Devlin's arm strength is what I've been calling on the margin between adequate and good. What that means is that his arm is only adequate, naturally. However, he has good footwork and when he's allowed to step into his throws, he gets some juice on his passes. The same amount of juice you would see much stronger-armed players get, you'd be very surprised if you were to see the radar gun results. But this guy should NEVER be confused with Joe Flacco, that's the kind of thing people that have never seen him play football before would say. And I've heard RealDriscoll claim that Devlin has rare arm strength or some such and that's just not true. The velocity on the ball on those stick throws is a combination of his arm and his strong footwork and follow-thru. But the guys with great arm strength, they can achieve that kind of velocity and distance without the step through, and so they're more versatile at dealing with pocket pressure.
There are two things that remind me a lot of a guy I had a high opinion of a year ago, Mike Kafka of Northwestern. One is the arm strength/footwork combo. They both achieve velocity when able to step hard into their throws. But also they're alike in their footwork. Both players breathe well within the pocket. They slide, have natural footwork, and can find their passing lanes and angles. Devlin's footwork is a big plus, he will adapt well to a dropback offense. You can see it in his drops from the shotgun, the feet are lively and disciplined as if he's dropping back from Center, even though they don't technically have to be since it's a shotgun (e.g. Cam Newton).
Where they differ a little is in two areas. For one thing Devlin's accuracy looks to me to be on a different level. For another, Devlin's release is more over the top, which is kind of nifty because he has such a quick release generally speaking.
Tonight I had Devlin being accurate on 32 of 39 throws. There was a 40th throw I don't count because it was a good throwaway decision. My tallies aren't based on completions, they're based on where the ball went, where it was supposed to go, and where the receiver was supposed to go. For instance I dinged him on several throws as "misses" just because they were poorly placed, even if caught. On the other hand, I credited him on several that were located correctly and the receiver either didn't run through his route the way he's supposed to or he just flubbed it. Some balls are not supposed to be necessarily right in a guy's chest. Some balls you're ok locating it closer to the ground to give the receiver a better chance of catching it without interference from the DB. Some balls you're ok locating it high.
The 32 of 39 is actually pretty ideal, a little higher than normal but part of that is because his comfort zone was the 13 to 19 yard throw rather than having some more 20 to 30 yard throws. I like guys that when you strip everything away and account for it, hit their receivers 4 out of 5 times, or at least 3 out of 4. There are guys that are consistently 3 out of 5, and I don't like that as much. Mark Sanchez is one of those guys, IMO, and so is Tyler Thigpen. Anything below that and you're total scattershot. Henne is between a 3 out of 4 and a 4 out of 5 guy.
I thought he did a lot of good things. Some more observations:
1. He took a little off some of his short throws to help them get caught. There were only 1 or 2 that I thought he maybe could have taken a little more juice off, but in general he was very good with this.
2. He didn't float or sail ANY of the deeper stick throws that he tried to make. He stepped into them when he could. When he couldn't step through, he had 26 and 30 yard attempts fall short and end up turfed a few yards short of where they should have gone. One of those fell short simply because he was on an awkward half-roll play call, there was some pressure, and so he wasn't able to set his feet and really step through the throw. The other one he did step through, and I think he was aiming for a low ball location with the way the route was run and where the coverage was, but it was just about 2 yards shy of where it needed to be.
3. He managed the clock perfectly. Underrated quality, being aware of the clock. Never any issues with delay of game, and in the 4th quarter he regularly brought it down to 8 or 7 seconds at the beginning of the quarter protecting a 16-3 lead but still trying to drive down the field and maybe put down a nail in the coffin. When they failed to do so, and the next drives they got were full "run the clock out" mode, that clock hit 01 seconds nearly every time.
4. He only tried two of the deeper touch throws. One was PERFECTLY placed at 33 yards as the crow flies, and so it ended up being a 24 yard TD throw on a corner route. The other floated too far but he was hit as he threw and the receiver was not as far along in his route as he should have been (claimed he was held, not sure he was).
5. He regularly read the entire field, coming to his 3rd or 4th reads, and showed a lot of eye discipline in general. He mixed things up a lot. Sometimes he would make his first pair of reads and click off them, then throw to his next read right away. Sometimes he would also click off that second read onto something further to the side, then flip back and hit the second read he just clicked off, so as to throw the defense off a little bit. Sometimes he made his read and decision on a short ball before the snap, but when he did so he never betrayed it by looking in that direction before he snapped the ball. That second TD he threw was really a great progression and showed off his ability to use extra time to find an open guy and fit the ball in there. A lot of his shorter throws were not like you would expect in a normal spread attack, they were true checkdowns where he was onto his 3rd or 4th read.
6. The shot selection was decidedly short, I only counted 9 of 39 throws that were 20+ yards as the crow flies. I only counted 3 that were 30+ yards and none that were 40+ yards through the air. But part of it was because of the safeties playing a lot deeper than I usually see especially in college. They were taking away the deep throws, leaving the underneath, and he was patient with it until he could make his deeper stabs later in the game. The shot selection bothers me at times, because consistently I think you see that the 15 to 20 yard throw is a lot more of a comfort zone to him than the 20 to 25 yard throw, but at the same time the GREAT passers in this league all make extremely good use of the area between the numbers and less than 10 yards up from the line of scrimmage. That's just a fact. Well timed and well located passes in this area hurt NFL defenses. Devlin has shown the ability to threaten the perimeter of the field.
7. As I have mentioned before, the offense he's in is kind of a curious one in how conservative it's called at times, especially near the goal line. At one point the same thing happened that I'd seen in other Delaware games, they're in the red zone and they run the ball on 1st and 2nd down, get nothing from it, and have to get Devlin to make a throw on 3rd & Long from inside the red zone in order to keep the drive alive or score. In this game when that happened his receivers were well covered and he just had to throw the ball away. You would think that with a guy like him that reads the field as quickly and ALWAYS makes good decisions (2 interceptions on the year), you would trust him more to try and stick it in the end zone himself.
8. I said before that one weakness was his handling of pressure in the pocket. I found it intriguing that some others thought he had strong scrambling ability and the ability to break pressure in the pocket, etc. That had not been my experience watching him. He took a lot of sacks tonight. Some were pressure immediately, some were coverage sacks where nobody was open, but this is an area of concern for me. He didn't generally take sacks during the year but the games where the other team was able to generate consistent pressure on him, they scored a low amount of points and lost...or in this case for the first time they were able to win despite the pressure. He throws the ball away at times, he just needs to be more consistent about his decisions to do so.
9. I had no idea the guy had broken his left wrist during the second game of the year. He's played all year long with a broken wrist on his non-throwing hand. The man has some guts.
You're not going to know enough about this guy until you start ratcheting up the talent of the players around him, on both sides. You want better skill players, and you want better defensive players. You want to see if he continues to handle pressure a little poorly at times when the bodies flying at him are bigger and faster. Does it start to affect his throwing? I doubt the speed of the defensive backs will significantly affect him, just because his eyes and timing are big pluses, but will he attack those defensive players enough with deeper throws? The Senior Bowl will be good for him.
