With the news that D’Eriq King is redshirting in 2019, we look back at every throw he’s made this year.
Over the last couple of days, I’ve gone back and charted every throw that D’Eriq King has made this season through four games (thanks to Brad Towns for going through the Prairie View tape).
King’s stats are a good bit worse than last season. Through four games last year, he was 84/134 (62.7%) with 15 TDs while his 2019 numbers finish at 58/110 (52.7%). Last year, we did his spray chart through 3 games but have gone into much more detail in 2019.
For this season, each attempt is charted from the line of scrimmage to where the ball was thrown to (except for ‘over his head’ – then, we measure where the receiver was attempting to make the play).
A few observations:
28 of his 52 completions are within two yards of the line of scrimmage (54%). A full 75% of his completions are within 6 yards of the LOS.
As you’d have expected, the biggest difference in his throws has been intermediate and long balls. In the first three games of 2018, King had 25 completions between 5-14 yards but he had just 13 in the first three games this season.
Last year, he completed 12 passes of 15+ yards through 3 games last season. This year? 3.
Last season, King was 5/25 over 20 yards through 3 games. This year, through four games, he’s just 2/19 over 20 yards (not counting balls thrown away).
I didn’t expect to find a bucket full of happy on long throws but there’s absolutely no good news here. King has overthrown almost everything deep to the left side and three balls deep to the right.
With his issues with accuracy, it’s not surprising that the routes are mostly along the sideline – if he misses, the ball likely goes out of bounds. That said, he has only connected on one ball deep down the sideline.
The lack of any throws across the middle is difficult to process. That’s a lot of unused real estate especially when defenses typically crowd the line of scrimmage against this offense.
Here’s my goofy gif attempt at showing each game for King then what his spray chart looks like after 2, 3, and 4 games.
King’s efficiency rating dropped 60 points from where it was last year. It’s clear that his inability to connect on passes over 10 yards is the reason. King finished his ‘senior’ season at UH 10/45 over 10 yards – just 22%.
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