Passing UFR: Rudock vs Wisconsin

[Patrick Barron]

THING NOTES: I should have done these in approximately chronological order but too late now. Wisconsin was three weeks after Northwestern and was Iowa's penultimate game of the year. Maryland, the nonsense game with a ton of empty formations against a DL Iowa could not block, was the week before Northwestern.

Between Northwestern and Wisconsin was a miserable outing against Minnesota (10 for 19, 89 yards in a 51-14 loss) and a 10 YPA facepunching of Illinois.

YOU MAY WANT TO WATCH THIS: MGoVideo has a supercut of all of Rudock's throws in this game.

[After the JUMP: kinda good things.]

That was a sudden change of direction.

Most assuredly. There was a point in the second half where the camera was meaningfully lingering on CJ Beathard as Spielman talked about the possibility of a change. The immediate aftermath:

• 70 yard touchdown drive
• 82 yard touchdown drive
• 86 yard touchdown drive

You can in fact hear the play by play guy talking up Beathard as the "more dynamic playmaker" as Rudock bombs it to Smith.

Rudock accounted for all but 13 of those yards with his legs or his arm as Iowa went from 3 points to 24. By the end it felt like Wisconsin really really needed to run the clock out on offense because a two point lead wasn't going to do it.

And before?

Rudock wasn't exactly bad. There was a Lloyd Carr feel to this game. Iowa had one offense until it got into a big hole and then a different, much better offense after. Rudock was much more involved in the latter. The former may as well have held a sign up that said "IT IS FIRST DOWN WE ARE RUNNING": excluding a one-minute drill, Iowa's only first down passes until desperation set in were two dink outs for five yards each, a two-man PA route that Wisconsin had very covered, and a deep-ish wheel route to Martin-Manley. Iowa is the type of offense that is perfectly happy to tell you what they're doing.

Drives before the touchdown spree:

• Weisman fumble on second play
• 79 yard FG drive
• three and out
• one first down and out
• 40 yard one minute drill
• 48 yard drive and punt

There are two drives that Rudock had anything to do with that didn't go at least 40 yards. This was a very short game, as Wisconsin/Iowa matchups tend to be: Iowa had just eight possessions plus the end of half drive that got 40 yards before a Hail Mary was attempted.

Then why was the camera lingering on CJ Beathard?

Because the QB gets disproportionate credit and blame for things. Really. I didn't pay much attention to Iowa this year since they were not on the schedule but I do follow a number of Hawkeye blogs and what I'm seeing is not what I expected to see based on their takes.

They really liked their receiving corps; their receiving corps is not good. They were heavily touting Brandon Scherff; Scherff may be a god in the run game but he is average at best as a pass protector. They heaped derision on Rudock for his conservative nature; Rudock seems to make good decisions from what I can see.

Now, maybe I will see something different against Minnesota and Iowa State, which were not good statistically. This is the third game I've done here and except for some checkdowns late against Maryland Rudock has been between good and terrific.

But checkdowns and checkdowns and punt punt punt?

A disproportionate number of Rudock's conservative decisions are made because he doesn't have much choice. Take this failed third down conversion on which Rudock holds the ball for a long time and then dumps it to nobody in particular, drawing a grounding flag.

Rabble rabble throw the danged ball amirite? But where shall he deposit it?

There is a tiny window in which the outside WR is open, in between certain INT death moments. Everyone else is dead. The bunch got completely covered; the back stayed in and Rudock correctly projected that the backside WR would get a bracket.

This happens a lot. Sometimes it works out fine, like when his back releases and he picks up a first down, or when he just takes off himself. Sometimes it does not, as above, or on Iowa's failed two point conversion. Wisconsin had that dead to rights.

This game was revelatory because whoever produces Spielman and this guy who I wish was McDonough is just as good as his announcers. So we get tons of downfield replays. I wondered what was going on in the Maryland game; in this game I had a pretty good handle on whether Rudock was making excessively safe decisions or sadly correct ones, and the answer was the latter.

As a result, this

CHART

chart has a crazy number of "MA" throws.

Jake Rudock

MAs are two things in one that I should probably separate out. One thing the category contains: a throw that is good enough to get caught but either makes the catch difficult or leaves some yards on the field. There were two of those, one an out that Rudock left upfield, the other a throw on which he forced a circus catch out of Vandenberg while getting hit.

The other five MAs are plays on which nothing good happened. I didn't think anything good could happen on those plays. I want to keep those out of the downfield success rate (MAs don't count in it), but they're a different thing entirely. Example: Martin-Manley runs a wheel route on which the throw looks good but KMM lost the route to the point where the DB can just slow up a little and it drops yards away from both guys. You have to take your shots, the throw was probably on target in a hypothetical world where your slot receiver beats the corner, but I don't know.

Usually the latter number are a couple plays a game; five is a ton, and I thought about some of those TAs becoming MAs because I could see downfield coverage on replay. YMMV.

Anyway: 80% downfield with 5 great throws is a bonkers performance. Worth noting that of Rudock's ten incompletions, three were drops on routine balls and another three to five were balls that I don't think Rudock was trying to complete. There was only one throw that was definitively uncatchable and not on purpose.

Stats back that up: 20/30, 311 yards.

Their WRs are really that bad?

I like Tevaun Smith some. He's reasonably big and reasonably fast and good downfield. He has a nice stop-start when running go routes that gets him some separation. He has some flaws, like on that third and nine…

…on which he caught a corner blitz. He ran directly at the safety trying to cover for it, then sat down. Rudock chewed him out, Spielman immediately caught it, and now we get to know it as well.

Unlike the rest of Iowa's WRs he was able to get a step on Wisconsin's cornerbacks.

One step is not a lot of steps but Rudock made it work.

The rest? Bleah. Martin-Manley is just a guy. He got by Wisconsin's nickel corner for a touchdown, but more than once that same guy erased him to the point where there was no chance of a reception. The touchdown was pure man press on which KMM had literally half the field to get open in. When he lined up in less favorable situation the results were middling. Martin-Manley also had a drop right in his hands, which is a pattern.

Damond Powell is not good. He's short, his hands are bad, his routes are bad. Rudock almost threw an interception on a play that looked really bad for him, and then on replay you see Powell running the world's clunkiest route:

That is not an aberration. That was the third straight play Iowa tried to go to him. On the first he tried to run a wheel against the nickel corner and the nickel erased him.  On the second he fell coming out of his break and was lucky to get a PI flag. He would drop a pass in his hands a few plays later, whereupon Iowa would bench him in favor of Vandenberg for the rest of the game.

Vandenberg is okay. He's the opposite of a game breaker.

Iowa's got guys. They drop a lot of balls. (I counted seven against Maryland and three against Wisconsin.) Some of them can't be trusted to run five yards correctly. Other than Smith there's not a guy who's physically threatening.

After three games what are Rudock's biggest strengths?

Rudock's best trait so far is outstanding accuracy. There's more to accuracy than putting the ball in a particular spot. Rudock will throw a rope when the situation calls for it, but he's also got great touch on dumpoffs and screens. Those throws in the bucket to Smith were impossible to improve on. I'm embedding the first one again because it's too pretty not to:

He got to throw a 30 yard pass in small window while getting plugged, and the resulting ball feathers its way into Smith's arms like a pillow.

Rudock has that throw, he's good when he IDs a guy in a seam or on a post.

He excels at putting timing routes on the money to give his players an opportunity to run after the catch. I don't think I've seen an instance where a short throw took a WR off stride more than a hair. Rudock's accuracy is so good that even when he leaves something short I tend to think it's on purpose. He did so when Duzey got wide open on a bust:

Keep it away from the safety, play it safe when you're getting 30 yards and a perfect throw gets you 35.

He will miss badly from time to time; when he does not he is on the money. Caveat: he is inflexible about changing his throws based on coverage. There were a number of times in this game where a back shoulder throw was an option. It never got thrown.

Rudock also has a sense for what's going on in the pocket. He got hit a number of times from the blindside in this game; each time he was moving up, probing to see if he could buy himself more time by improving his tackle's angle. He will think about running but if the window closes he will often go back to finding a receiver.

His football IQ seems high. When he IDed man press one-high coverage from Wisconsin, he checked into a wheel route from the slot that was extremely difficult to cover and nailed the throw.

This week on "why Jabrill Peppers is important"

I may be overrating him because of recent experience. He looks way better than I thought he'd be.

Weaknesses?

Rudock's velocity is fine but it is not a strength. Those dink outs tend to pull WRs upfield, which is an indicator of a guy who wants to make sure they get there without a CB stepping in. He's a guy who has to be confident and correct in his reads because he's not going to make up for it once the ball is in the air.

This is a minor weakness. Here's a 12-yard out.

Not exactly Mallett or Shane Morris but not a major issue.

Rudock is somewhat conservative. I say "somewhat" because I'm beginning to think that giving your WRs an opportunity to make a play is not worth the risk when you're Iowa. Meanwhile Rudock's dink-and-dunk frustrations against the Terrapins were largely a function of pass protection, or the lack thereof.

If you are looking for issues they are present. As a Michigan fan you will be delighted by their lack of severity. Most of the time they're like this:

Maybe you could have gone at Smith, sure. But this was not a ball deposited in the defense's hands.

How much of that conservative play is Iowa being badly coached versus Rudock making correct decisions versus Rudock not being aggressive enough is the main question he has going into 2015. So far I think the lack of aggression contributes the least to Iowa's problems. Rudock takes his shots when put in a situation to.

Finally, Rudock is not an athlete. Nobody expects him to be one, but it is an important aspect of modern QB play he's short on.

This feels too optimistic.

I've looked at two of Rudock's highest YPA outputs of the season, it is true. I couldn't find the Minnesota game, which was a stinker statistically; I do have Nebraska (19/38, 230 yards), Iowa State (16 for 245, 146 yards), and Illinois (14/21, 210 yards). I'm guessing the former two give reason for pause unless it's all guys dropping the ball.

What does it mean for 2015?

I'm sure there are rougher games on Rudock's resume but I would be utterly shocked if he did not start for the whole year.