In Review: D'Eriq King

https://swcroundup.com/news/2018/1/9/in-review-deriq-king?utm_content=buffer3a460&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Let’s deal with the bad news first, cause there isn’t a lot to deal with; King struggled with sack avoidance. Opponents sacked King on almost eight percent of his dropbacks. Sacks aren’t solely on the quarterback, good coverage, inadequate protection, schemes, all play a role in sacks, but as Bill Bilichek points out, there’s nothing wrong with an incompletion. Negative plays, however, those are drive killers. If King can cut that number to five or six percent, he’ll be right in the meaty part of the curve.

Every other category, from a percentile rank, King played at an elite level, real elite. King’s interception avoidance came in the 98th percentile, his yards per attempt and touchdown percentile rank were both above the 97th percentile. We started incorporating touchdowns accounted for over the past season, basically taking the number of total touchdowns, running and passing, and look at the number of plays to get a percentile rank of point production per play. In almost 10% of his snaps, King played a role in producing points. That percentile rank puts King in Baker Mayfield, Drew Locke, and Mason Rudolph’s neighborhood.

Another area we’d like to highlight is interception avoidance, which is a fancy way of saying King didn’t throw a lot of picks. King threw interceptions on just 1% of his dropbacks. We heard a lot about Jalen Hurts throwing just two picks in 2017, King’s interception rate sat in that ballpark, better than Heisman winner Mayfield, Heisman runner-up Lamar Jackson, and 96% percent of all quarterbacks who threw 90 or more passes last season.

Finally, and this surprised us a bit, King’s completion percentage hit 69.8%. That’s elite level efficiency and combined with his yards per attempt shows that he wasn’t a dink and dunker. Kyle Allen led all FBS quarterbacks in completion percentage, but his completions went for five yards less per completion that King and three yards less per attempt. King threw accurately and downfield better than 98% of his peers.

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Thanks for sharing this, pray. I said to myself during the season, “King looks at least as athletic as Ward was, and I think he is a better passer already.” These numbers bear that out. Of course, it remains to be seen whether King has the amazing toughness and will to win that Ward possessed, but based on what I’ve seen so far, I like it.

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I think King will be a dominant QB in our new system with CKB…