dead_poet wrote:I think we're past "good" pass and are on "catchable" pass.
Agreed.
DKSweets wrote:You CAN'T be positive of which route was called unless you're on the coaching staff, Jim. Isn't that why you don't like PFF?
Touché.
However, just to be clear, I'm not saying I'm positive which route was called, I'm just saying I can see what kind of route was run.
You say that the route isn't ran that way, but to me it looks like he's trying to curl the route back towards Bridgewater. I've seen Percy Harvin, among others, run routes this way. Furthermore, he's a young player so it's very possible that he didn't run the route perfectly because he was trying to shake the defender at the top of his break. Just because it wasn't ran technically perfect doesn't mean that an outside curl is out of the question.
I doubt it was an outside curl because Bridgewater doesn't give the route time to curl back before releasing the ball. If I recall correctly, he said it was supposed to be a "bang bang" play. He threw it like he was supposed to hit Johnson coming out of his break, not like he was supposed to wait for him to curl back into the flat. However, for the sake of argument, let's say I'm wrong and it was an outside curl not a down and out. That's a similar route so it's possible but how would it in any way make the throw look better? If anything, wouldn't that make it worse because the pass is still high and it's even further inside where a curl route would take Johnson.
Nobody can answer your question on why it is a good pass, but you're setting up a question that only you can win. Nobody here thinks it was a good pass. Then again, very few of us think it was bad, either. It was just a pass where Bridgewater tried to give his receiver an opportunity - it is only viewed as good or bad based on the outcome. It was not an awesome pass, nor would anybody have viewed it as terrible if Johnson had kept his feet. The pass in a vacuum is average, it is only perceived differently due to circumstances.
I just don't see how it's even an average pass. I just pointed out in the game thread that you can see from the screenshots and highlights that the pass is about 7 feet high (if not higher) when it is over Johnson and the covering defender. Whatever the route, that's far from where the ball should have been placed. I think he sailed it and that's the main reason it was picked off.