It’s hard to find many judges willing to hold on to the record to indicate that Clemson’s Trevor Lawrence is not the best QB prospect in the NFL draft in 2021.
But we found that one who does not even have Lawrence has one of his two best QB outlook this year.
June Jones, the former head coach of the Atlanta Falcons and San Diego Chargers, watched many of the best backs for the NFL draft in 2021. He did not see them all. But he has seen enough of Lawrence to be less with the overwhelming favorite for the overall no. 1 to know that if he chose Jones in that place, he would build up some other plans.
“Hey, I like him. But I will not take him with the first choice,” Jones told Yahoo Sports by telephone from his home in Honolulu. “Everyone says it’s the man at 1. But I’ll take the pick and take down one of these other quarterbacks.”
The two quarterbacks he prefers? Well, one is now almost a household name – at least among those involved in the NFL draft process. BYU’s Zach Wilson, who may be the second overall pick for the New York Jets, is higher on his pick order than Lawrence.
But Wilson is not the prospect of Jones on QB this year. He has Alabama’s Mac Jones at the top.
We had follow-up questions about Lawrence, Wilson, and Jones. And he had answers.
What Can Hold Trevor Lawrence
We asked Jones: Why is he so (relatively) little to Lawrence?
“He’s a very talented kid, don’t get me wrong, and I think he’s a winner,” Jones said. “He can do things that other backs can’t do, like run.
‘But what I noticed is that when he sees him fall back and, let’s say, throw a 9-yard run off the field, on the completions he’s had more than 20 yards, his receivers play up many times. the balls. And they were not right on the money, they were not right in the pass. The receivers sometimes had to work with him for the deep ball as a great quarterback (you would expect). ‘
Jones is not wrong about the fact, as Lawrence had a strong completion percentage (69.2) this season, hitting a significant 51 percent of his passes that traveled at least 20 yards in the air. And Jones makes a good point about Lawrence’s deeper passes not being as accurate and limiting the potential of his receivers after the catch.
“Of course he can work on it and improve it. But at the moment I like a few other guys better,” Jones said.
Are they ball viewers? Or a receiver viewers?
One of the things Jones looks for with quarterbacks as they throw the ball vertically is their eyes. Jones’ no. 1 criterion for whether he thinks a quarterback can achieve greatness in the NFL is accuracy, and Jones believes that the eye behavior of a QB has an important key in it.
This is something that started when Jones had a backup from Steve Bartkowski in Atlanta, noting that Bartkowski would see the ball regularly during the flight and not the receiver he was throwing at. And he just overturned his receivers, sometimes by a foot or less.
After Jones made the proposal to his teammate, Bartkowski’s deep ball became one of the best in the NFL in the late 1970s and early 1980s. And when Jones coached Moon, the same thing happened: Moon would barely overthrow his husband and miss out on a long win.
The improvement occurred when Moon focused on keeping his gaze on the receiver, not on the ball.
“The big ones obviously don’t take their eyes off the receiver,” Jones said. “It’s a hard thing to change. But you can change it. Bart and Moon both said it (they helped), and it was something (pioneer of run-and-shoot attack) that Mouse (Davis) told me. years ago. It just makes a difference. “
Jones tried to keep an eye on Lawrence’s eyes to see if that was the problem, noting that the throws could be more accurate even on his long rounds. Based on what he saw on tape, it’s hard for Jones to say definitively.
“You really have to watch the quarterback to tell it,” he said. ‘If I were to see it with him, it would be the first thing I work with him on.
“It’s such a simple thing, but you almost never hear coaches talk about it. That one thing is more valuable for evaluation (quarterbacks), and some people hardly know it.”
Why so high on Mac Jones?
No, it’s not just a van-thing. June Jones believes Mac Jones, who has started just 17 games in Alabama, is the best forward in this class because of his accuracy on the field.
With many judges after which Yahoo Sports spoke, Mac Jones lamented the lack of dual threat capability. He’s simply not a scumbag, and his athletic qualities (including raw arm strength) will almost certainly be average to below average compared to other prospects in this class and the NFL’s higher level QBs.
But June Jones does not see it that way.
“Mac’s deep-ball accuracy is probably the best I’ve rated in my years of coaching,” said June Jones. “He’s almost 55 percent at more than 20 yards, which is incredible.”
Face control: true. Last season, Jones hit field 20 yards on 58.9 percent of his pass attempts. And with the set-off of passes, Pro Football had Focus Jones at an adjusted completion rate on the attempts at a scorching 67.1.
Interestingly, Wilson was higher than Jones in both statistics – 62.5 percent and 67.9 percent, respectively. But both of those quarterbacks had exactly 56 such attempts last season, and Mac Jones threw more depth (1,355 to 1,286) on deep balls in 2020.
June Jones believes it’s the small difference, which throws down the field slightly more accurately, that makes Mac Jones a notch ahead of Zach Wilson.
“(Mac Jones) is a receiver watching,” June Jones said. “I could see him watching on television how they had the right camera angle. And I really think it’s big for him. That’s how he throws the deep ball, of course.”
With this level of warm-up, June Jones understands that he’s going to be in the minority in the Mac-over-Trevor series. But ask him if he cares.
“Some people have a problem with me saying that because he only did it one year, yadda yadda ya,” June Jones said. “But I’ve seen enough in one year where you say, if it’s his only year, wow, that guy’s going to be something else.”
Justin Fields, Ohio, and Trey Lance, North Dakota, were both interested in June Jones when he watched them, but he could not overcome some of the missed passes that were both on tape. He likes both as development backs, but believes the other three should be rated higher.
The idea that Lance is going to be in Round 1 and possibly high in Round 1 is not something Jones would like to think about.
“In a perfect world, you set him up late in the second or second round and develop,” he said. “You can work with him, and maybe you have something. The tools are there. But I do not know how anyone can know that he is worthy to be exalted. He can definitely become that great fullback in time, but he’s not there. ‘
June Jones training videos
One of the pet projects Jones wanted to work on was leveraging the extensive knowledge of Mouse Davis, his nearly 50-year mentor, and creating coaching videos to pass on to future generations.
Because as Jones said: ‘You can talk offensive innovation all you want … but everything we do now in football comes from something someone did before.
“All the flashy things the Kansas City Chiefs do with their short moves and their pitches and subject throws and wrong direction, and that, it was all from the run-and-shoot for which ‘Tiger’ Ellison first coached in the 1960s. and wrote. took everything from somewhere else. ‘
That’s why he partnered with coachtube.com and devised the official Run & Shoot certification program there. Jones is delighted with the results.
“It’s really a life of its own,” Jones said. “One of my coaches approached me because for years we always looked at things to do, from university coaches and high school coaches. He thought of doing something with all these movies that we have available, and that people usually can not get.
“Mouse is 88 years old, so we knew we wanted to get together and do something about it. It was nice to talk through all the routes and concepts, and it was nice to hear all the positive feedback.”
Viewers can learn all the concepts of the run-n-shoot offense, from its origins to its modern application, and take tests at the end of the program to become certified.
More from Yahoo Sports: