He doesn't understand when or even how to use a touch pass. I've watched the tape its all 100 mph. He is highly inaccurate and its not even a footwork thing. He does everything right and it still misses. And you misunderstood me, i didn't say he's not smart. I said he doesn't understand the mental game of being a QB. When to hit short routes, how to read a defense and yes when to use a touch pass
First off, yeah he does know how to throw with touch. He's shown it many times. I've seen all of his 2016 and 2017 tape, and his Senior Bowl tape, it's just a simple fact.
Secondly, "highly inaccurate" is a highly suspect description. He's inaccurate in certain situations. Coming from a pro style offense, he hasn't mastered the turn and quick throw stuff that is pretty much required mastery for all of these college QBs operating Air Raid offenses and spread attacks. It's something he needs to work on. Everyone has something they need to work on. He's a second year college starter.
Aside from that, his accuracy issues reside almost exclusively in plays where he holds the football for an inordinate amount of time, looking to buy extra time for his crappy receivers running isolation routes to get open, and then he goes for the home run (i.e. LOW PERCENTAGE PASS). It's like a three point shooter deciding everything's gotta be a 30 footer from beyond the break.
That's not accuracy. That's decision making. And his decision making has developed within the confines of an offense that curiously asked him to do nothing about 2/3rds of the time on 1st down, choosing instead to gain a paltry 3.8 yards per carry (nearly 2 full yards per carry less than you saw on 1st downs from the group of other top QBs in the draft whose teams averaged 5.5 yards per carry on 1st down), and then ask Josh to bail them out on 2nd & Long, or on 3rd down.
This is what you see when you take a look at him analytically. He had a FAR higher portion of his action on 3rd down than the rest of the group. He had a FAR lower portion of his action on 1st down than the rest of the group. And his 2nd down action had two defining characteristics: an extreme imbalance toward 2nd & Long, and poor group-relative performance. The group-relative performance wasn't poor on 1st or 3rd down. It wasn't poor on throws that took between 2.0 and 3.0 seconds to execute. It was poor on 2nd down, poor on throws that took under 2.0 seconds, and poor on the outsized portion of his throws that took 3.0+ seconds to execute.
Why did he have poor group-relative performance in those situations?
Let's take the short-time quick throws first. As I said, there are very real accuracy issues and they absolutely DO have to do with footwork (I really don't see your assertion that his accuracy issues have nothing to do with footwork; footwork issues are all over the tape).
But also, short throws that take less than 2.0 seconds to execute are bang-bang throws that take a lot of chemistry and trust between the QB and his WRs. Trust me, that was a work in progress this year with this receivers unit. He lost THREE primary receiving targets from a year ago to the NFL (WR Tanner Gentry, WR Jake Maulhardt, TE Jacob Hollister...combined for 68% of Wyo's catches in 2016...were gone in 2017). In their place stepped a bunch of sophomores and juniors, and the chemistry wasn't always so good. Not surprisingly, he was markedly better on these throws in 2016 than 2017. That is HARDLY a shock. Any mature evaluator would understand and account for that.
So why did he struggle on 2nd downs, and on throws that took 3.0+ seconds. These two areas overlap quite a bit on the Venn diagram. He had the ball mostly taken out of his hands on 1st down and even on 50% of the 2nd downs (about a 50/50 run-pass split on 2nd down). So when he was asked to throw on 2nd down, A) it was an outsized portion of 2nd & Longs specifically, and B) he had to be thinking essentially that this is his only chance before 3rd down (when you need to be focusing on the sticks) to make a play, and so he seemed to have throws where he intentionally decided to hold the football and evade the rush and try and make something happen on extended time.
When you also start to factor in Wyo's play-faking tendencies, and the fact most of their receiver routes are isolation routes instead of route combinations (asking these inexperienced and often out-gunned sophomore and junior receivers to just straight up win isolation routes rather than utilizing two- and three-man route combinations to create windows)...the picture starts to come together how this guy can have a low completion percentage in college and then go out to the Senior Bowl and suddenly look like a marksman.
It's not that he doesn't have flaws. He certainly does.
I didn't like how he played in that Iowa game because he gave up on the structure of his offense after basically just one quarter of looking out-gunned. He needs more patience. His accuracy issues on some of those quick passes are real, and his footwork gets jacked up far too much. I'm not sure he always sees things in real time, either. I'm not entirely certain it's a coincidence that he struggled the most in games that featured huge crowds and there's a certain amount of confidence that I think is lacking. He's going to have to basically un-learn some of his hero ball tendencies, especially on 2nd down, and accept working within structure more.
Are these issues manageable on a guy as young as he is, as talented as he is, as smart as he is, with as well-grounded a personality as he has? Absolutely. If they didn't have flaws, they wouldn't be a draft prospect.