NFL Draft First Look: QB Matt Corral
Taking a first look at Ole Miss QB Matt Corral and his performance against Liberty.
Earlier in the week, I took my first look at a college quarterback in Pitt’s Kenny Pickett. Today, I thought I’d move on to Ole Miss quarterback Matt Corral. Corral was one of the quarterbacks that gathered some attention for his performances early in the season. I managed to get hold of some All-22 from his performance against Liberty last weekend, so let's take a closer look at that.
The first thing that stood out when watching Corral is that he clearly plays with an aggressive mindset. He’s always looking for the opportunity to take the deep shot and will pull the trigger if he thinks he can make the throw. This play is a good example of that.
Ole Miss have two receivers running deep over routes from either side of the field, which is mostly designed as bait for the deep safety. Outside to the left, a third receiver runs a post-corner-post, breaking inside, outside and then back inside on a deep route. The idea is to occupy the deep safety with the two over routes, isolating the cornerback one-on-one with the post-corner-post route.
This play doesn’t quite work out exactly as intended. The deep safety initially works to the deep over route, leaving the corner isolated outside. However, he gets his eyes in the backfield and spots Corral looking outside and makes the adjustment. Corral, however, spots the safety just slightly out of the middle of the field and that’s enough for him to take the shot. He delivers a pretty good throw that’s maybe a yard or two underthrown, causing the receiver to hold up right at the end of the route, which allows the safety to recover. The safety lands a big hit, but the receiver holds on to complete the catch.
It wasn’t the perfect play from Corral and it’d be nice to see that ball just a little bit further out in front of the receiver, but the point to take away here is the mindset. Plenty of quarterbacks wouldn’t have attempted that throw with the safety opening his hips back outside, and perhaps it was slightly naive of him to do so. But I personally always like a quarterback that has an aggressive mindset than one that is gun-shy.
His deep ball in this game was generally pretty good too. He missed a few throws by a yard or two, which can happen with downfield throws, but he also had a few dimes.
On this play, Ole Miss isolate a receiver to the right of the formation and have him run a double move. Corral checks the safety rotation after the snap, with the defense flipping from a two-deep look pre-snap to single-high post-snap. The safety that would have been over the double move is the one to rotate to the deep middle, and Corral knows it would be hard for him to get back outside after rotating back. So he immediately looks to work to that double move. The corner bites on it and Corral pulls the trigger, dropping a dime over the shoulder hitting the receiver in stride for a big gain.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Bullock's Film Room to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.