What Brian Hoyer Brings to the Texans’ Offense

Arm Strength

The next thing is arm strength. I don’t have too much to say on this subject other than Hoyer’s arm is a fairly average NFL arm. He can put some good velocity on the ball, but for the most part he’s trying more for accuracy and touch than he is for power. Hoyer throws a fairly clean spiral. The ball never seems too wonky coming out of his hand and looks very catchable most of the time. Here’s a couple examples of his ball speed:

Footwork

Next up is his footwork. Hoyer’s footwork is pretty standard. He’s not doing anything too crazy with his feet, and is mostly sticking to a pretty traditional style of footwork. Two feet on the ground, bouncing on the balls of his feet, and staying in a good position to set and fire quickly.
Hoyer’s movement within the pocket is not good, but it’s not awful either. He knows when to step up in the pocket and is good about finding the space within the pocket to move to.

Here’s a few examples of his pocket movement:

His problem is that he sets his feet early on throws occasionally and just doesn’t reset. He also has a problem resetting after a pump fake. He’ll widen his base for his pump fakes and simply won’t reset.

On this play for example, Hoyer commits to the throw, but hesitates when he sees the receiver isn’t open. He makes a small reset, but throws very stiffly and the ball is underthrown. Not to mention the decision to attempt this throw was not good, but that’s another topic.

On this play Hoyer pump fakes and turns to look upfield, but instead decides he wants to throw to his right. He doesn’t reset his feet and throws a poor ball for Austin.

On this play Hoyer pump fakes and once again does not reset and this causes him to take a big sack in a bad spot. If Hoyer resets himself before he begins to back up he has a better chance of avoiding the sack since he would be more balanced than he was on the play.

Mobility

Hoyer is not a very mobile quarterback. He has the ability to scramble for small chunks of yards and make it difficult for defenders to tackle him outside the pocket, but he won’t be making too many guys miss on his scrambles.

Here’s a nice example of what Hoyer can do once he leaves the pocket:

Hoyer can move well enough to avoid pressure, but he can only do so for a limited amount of time. On this play Hoyer buys himself just enough time to hit his wide open receiver in the endzone which is really the most you should expect from him. Hoyer can give himself two to three extra seconds on his feet before someone is likely to bring him down.