Jameis Winston vs. Vikings - Preseason 2015

Play 4 - Here is one of the Jameis Winston’s best throws of the night. In shotgun slot right far, Winston takes the snap and drops 3-steps. He then climbs into the pocket to avoid the edge pressure coming from his left side to step up and throw it deep to WR83 Jackson. The ball placement is still not there. WR83 Jackson has his man beat, but he still has to dive back inside on his go-route to catch the ball.

The one concerning thing about this play is Winston’s throwing motion. Do me a favor and slow down the GIF and watch his arm motion very carefully. Winston is still winding up and throwing the ball with baseball-mechanics. It’s clear Winston has been working on fixing this since the NFL Draft process started, and it’s clear he still has more work to do to get rid of the extraneous movement before releasing the ball to throw it sooner. This is something we need to look out for as the season progresses and into next preseason on his progress.

Play 5 - Here is another play using the timing pattern principle of the west coast offense. Winston is half a second too late on the timing of this throw or it would have been a completion by the goalline on the deep hitch route. Just like before, his arm mechanics are what is slowing down his ball release, but like before he does show the ability to throw with a level of anticipation most rookies do not have at this point.

Play 6 - This is my favorite pass of the night. This is a submarine, play-action bootleg that is an installed packaged play that many teams including the Redskins, Falcons, Seahawks, and Steelers use to cause misdirection and to cut the field in half to give the quarterback an easy read.

In this play, Winston runs the bootleg to the right and realizes the edge defender on the right side of the pocket doesn’t bite. Winston stops running and throws it down the sideline to WR18 Murphy on a perfectly placed pass on the deep-out route to move the chains for the first down. Beautiful pass and beautiful job of sensing the defender and stopping the bootleg earlier than most quarterbacks would take it.

Play 7 - After that great pass to move the chains, Winston throws my least favorite pass of the entire night. On 2nd and 7, Winston forces the ball to his outside receiver who is covered and due to his long release and eye movement towards the left side of the field after the snap it brings over the safety and it is clearly covered. This pass should have gone to the checkdown receiver underneath.

Play 8 - Here is Winston’s touchdown run. Winoston from shotgun trips left goes through his reads on the left side of the field seeing that all of them weren’t open. He senses the pocket collapsing and starts to scramble into it, then outside to the right for the touchdown. For the vast majority of the quarterbacks I like to see them using their pocket awareness and scrambling ability to set up plays downfield, but there was nobody open on the backside that could have been a simple touchdown throw. TE88 Stocker needs to release to the back of the endzone on these scramble drills once Winston starts improvising in order to get open for a touchdown without Winston risking his body.

Play 9 - Finally, here is Winston’s interception on the night. I included both angles from the broadcast view so you can see what Winston saw as he releases the football. It’s still difficult to fully analyze these plays without ALL-22 angles which aren’t available during the preseason, but this is the best we can do.

In this play Winston is in singleback slot right and has his slot receiver #13 Mike Evans running a seam route up the middle of the field. The defender, CB24 Munnerlyn is draped all over Evans well past the 5 yard cushion allowed for legal contact. This should have been called back for defensive pass interference or at the very least defensive holding in my opinion as WR13 Evans is being held by Munnerlyn.

Outside of the holding call, Winston still needs to work on his eye movement. From the snap he immediately looks over to the right side of the field and at WR13 Evans before releasing the football which draws the safety. It was a good read IF Winston faked left and then came back to his intended target as that would have bought him a cleaner window to throw the ball through.

Overall, I was impressed by Winston’s pocket awareness and attempted anticipation throughout the game. I said this before and I’ll keep saying it, but most rookies don’t have this skill-set developed and it takes 2-3 years for most to fully understand that as a quarterback you need to throw your wide receivers open, not wait for them to get open. On the negative side, Winston’s inaccuracy is something that we need to keep an eye out for. This could have been nerves as this was his first NFL game of his career, but you can tell he was gaining more confidence in the pocket as the game progressed. Another thing we need to look out for is pre-snap to post-snap read progressions. Winston showed in Play 1 that he had his mind made-up and he was going to his intended target from the beginning. He needs to read the coverage post-snap as well as pre-snap and have that dictate his progression and intended target.

From the Buccaneers’ standpoint as a whole, they need to fix their center-to-quarterback exchange issues. There were at least three fumbled or high snaps that destroyed drives and caused issues for the offense to start clicking. Four of the of five starting offensive line received a negative rating by ProFootballFocus. The only positive grade on the line was veteran left guard #70 Logan Mankins. The Buccaneers drafted left tackle Donovan Smith out of Penn State in the 2nd round this April so hopefully as the season progresses he will continue to improve.

Follow Samuel Gold on Twitter: @SamuelRGold.