Taylor Heinicke makes hard things look easy and easy things look hard
Breaking down Heinicke’s game from the Giants to show how his play seemingly defies logic.
Taylor Heinicke continues to defy logic with his play as the starting quarterback of the Washington Commanders. Since taking over for Wentz, Heinicke has led the team to a 5-1-1 record with his latest game resulting in a tie against the New York Giants on Sunday. There’s no doubt that the team absolutely loves playing for him and that somehow gets that little bit extra from the team, which has helped them significantly on this run. He also does a lot of things to help the offense function, like moving around in the pocket to avoid pressure and going off-script when he has to in order to keep plays alive.
However, while he manages to make the offense function better and gets more performance out of the entire team, he also somehow manages to hold the passing attack back. It’s a very strange dichotomy that doesn’t really make sense, but his latest performance against the Giants was just another example of how he helps the offense function while still holding it back.
Let’s start with the positives. This play is a great example of how Heinicke helps enable the offense to function. It’s third and 13 and the Giants are known to send lots of blitzes, particularly on third down. This play is no different as they show a heavy blitz off the right side of the line but actually bring the slot corner off the left. Off the snap, Heinicke is looking to his left anyway, as in key third down situations he typically wants to go to Terry McLaurin. He spots the slot defender rushing free off the edge but remains calm.
He doesn’t panic and instantly try to scramble, he quickly recognizes that with the slot corner blitzing, the safety needs to rotate down to replace the slot corner, leaving the outside corner without the safety help. That means the corner will naturally get more depth, leaving McLaurin a ton of room to break off his curl route. Heinicke calmly throws over the blitzing slot corner and hits McLaurin on his curl route on time, giving McLaurin the opportunity to turn up the field and pick up the first down after the catch.
That’s a high level quarterbacking play. Being able to process that information quickly and under pressure from a free rusher is unquestionably a good trait. He typically reacts pretty well to pressure and has the ability to move around to avoid it, even within the pocket.
Here we see the Commanders face another third down situation, this time third and four in the red zone. The Commanders love mesh concepts in the red zone and they call a mesh-dagger combination here, hoping to get some form of man coverage for the mesh combination. The Giants again show a heavy blitz look here with multiple defenders up on the line of scrimmage, but they only end up rushing four. Despite that, they still play man coverage, which gives McLaurin a great look on his shallow crosser. As Heinicke drops back, he reads the defense in man coverage and knows he wants to go to McLaurin, however he feels pressure off the edge at the top of his drop.
Earlier in the season, Carson Wentz was guilty of drifting back under pressure and giving the edge rushers an easier path to him. Heinicke doesn’t fall into that trap, instead calmly stepping up in the pocket to allow his offensive tackles the opportunity to recover by running the edge rushers by him. Having to avoid that pressure makes him slightly late on the throw, but Heinicke does well to try and get back on track and get the ball out as quickly as possible with a side-arm flick to McLaurin. It’s not a perfect pass, forcing McLaurin to stop his momentum and turn back for the ball, but McLaurin makes the adjustment and breaks a tackle on his way to a touchdown.
Of course, Heinicke also has that magic ability to go off-script in key situations and just make things happen when the Commanders need it most.
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