Geno Smith By the Numbers

Jun 17, 2014; Florham Park, NJ, USA; New York Jets quarterback

(7) talks to media during minicamp at Atlantic Health Training Center. Mandatory Credit: Noah K. Murray-USA TODAY Sports

We are now in the vacation period for the league. No camps, no minicamps, no workouts, nothing. So, what do we do during that time? Analyze statistics, that’s what. A little analysis of last year’s numbers will make the time pass by and 2014 training camp will be here before we know it.

How are we going to do it? Well, our friends at Pro Football Focus, as always, are going to help us out.  They spent several articles going through some interesting quarterback facts and figures from last season.  We will take a look at some interesting ones here this morning:

QUARTERBACK POSITION:

This refers to how whether the quarterback is lined up in the shotgun, under center, or in the pistol. The facts show how Marty can teach, but still play to a player’s given strength.

Last season, Geno Smith had 429 drop backs from the shotgun, right in the middle of the pack at 14th in the league. However, Geno only posted 88 drop backs from directly under center, near the bottom of the league with quarterbacks that started all 16 games.

Geno was far more accurate from the gun, with an accuracy percentage of 66% vs 61% from under center.

You know what that tells us? That Marty Mornhinweg is gradually rolling Geno into being a quarterback from under center, letting him get his feet wet where he is more comfortable, from the gun.

QUARTERBACK TENDENCIES:

Did Geno Smith drop straight back, or was he used on a lot of designed rollouts? We have the answers here.

Geno was actually near the bottom of the league in the straight drop backs, performing one 82.6% of the time. However, he was near the top of the league in designed rollouts with a percentage of 8.9%. Geno was set on the designed rollout actually more often than Robert Griffin III (8.5%).

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Interesting to note as well that Geno only ran play action 26% of the time. The league average is 28.1%. The design of play action is to buy the quarterback more time, which seems prudent for a rookie, so I found it interesting to read that Geno used it so infrequently.

No surprise here, that Geno faced the blitz a league high of 42.9% of the time, and blitz on third down 52.9%. The way to get a quarterback off of their game, especially a rookie is to blitz them. So, this one is not shocking.

TIME TO PRESSURE:

This final piece is an indictment of the offensive line a bit as well as Geno and his early decision-making.

The line can’t block forever. One of Geno Smith’s issues for at least the early part of the year was holding the ball too long, and that is shown here. For any pressure that got to the backfield in 2.6 seconds or longer, Geno Smith faced pressure above the league average. Clearly, the quarterback needs to get the ball out quicker than that, and the line should be helping him out. But they can’t block forever.

We may do more of these as the off-season rolls along.