New York Jets: Sam Darnold inside his readiness by the numbers

With his announcement as the starting quarterback, we take a look inside the numbers at New York Jets quarterback Sam  Darnold and how ready he really is.

The announcement was finally made on Monday afternoon. It surprised nobody. But the New York Jets sure tried to make it dramatic.

Sam Darnold is the starting quarterback when the season opens on Monday night in Detroit. Sam becomes the youngest quarterback to open the season as the starter since the NFL merger.

With that, we take a look back at the small body of work so far. Is Darnold truly ready to go? How will things go when the opponents open up the playbook?

A lot of observation is done with the “eye” test. Tonight we are going a bit more traditional and looking at some numbers, courtesy of Pro Football Focus (subscription required).

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First let’s take a look at the overall statline:

29-45 for 244 yards, 64.4% completion, two touchdowns and one interception.

Now look at this second statline:

29-56 for 397 yards, 51.8% completion, zero touchdowns and one interception.

This comes from the 2017 preseason and belongs to a quarterback that many call one of the best young players out there.

That player is Deshaun Watson.

Darnold compares very favorably to Watson and Watson has proven he is ready to go.

Yes Watson threw more passes but he also had more  drop backs. The play calling is not Darnold’s fault.

Darnold also completed 60% of his passes when blitzed, compared to Watson who completed 53.3%.

Being able to recognize the blitz and make the correct read is not something most rookies do. Sam Darnold does that well.

Now we look at the passes he threw. There has been some concern that he didn’t push the ball down the field.

For one, that’s in part due to the play calling. He is only running what he is asked, and the teams don’t open things up too much in the preseason.

However he did achieve success with the intermediate passes. On passes between 10 and 20 yards, he went 7-12 for 97 yards and one touchdown. The completion percentage was just above 58% which is solid for a first preseason.

Sam Darnold will be just fine. This is his team now. Let’s just get on board and enjoy the ride.