J.J. McCarthy had a horrible, no-good, very dangerous recreation on Sunday night time in opposition to the Falcons. It wasn’t merely a recreation that failed the attention take a look at, or introduced him again to earth — however the worst QB efficiency on the weekend by a large margin.
A few of that’s only a issue of being a rookie. It’s anticipated that he’ll take his lumps. The problematic half is that we noticed not one of the playmaker who confirmed up in opposition to the Bears on Monday Evening Soccer, and was as a substitute changed by a misplaced, typically scared QB whose resolution making was nonsensical. The problems began up entrance with the Vikings being unable to determine the run. As quickly because the Falcons knew they didn’t must respect the Minnesota working backs it eliminated play motion from the Vikes’ guide, which is the place McCarthy had a lot success the prior week.
This nonetheless isn’t the most important difficulty with McCarthy. That is:
For the second straight week McCarthy has been each unable to persistently throw to the left facet of the sphere, and unwilling to take action. Via two video games he has an extremely pronounced cut up distinction in relation to which space of the sphere he’s throwing to.
Furthermore, all eight of McCarthy’s left area completions both got here off the RPO or out of play motion. It’s an indication the QB simply isn’t snug enjoying in construction to his left, which is a giant downside when that’s Justin Jefferson’s facet of the sphere until the Vikings play bunch.
The plain query is “why can’e he throw left?” The reply isn’t dissimilar to a different ghost of NFC North’s previous: Mitchell Trubisky. So pronounced was Trubisky’s incapacity to throw left that The Ringer took a deep dive into the difficulty again in 2019.
Right here’s the rub with McCarthy: It’s about how he likes to throw the soccer. Should you watch his mechanics he’s an enormous fan of drive throws. Entering into the go and dealing a fastball is his most popular approach of getting the ball downfield. McCarthy loves this throw a lot that he’s developed a baseball-esque wind up in his mechanics to ship the ball with as a lot drive as doable.
This throw comes naturally when he’s seeking to his proper. His ft are correctly lined up, and he has consciousness of any frontside stress that would take away his supreme movement. Nonetheless, when he must scan left it requires a reset of his ft, and he’s not snug with that but as a result of it drastically will increase his time-to-throw when paired together with his windup and supply.
It’s right here we have to surprise slightly in regards to the pre-draft criticism about McCarthy’s arm expertise. We haven’t seen him work out of platform a lot, actually for almost all of his soccer profession. Michigan’s safety was ok that he had all day to be snug below middle. What worries me is that he’s now in year-two below Kevin O’Connell, who’s a QB guru — and O’Connell hasn’t had McCarthy drop that wind up throwing movement. Is that as a result of he merely desires his QB to get snug, or does J.J. lack the arm expertise to make NFL-caliber throws when he doesn’t use that movement?
We really don’t know. What we do know, nonetheless, is that McCarthy drastically favors one facet of the sphere, and is mediocre when he throws to the opposite. That is particularly dangerous, as a result of in video games like Sunday night time in opposition to the Falcons, when he wants to fireplace the ball in there and make performs, the protection is aware of one facet of the sphere is mainly worry-free. Atlanta had been capable of cheat safeties over the fitting, bracket receivers in bunch, and generate incompletions and turnovers due to it.
It’s ludicrous to say McCarthy is in bother, however he wants to repair this downside to take the subsequent step.
