find the OL to be a problem last year. Not on run nor pass protection. The issue wasn’t that Gavin didn’t have time. He often had tons of time but just wasn’t accurate. He didnt avoid sacks by scrambling with his legs, rather he wasn’t even allowed to try to scramble. He was programmed to throw the ball away immediately if option one wasn’t there.

And again - AK has been playing with a knee brace for at least half of the season. I don’t know why folks are dismissing this as nothing. Take a look at Gavin’s rush stats when he came back from injury in Nov 2022 and was nursing a lower body injury. What do those numbers look like?

Pass protection was terrible last year. Part of it was due to the competition.

ETA we didn’t have to face a guy like Chop Robinson this year. I remember he beat GW to the launch spot on a three step drop.

 

[PSAL_Hoops]

Pass protection was terrible last year. Part of it was due to the competition.

ETA we didn’t have to face a guy like Chop Robinson this year. I remember he beat GW to the launch spot on a three step drop.

Look - you only have to pull up one game from last season. The last one. Gavin had boatloads of time against Miami. He had time in the Temple game.

You folks misunderstand. I’m in no way trying to say there weren’t games where pass protection wasn’t good. And your right - a big part of it was the competition level in a handful of games against top 10 teams.

But it is grossly inaccurate to imply that his situation was synonymous with, say, Art’s situation at RU where it didn’t matter if we had a Heisman caliber. Nobody was getting throws off - period. There were many games against varying non-top 10 team types where Gavin had plenty of time to throw. On a whole, his accuracy level was not correlated to this metric at all. He wasn’t accurate with or without pressure which means that having more time in a few extra games was not likely to have much, if any, impact on his overall accuracy level. The numbers speak for themselves.

The pressure throw metric would also understate pass protection because it doesn’t account for the lead time before the pressure comes. Gavin didn't have the geeen light to make second or 3rd option adjustments often. I don’t know why but plan B was to consistently throw the ball away or in the vicinity of the out of bounds line in the hope of a reception or PI call (basically an area where pick 6 was impossible).

 

[jtung230]

Look - you only have to pull up one game from last season. The last one. Gavin had boatloads of time against Miami. He had time in the Temple game.

You folks misunderstand. I’m in no way trying to say there weren’t games where pass protection wasn’t good. And your right - a big part of it was the competition level in a handful of games against top 10 teams.

But it is grossly inaccurate to imply that his situation was synonymous with, say, Art’s situation at RU where it didn’t matter if we had a Heisman caliber. Nobody was getting throws off - period. There were many games against varying non-top 10 team types where Gavin had plenty of time to throw. On a whole, his accuracy level was not correlated to this metric at all. He wasn’t accurate with or without pressure which means that having more time in a few extra games was not likely to have much, if any, impact on his overall accuracy level. The numbers speak for themselves.

The pressure throw metric would also understate pass protection because it doesn’t account for the lead time before the pressure comes. Gavin didn't have the geeen light to make second or 3rd option adjustments often. I don’t know why but plan B was to consistently throw the ball away or in the vicinity of the out of bounds line in the hope of a reception or PI call (basically an area where pick 6 was impossible).

This discussion isn’t about AK vs GW. It’s about pass protection blocking. Great example of how poor our pass protection was is the number of times we ran it on 3rd and 4+ yds. On obvious passing downs, our OL had no chance. The few times where we had time to throw, we were blocking 4 with 7.

 

[shields]

If I remember right Chop went against Reggie Sutton who could not move fast enough.

 

[jtung230]

If I remember right Chop went against Reggie Sutton who could not move fast enough.

Chop was a 1st round pick. Most tackles are not fast enough to block him.

 

[PSAL_Hoops]

This discussion isn’t about AK vs GW. It’s about pass protection blocking. Great example of how poor our pass protection was is the number of times we ran it on 3rd and 4+ yds. On obvious passing downs, our OL had no chance. The few times where we had time to throw, we were blocking 4 with 7.

Just because you can point to certain isolated match up instances where pass protection failed last season does not make it an accurate statement that pass protection was consistently poor. It broke down at times, but was still vastly improved from where it’s been with our QB having plenty of opportunities to make throws without immediate pressure.

Besides which - what Mildone said did loop in GW. The comment made was that his accuracy would be better this year because pass protection is better. I disagree for the reason I stated - Gavin’s accuracy was not highly correlated with pass protection. He didn’t need much time because the staff didn’t trust him to make a second read. If plan A worked he made the throw immediately. If it didn’t he threw the ball away. That was the play book. Time and time again.