Trevor Lawrence is Putting to Rest Any Concerns From His Rookie Season

One thing was clear while watching Trevor Lawrence against the Ravens last week; he has grown substantially from his rookie season.

Ed wrote this past offseason that despite being physically gifted, Lawrence had a long way to go to polish his game. He didn’t consistently anticipate throws during his rookie season. He was over-reactive to pressure. His decision-making and ability to read the field were questionable, often leading to some ugly mistakes. All of these were traits that weren’t necessarily visible during his time at Clemson.

Simply put, the NFL game looked like it was moving too fast for him.

This season, however, Lawrence looks like a different player. And in the Jaguars’ Week 12 win over the Ravens, you could see a quarterback who not only seems to have adjusted to the speed of the NFL game, he’s also put to rest any concerns that the flaws mentioned above are long-term issues.

This first touchdown pass was a great example. The Ravens appeared to be playing Cover-4 “Palms” to the 2-receiver side of the field. That meant cornerback Marcus Peters would be keying on the route run by the #2 (slot) receiver. If he ran a vertical or inside route, Peters would turn his attention to the #1 receiver. But if he ran a quick-out, for instance, Peters would try to jump it, and the safety would then take #1 if he ran a vertical route:

Head coach Doug Pederson seemed to anticipate this coverage. He would actually call the route combination illustrated above.

The added wrinkle, though, was the personnel he used. Pederson put a receiver (Christian Kirk) in the slot and a running back (JaMycal Hasty) on the perimeter:

Against this alignment and personnel distribution, Baltimore was more likely to play Palms coverage with Peters attacking Kirk’s route from the slot. After all, running backs are often just put on the perimeter to provide an indicator of the coverage for the quarterback. They’re rarely thrown to with a cornerback aligned over them. And even if they do run a vertical, they generally aren’t burners that the defense has to worry too much about.

Here’s where Lawrence really made this play happen. At the top of his drop, he gave a slight shoulder roll in the direction of Kirk’s quick out to bait Peters, and that allowed Hasty to run right by him. You can even see Peters leaning below:

But since this play was to the boundary, there wasn’t a lot of margin for error on the throw. The safety would have time to read the play and not too much ground to cover in order to take away the vertical route. So Lawrence had to get the ball out quickly and make a near perfect throw. That’s exactly what he did:

Check out the anticipation on that throw. Look where Hasty was when the ball was just coming out of Lawrence’s hand:

Lawrence didn’t give the safety any time to react, and that made all the difference.

This is worth another look from the end zone angle, because you can also see that Lawrence wasn’t delivering this throw out of a clean pocket. He had defensive tackle Brent Urban bearing down on him and delivering a hit right after he got rid of the ball:

From the read, to the manipulation of defenders, to the anticipation and ball placement, to the ability to make a throw in the face of pressure, this was an elite play. And it wasn’t Lawrence’s only outstanding throw of the day.

On this next play, the Jaguars were trailing by 9 in the 4th quarter and facing a 4th-and-8. The game was basically on the line.