Darnold's low point: 'Seeing ghosts'
It was a weird season for the Jets, but the lowest moment was likely their 33-0 loss to the Patriots on Monday Night Football. Darnold finished 11-of-32 passing for 86 yards with four picks and a strip sack and admitted during the contest that he was "seeing ghosts." It was a rare moment of honesty from a struggling player in the middle of a game, which meant that it was immediately met by controversy and criticism from all sides.
The Patriots tormented Darnold with what's known as "sim pressures" or "creepers." The goal with sim pressures is to crowd the line of scrimmage with possible blitzers and then send the four best-positioned rushers while still dropping a full set of seven defenders back into coverage. One example would be to load up both sides of the line with potential blitzers and then send pressure on one side while dropping the other side into coverage, wasting the offensive linemen on one side and overloading the pressure on the other side.
On that Monday night, what it looked like for Darnold too often was this:
Bill Belichick repeatedly hit Darnold with free rushers. When he stayed upright long enough to throw the football, the Patriots had a good sense of where he would look on his hot routes, leading to one early interception where they showed man coverage and then used Devin McCourty as a trap defender, coming off of his man, to pick off Darnold. Other interceptions later in the game were just blind desperation.
As bad as the numbers were, Darnold's performance as the game went on was worse. I don't think I've ever seen a quarterback as shaken as he was during one stretch in the third quarter. With the Patriots' pressure slowing down, he had time to throw but still had a stretch where he put six passes in places where no human being could have made a catch. He was missing by yards and sailing passes out of bounds. The missing toenail didn't help matters, I'm sure, but he really didn't belong in the game. At the very least, Gase should have dialed up more quick game and concepts to get the ball out of Darnold's hands as easily as possible, but it didn't get better until a couple of bright spots popped up in the fourth quarter.
The Patriots made a lot of quarterbacks look bad last season, but it was telling that they were able to dominate really with this one pass-rush concept throughout the game, and neither Gase nor Darnold had a solution. Those same pressures gave him trouble as the year went along.
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It was a weird season for the Jets, but the lowest moment was likely their 33-0 loss to the Patriots on Monday Night Football. Darnold finished 11-of-32 passing for 86 yards with four picks and a strip sack and admitted during the contest that he was "seeing ghosts." It was a rare moment of honesty from a struggling player in the middle of a game, which meant that it was immediately met by controversy and criticism from all sides.
The Patriots tormented Darnold with what's known as "sim pressures" or "creepers." The goal with sim pressures is to crowd the line of scrimmage with possible blitzers and then send the four best-positioned rushers while still dropping a full set of seven defenders back into coverage. One example would be to load up both sides of the line with potential blitzers and then send pressure on one side while dropping the other side into coverage, wasting the offensive linemen on one side and overloading the pressure on the other side.
On that Monday night, what it looked like for Darnold too often was this:
Bill Belichick repeatedly hit Darnold with free rushers. When he stayed upright long enough to throw the football, the Patriots had a good sense of where he would look on his hot routes, leading to one early interception where they showed man coverage and then used Devin McCourty as a trap defender, coming off of his man, to pick off Darnold. Other interceptions later in the game were just blind desperation.
As bad as the numbers were, Darnold's performance as the game went on was worse. I don't think I've ever seen a quarterback as shaken as he was during one stretch in the third quarter. With the Patriots' pressure slowing down, he had time to throw but still had a stretch where he put six passes in places where no human being could have made a catch. He was missing by yards and sailing passes out of bounds. The missing toenail didn't help matters, I'm sure, but he really didn't belong in the game. At the very least, Gase should have dialed up more quick game and concepts to get the ball out of Darnold's hands as easily as possible, but it didn't get better until a couple of bright spots popped up in the fourth quarter.
The Patriots made a lot of quarterbacks look bad last season, but it was telling that they were able to dominate really with this one pass-rush concept throughout the game, and neither Gase nor Darnold had a solution. Those same pressures gave him trouble as the year went along.
Is this Sam Darnold's last chance? A progress report on the Jets QB and what to expect in 2020
Dig into the numbers, and the odds are stacked against Darnold. But considering his age and skill set, there's reason for optimism.
