QB Evaluation: Mac Jones vs Florida
Breaking down Alabama quarterback Mac Jones against Florida
This is the second part in a series of posts looking at Alabama quarterback Mac Jones. In the first part, which you can read here, I broke down his performance against Georgia. In this piece, I’ll be taking a closer look at how Jones played against Florida in the SEC Championship game against Florida. Jones completed 33 of 43 passes for 418 yards, five touchdowns and one interception. Let’s start with the positives
The Good
Just like in the Georgia game, Jones had a number of strong throws against Florida. Here’s a few that stood out to me.
First play timestamp: 0:00
Notes: This play is as simple as it gets, but it’s still a nice throw by Jones. Alabama runs a corner-flat combination from a stacked set to the left. The read for Jones is the outside cornerback. If the corner sinks deep, Jones throws the underneath route in the flat, but if the corner steps up towards the flat, Jones rips it behind him on the corner route. The corner initially opens his hips to turn and run with the deeper corner route, but as Jones sets up to throw, he hesitates, anticipating a throw to the flat. That hesitation is all Jones needs to drive the ball over his head and throw a dime to his receiver on the corner route.
Second play timestamp: 0:17
Notes: This throw is more difficult than it might first appear. It’s a good example of Jones having enough arm strength when he is able to set his feet properly. After a quick play-action fake, Jones drops back and opens up to his left to drive the ball on a deep out. He throws the ball from the far hashmark and it travels the best part of 30 yards down the field from the point he threw the ball. Despite that, the ball accurately and on time as the receiver makes the catch just before stepping out of bounds.
Third play timestamp: 0:33
Notes: The third play of the clip was perhaps Jones’ best throw of the game. Near the red zone, Alabama works out of an empty set with the running back aligned outside to the right. A lot of teams like to do this to give a man/zone indicator to the quarterback pre-snap, while also using that running back on a quick hitch to occupy a defender and create space for the slot receiver to work outside on a slot fade. That’s what Alabama shows initially here and Jones executes the fake of it particularly well. He uses a convincing pump fake to the flat, getting the outside corner to bite up and the flat defender to work outside. With the outside corner biting up, the safety has to stay on top of the slot fade. After the fake, the running back then takes off running towards the middle of the field. Jones quickly resets and delivers a strike under pressure, with three defenders converging on him. The ball was out before the back had even cleared the flat defender, which shows great trust and anticipation and the back rewards him for that by taking it to the house for a touchdown.
Lay-ups
While he did have some nice throws, it’s worth pointing out that Jones also had some lay-ups too.
First play timestamp: 0:00
Notes: On this first play, Jones had just thrown an interception the play before, but was lucky that his receiver managed to chase down the defender and knock the ball out for Alabama to recover. On the very next play, Alabama scored a touchdown. It’s a strong concept for Alabama, with two in-breaking routes from the left designed to drag the defense inside while DeVonta Smith breaks underneath them before looping into the vacated space behind them. Florida drops into quarters coverage and the deep safety and corner to the left both get dragged inside while no underneath defender carries Smith’s route. Jones does a nice job feeling pressure from his right early and sliding to his left to give Smith time to run his route, but as soon as Smith clears the underneath zone defender, Jones knows he has a touchdown throw. He delivers a solid throw and Smith walks in for the touchdown.
Second play timestamp: 0:24
Notes: This is another simple touchdown throw for Jones. Alabama runs a spot concept to the left, with the tight end spotting up between a corner route from the wide receiver and a flat route from the running back. Jones reads the outside cornerback, who is responsible for the flat, relating more inside to the tight end and receiver than playing the flat, so he quickly dumps the ball off to his running back in the flat. The corner reads the throw and drives to the flat, working to make the tackle at the five yard line, but the back makes him miss with a great spin move before bouncing off another hit as he walks into the end zone for a touchdown.
Third play timestamp: 0:45
Notes: The third play of the clip is perhaps the easiest touchdown Jones will ever throw. With just under five minutes left in the fourth quarter and down by a touchdown, Florida expects Alabama to try and run the ball as much as possible to run the clock down. Alabama’s previous three plays on the drive had all been runs, totaling 46 yards, so another run is to be expected. Thus, Alabama smartly calls a play-action pass. Florida sells out on the run and Smith wins his route on the outside for a very simple touchdown throw for Jones.
As much as Jones did have some nice plays, those lay-ups can’t be overlooked either. In both games I’ve studied, Jones has had some very easy throws to make. Now, it’s not his fault that Alabama schemed him up some easy throws and that his supporting cast wins a lot of different matchups, and he certainly made the most of it. However, it does raise the question of how will he perform when conditions aren’t perfect?
The Bad
Despite his numbers in the game, Jones had a number of bad throws too.
First play timestamp: 0:00
Notes: Here we have Jones’ interception. Alabama appears to run a choice route in the slot to the right with a high-low read on the opposite side. Jones initially looks out to his right for the choice route. He feels the edge defender stunting inside and gets a bit panicky, starting to work out to his right quickly. However, with the slot corner taking heaving inside leverage against the choice route, he knows the receiver has to break outside where the flat defender is working inside to trap that out route. Jones wisely moves off the route early and comes back to his left for the high-low read. He resets his feet, but his throw is slightly behind the receiver. It’s still catchable for the receiver, but it opens a window for the defender trailing to undercut the route and intercept the pass, which is precisely what happens. Fortunately for Jones, his receiver chases down the defender and force a fumble which another receiver recovers.
Second play timestamp: 0:28
Notes: On this play, Jones misses a couple of opportunities for big plays. After the snap, he initially works to his right, where he has a receiver breaking over the middle. The corner stays deep on top of the route while the safety holds his shallower position to try and wall off the receiver. Jones sells a pump fake to that route and works back to his left, but had he stayed on the route for a fraction of a second longer, he’d have seen the receiver work under the safety and run wide open across the middle. It’s an understandable miss, however, given the receiver was effectively doubled with the corner over the top and the safety in position to wall him off. Fortunately, Jones works back to his left where the outside receiver runs a good route and explodes past his corner down the sideline. Jones has a clean pocket and time to make his throw, yet throws the ball out of bounds. The receiver does a great job trying to keep a foot in bounds as he pulls in the catch, but the throw is just too long.
Third play timestamp: 0:50
Notes: This time, Alabama calls a variation of Y Cross, a concept they ran routinely throughout both games I’ve studied so far. Jones works to his right first, with the bubble screen and fake block down the sideline as his two options to that side. He pump fakes the bubble screen to try and get the outside corner to bite up and hit the throw down the sideline and while he thinks about it for a second, he opts against it with a safety over the top. He comes back to the middle of the field for the core part of the Y Cross concept. The safety to that side of the field attaches to the tight end’s over route, which should open up the post route behind it. However, Jones feels pressure from the edge rusher to his left. He does a good job stepping up to avoid the pressure, but as soon as he feels it he looks to check it down. Had he trusted that the step up avoided the pressure, he could have quickly pulled the trigger on the deep post route with so much field open to lead the receiver away from the corner. Instead, he ends up rushing a checkdown in the flat which misses the running back by a margin.
Fourth play timestamp: 1:11
Notes: Here, Alabama runs a sail concept to flood the right side of the field. Jones locks onto the sail route early on and refuses to get off of it. He reads the leverage of the corner and knows there is space outside of him for the sail route once the receiver clears the defender, which is true, but it takes a long time for that route to develop and the right tackle gets beat early. Jones knows the pressure is coming as he tries to step up, but he fails to come off that sail route and ends up getting sacked waiting for it to come open.
Fifth play timestamp: 1:30
Notes: On this play, Jones executes a play-action fake and feels pressure coming off the right side of the line early. He does a nice job stepping up in the pocket to avoid the pressure, but immediately looks to check the ball down. Had he remained calm and felt the rusher go by him, he’d have seen that he had two receivers breaking into the end zone with just one defender in the area.
Those last three plays worry me slightly with Jones. Play three and five show Jones doing well to step up in the pocket and allow the edge rusher to be run by him, but he then immediately looks to check the ball down, missing an opportunity to work deeper down the field. With the edge rusher run by him, he had plenty of time to reset and get back to his reads, which suggests some panic under pressure and wanting to get the ball out as quickly as possible. The fourth play was almost the opposite. He locked onto a receiver and took multiple hitch steps, knowing the pressure was arriving. That would have been the time to find the checkdown, or at least move off that initial read as it was taking too long to develop.
It was something I saw against Georgia too. Jones looked to get rid of the ball as quickly as possible whenever he felt pressure. Pressure should make a quarterback react, but it shouldn’t automatically cause them to panic and instantly throw the checkdown if the pressure is manageable, which it was in those situations. Jones will face far more pressure in the NFL than he did in college and handling that pressure will go a long way to determining if he makes it as a quarterback in the league or not.
Third Downs
I wrote on Monday that I wanted to focus on Jones’ ability to win on third down, particularly when the situation wasn’t perfect and he had to work off-script. So let’s look at how he did on third downs.
First play timestamp: 0:00
Notes: On this first play, we see Jones face a third and seven situation. Alabama works out of an empty set, running a similar concept to the Y Cross play we saw earlier. Jones looks to his right initially, but the corner sits on the hitch route outside and the slot fade gets jammed and forced wide off the line while the safety works over the top. Jones comes back across the middle and finds his over route breaking open. Jones shows good anticipation, beginning his throwing motion before the receiver breaks across the middle and the accuracy is solid as well. He could perhaps put the ball a little more out in front for the receiver to run onto, but the ball is on the receiver and they get the first down, which is the most important thing.
Second play timestamp: 0:17
Notes: Here, Florida threatens to blitz two defensive backs, one off either side. However, with the safety over the top of the stacked set to the right and just one cornerback over the two receivers to the left, it’s clear that only one of those two defenders is blitzing. Jones anticipates the blitz well and deliberately looks to throw over it, into the vacated space. His receiver spots up in that space and Jones hits him well before the blitz arrives but the linebacker is able to get over and make the tackle just short of the first down marker. While it was a failed conversion, it was a positive play from a quarterback’s perspective.
Third play timestamp: 0:34
Notes: This is Alabama’s go-to concept on third and short: mesh. It’s an extremely popular concept across all levels of football, with two shallow crossers working in opposite directions designed to cross close together to create traffic for any trailing defender. Jones initially works the wheel route, but he spots the outside corner holding his spot instead of running with the receiver, suggesting he’s playing zone coverage. Jones also does extremely well dealing with the slot corner blitzing. He slides to his left, allowing the running back to work across to pick it up, which allows Jones time to find Smith on his shallow cross. It’s a short pass that leaves Smith a ton of work to do to get the first down, but there wasn’t much more that Jones could have done on the play and Smith showed off how good his is by making the play to get the first down.
However, while he had some positive plays on third down, there were some poor plays too.
First play timestamp: 0:00
Notes: The first play of this clip is another mesh concept on third and short. On this occasion, Jones sticks on the wheel route for too long, hoping a small pump fake might get the corner to bite. It fails and Jones is late to come back over the middle and thus late to deliver his throw. That allows the corner to make up ground and undercut the throw, which he does superbly to knock the ball away before the receiver can catch it.
Second play timestamp: 0:16
Notes: This is another mesh play, but combined with a dagger concept instead of a wheel route and a deep hook as we saw previously. Jones works to the dagger concept first, but with the defenders playing man coverage and taking inside leverage, he opts to move on to the mesh concept. Jones throws the shallow cross coming from left to right, anticipating the receiver working in the opposite direction would get in the way of the trailing defender and leave the other receiver open. However, what Jones missed was that the receiver running right to left was completely uncovered. His corner sunk into zone coverage while everyone else played man. Had Jones noticed his receiver was uncovered, he had an easy first down throw and then some to his left. Instead, he throws to the other receiver, who gets tackled short of the first down marker.
Third play timestamp: 0:33
Notes: Here, Alabama faces third and goal from the nine. Off the snap, Jones gives a quick flash of his helmet to the right side before coming back to his left to find Smith hooking up over the middle. The hope is that by looking right, the linebacker in the middle of the field would slide to that side, opening up space for Smith to work over the middle. However, the look to the right was nowhere near long enough to really manipulate the linebacker, and the linebacker didn’t end up making the play anyway. Jones hurried the throw to hit Smith, only for two other defenders to rally to the ball and make the tackle as the ball was caught.
In fairness to Jones here, no other routes came open, but Jones couldn’t have known no other routes would be open at the time of throwing the ball, having thrown it so early. Now, Alabama did have an 11-point lead early in the fourth quarter and Jones played it safe, taking a field goal instead of risking a potential turnover by forcing a ball into the end zone,so it’s not a case of terrible situational awareness. However, I talked about Jones’ inability to create off-script in key situations in the post on the Georgia game and this is a good example of exactly that. Florida only rushed three and Jones had plenty of time in the pocket along with lanes to roll out and extend the play and buy his receivers time to work off-script and get open. It wasn’t a horrible play from Jones and situationally made sense, but the lack of ability to work off-script is concerning.
After two games, my biggest concerns with Jones’ game is his ability to perform when the play doesn’t go exactly as scripted. In these two games, Jones has made some fantastic throws, made good reads and moved nicely within the pocket to create some room to deliver throws. Alabama did a great job supporting him with a strong running game - in both the Georgia and Florida game running back Najee Harris ran for over 150 yards - and dialing up shot plays off play-action where his first or second read was typically open. Under those conditions, he was excellent, but the same can be said for Jared Goff with the Rams. Sean McVay did everything he could to keep Goff ahead of the chains and on script and Goff was very successful when McVay was able to do those things.But in the big moments, like third downs against quality defenses in the playoffs, Goff was forced to work off-script and create when conditions weren’t perfect and he struggled.
My fear for Jones is that he is similar in fashion. As we’ve seen in these two games he lacks the mobility to create outside of the pocket, which isn’t a fatal flaw, but it means he has no fallback option. He has to be near perfect with his reads and movements in the pocket. He does manage the pocket well, but often looks to checkdown the moment he feels pressure, rather than trusting his movement has bought him time to look further down the field.That type of issue will arise far more often in the NFL, when he is facing far more quality opposition regularly without necessarily having the stacked roster Alabama had to keep him protected or get his first or second read open quickly.
Great article Mark. Your last couple of paragraphs would seem to backup what @Butz Monster commented after your Georgia write up.