After the 2011 season, a season in which Tyler Wilson completed over 63% of his passes for 3600 yards and 24 TDs with only 6 INTs, Wilson seemed as good a candidate as any for the 2012 Heisman.
With an unexpected scandal and the ensu...
After the 2011 season, a season in which Tyler Wilson completed over 63% of his passes for 3600 yards and 24 TDs with only 6 INTs, Wilson seemed as good a candidate as any for the 2012 Heisman.
With an unexpected scandal and the ensuing firing of head coach Bobby Petrino combined with Wilson losing his top 3 targets to the NFL (Jarius Wright, Joe Adams and Greg Childs were all drafted in the 4th round of the 2012 draft, Adams to the Panthers and Wright and Childs to the Vikings), Wilson’s chances at a Heisman or a National Championship looked substantially worse but Wilson and the others were still hopeful, as this Sports Illustrated piece in August of 2012 demonstrates.
Wilson had a solid season, completing over 62% of his passes and still throwing for over 3300 yards but the team struggled to score and went on to win only 4 games in 2012, one of the wins coming against lowly Jacksonville State University.
It was going to be interesting, therefore, to see what the tape showed about Wilson as a QB – both in 2011 and 2012.
Wilson does a great many things well – as should be expected for someone who was a possible Heisman contender and once considered a likely first round pick – but he has his struggles, too.
His biggest issues come in the deep game. He seems to have enough arm to make the throws but his mechanics on deep throws are a concern. He often throws off his back foot to much when lobbing a ball deep, which causes there to be too much air under the throw when it arrives downfield.
The deep throws that have too much air on them tend to drop too early, so the receivers have to come back for them. It also results in interceptions.
The mechanics of his throw can, of course, be corrected or at least improved. The other issue – and one that cannot be corrected or improved – is that Wilson possesses small hands. Measured at the Combine at 8 ¾” (the average for an NFL QB is 9 1/2”), Wilson struggles to get great rotation on the ball and that lack of great rotation doesn’t help Wilson on the deep passes. In fact, the deeper the pass the more his balls flutter or outright tumble short of their target.
Here is an example of Wilson’s suspect deep throw abilities. To start, the Razorbacks are in a shotgun formation:
The Razorbacks OL, which struggled most of 2012, has provided Wilson with a clean pocket for this play. His intended target is at the bottom right of the picure, here, and you can see that the receiver has a half step on the corner. By the time the ball gets down field, the receiver will be a good two steps or so past his man and he'll be wide open:
Wilson sees the advantage that his receiver has gained and is able to step up to throw the ball downfield:
As you can see, Wilson has a space to throw - he is able to step up and make the throw downfield and he is not hit has he throws:
However, the ball, which flutters fairly quickly and loses it's momentum, falls well short of the receiver. The cornerback, who was trailing the receiver, is now in a better position to make a play on the ball than the wideout. The wideout runs back to try to break up the pass:
The wideout was not able to make it back in time and the cornerback hauls in the interception. The wideout arrives in time only to make a quick tackle:
It's not always so bad for Wilson, of course. His normally accurate passes simply become more erratic when he's asked to throw deep. Sometimes, Wilson is able to put it all together and deliver a truly beautiful deep pass, such as this one, below.
In this play, the Arkansas offense starts out with an offset I formation:
At the snap, Wilson fakes a handoff to the runningback, freezing the defenders a moment and allowing his receivers to get downfield:
Like the last play, Wilson
