Week 5 Colts’ Opposing QB: An analysis of Trevor Lawrence

Thanks to the nflFastR project and NFL NextGen Stats for the timely sources of data.

For those of you new to this, I will publish key QB stats each week judging how well the upcoming opponent QB has performed. Yes, O-Line, receivers, and play-calling impact these numbers but they are primarily QB measures. I will probably modify the charts throughout the season. Commentary will be brief but feel free to let me know in the comments that stats aren’t everything. (click charts for larger view)

DASHBOARD

I predicted Trevor Lawrence to take a step forward and be a top 10 QB this year, and so far that prediction has aged like milk. After 4 weeks, he is putting up some of the worst numbers in the league. Let’s take a look.

• He has been backed up by a more than competent run game as the Jags implement a balanced offensive approach (11th arsr, 17th edp)
• He is facing harder than average passing defenses (17th opd), but they have been easier than what he saw last year (5th hardest).
• Lawrence has faced higher than average pressure with about an average time to throw (13th pr%, 19th ttt). Yet he still manages the 3rd longest attempts in the league (3rd adot). One of my predictions was that the Jags return to shorter passes for success and so far, they have not done that.
• His accuracy has been horrible, which in part has been causing his receivers to get less than expected yac, and both of those drivers are pushing down his yards per attempt (31st cpoe, 31st yacoe, 25th ypa)
• His abandoned attempt rate is higher than average but not terrible (12th aa%). The problem is that he is not scrambling enough and getting sacked too often (21st scr%, 8th sck%), which drives down his yards per abandoned attempt (24th yaa), which in turn drives down his overall yardage efficiency (27th ny/d).
• With low yards per dropback, its tough to get first downs and TDs (23rd 1st%, 21st td%).

About the only positive to his game is his ability to protect the ball (31st to%), but that alone is not enough to overcome all of the bad and he ends up 26th in EPA efficiency and 27th in Passing Success Rate, pushing for a spot in the bottom 5 QB club.

HOW WELL?

Look at the rolling average trend lines in these graphs. They are all going the wrong way. Week 1 against Miami was a promising start, but the next 3 games fell off a cliff.

HOW FAR?

For the last 11 weeks, Lawrence has been chucking the ball deep and it certainly is helping him get long average completion depth.

But that long completion depth is not boosting his yards per attempt. I mean look at this graph, there are 2 outliers; Tua who passes very short and gets great YPA and Lawrence who passes far and gets horrible YPA.

TO WHO?

1st round pick Brian Thomas Jr. leads the team in receiving yards, but Christian Kirk has the most targets.

HOW ACCURATE?

Trevor’s poor accuracy is basically driving his poor numbers. It’s not the deep passes that are off target, but rather he has gone 6 for 19 on passes between 11-15 yards.

HOW FAST?

He used to be one of the quick, short pass throwers and it worked well for him in 2022. But passing depth has gotten longer and time to throw has grown with it and it hasn’t been a good trade-off.

As the era of the running QB takes hold, this is becoming more common place. QBs take longer to throw with worse results. Give me a guy who can get rid of the ball in under 2.5 seconds any day.

TO WHERE?

The misery is spread out all over the field.