Matt Waldman’s RSP Boiler Room breaks down Alabama QB Tua Tagovailoa’s touchdown pass versus blindside pressure—an enviable play for any NFL Draft prospect, or NFL passer, period.
I’m often asked, what’s the most important thing you value when evaluating [insert position here]? The answer can never be one athletic skill, physical dimension, positional technique, or understanding of a football concept.
These are the equivalent of football words. When a kid in Pop Warner uses these words correctly, he’s a good player. When that kid becomes a good player in high school, his football is doing the equivalent of speaking in sentences.
Once he reaches the college game, the goal is for him to speak in sentences but think paragraphs and chapters ahead—setting up a basic narrative. If that player is good enough to reach the NFL, it’s because his game tells a rich and compelling story that balances multiple plots and characters.
College and NFL players are communicating in large chunks of information filled with layers of football. So when asked, what’s the most important thing you value when evaluating [insert a position here]? For now, and the foreseeable future, my answer will be Integrated Techniques and Concepts.
Alabama’s Tua Tagovailoa is a top quarterback prospect for the 2020 NFL Draft because his game communicates in layers of information. This touchdown pass against Tennessee last year is an illustration of Tagovailoa’s ability to read the defense pre- and post-snap and change the intended design of his post-snap execution so he can set up and execute a winning outcome.
His skill at integrating what he sees unfolding in front of him while making adjustments within the scope of the play design is high-level quarterbacking that some NFL quarterbacks would envy in this situation.
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