Christian Ponder Improving

[Just Me]

I think you're correct, it was a jailbreak so there were multiple rushers. I think it was Redding that initially got past Johnson.

It was.

[Crax]

i find it funny how some people are really good at finding the negative in an extremely positive situation.

We just lost to the colts who were one of the few teams worse than us last year. Oh crap, I just did it again. It goes both ways, it's not all sunshine and rainbows in Ponderland.

ponder has been awesome. coaches terrible, defense quite bad.

It's two games against poor teams. I'm not sure I"m going to go with awesome. He isn't throwing 350 yards and 3 TD's or anything. I guess with how few big games TJack had, it may seem sort of awesome, but I don't think we've reached full on awesome yet.

[akvikingsfan]

Currently Ponder is #1 amongst QBs for completion percentage (75.8%). He's 16th yards (515 yards), 7th for QB rating (110.6) and 23rd for plays over 20 yards (5). From these stats it is clear to me that he is improving (see completion percentage and QB rating) but he (along with the rest of the team) does not make big plays (see yards and plays over 20 yards). Yes his play may not be pretty but at least on paper there has been improvement. Is there room for more improvement? Of course there is. There is always room for more improvement. But to say he hasn't improved is to completely disregard what he has done so far this season.

[Crax]

Is there room for more improvement? Of course there is. There is always room for more improvement. But to say he hasn't improved is to completely disregard what he has done so far this season.

I don't recall anyone saying he is worse than last year. He was pretty bad last year. People are saying things like "great" and "awesome" in regards to ponder though. We just played what could be the 2 easiest games on our schedule. If we're going to gush over him completing quick 3 yard passes, let's make sure we remember that completion % is only one piece of the bigger picture. As you just mentioned, he's right in the middle for yards and closer towards the bottom for 20yards+. In fact, he's tied for 29th/30th for % of attempts beyond 15 yards. It could be musgrave isn't calling anything beyond 5 yards, but it's hard to know on that.

Once again Christian Ponder came out of the game looking very good statistically, and once again he comes away from it with a negative grade from PFF. In order to understand why this is you need to look at his entire game.

It may not matter to some, but for what it's worth, Ponder has had a negative grade in both games so far from PFF. This next sentence is pretty crazy when you think about:

Of Ponder’s 245 passing yards, only 104 of those were thrown in the air. That means that his average depth of target for his completions was a ridiculous 3.9 yards down field. The rest of the work was done by receivers after the catch.

So, big ups to Percy Harvin. I think we all knew he was good already.

[saint33]

I don't get the complaints about the passes to Percy. Most of them are designs to get the ball in Percy's hands, and the plays are almost always successful. Is it something we should be gushing over from Ponder's perspective? Obviously not, but you also can't treat it as a negative. He's executing the play that is called and the play that is called is successful, what's wrong with that? When Percy can make 3 people miss on WR screens and gain 1st downs on a consistent basis, why overcomplicate things?

[Crax]

I don't get the complaints about the passes to Percy. Most of them are designs to get he ball in Percy's hands, and the plays are almost always successful. It is something we should be gushing over from Ponder's perspective? Obviously not, but you also can't treat it as a negative. He's executing the play that is called and the play that is called is successful, what's wrong with that? When Percy can make 3 people miss on WR screens and gain 1st downs on a consistent basis, what is the problem?

Nothing is wrong with that. Maybe we should try throwing it to him beyond 10 yards? I recall one yesterday he was open on that was way over his head. Ponder having a high completion % isn't a negative on it's own. Ponder doing it while averaging 3.9 yards of distance IS though.

The randy ratio on it's own isn't a terrible idea as we wanted to get the ball to him whenever we could. Focusing on the number and not letting it happen naturally was a problem though. The coaches and ponder talked about getting high completion % numbers on 1st and 2nd down this year. So far they've done it(and proved me wrong to this point). We've had a OT win over the Jags and a loss to the colts. I hope they aren't so focused on the number resulting in only calling easy completion plays.

[J. Kapp 11]

Honestly, as I'm re-watching the game, my suspicion is that the speed with which he makes his reads wasn't much of a factor. When the pressure came, it usually came fast and it often involved the inside of the line being pushed back, meaning Ponder had no room to step up. I'll have access to coaches film at NFL.com later in the week (fun!) and, time permitting, I plan to look specifically at plays where Ponder was under pressure to see what happened, how he reacted and if he had the opportunity to check down. It should be interesting!

I saw the same thing, Jim. Pressure up the middle, with no room to step up. When he actually had room to step up, he did.

Don't know who's getting whipped on the inside, whether it's the guards or the center or both, but it's been pretty consistent through two games.

[mosscarter]

why isn't anyone discussing the fact that our receivers are probably the worst starting group in the nfl, followed by our secondary? if jenkins were cut tomorrow, who in their right mind would sign him? ponder constantly throws to harvin because he is the only playmaker on the entire offense (aside from peterson). to say ponder isn't improving is insane, all the numbers point to the exact opposite. he started out either 7/7 or 8/8 for god sake. sometimes i can't figure out which team some people are actually watching.

[Delaqure]

It sure seemed to me that Ponder was getting a lot of pressure up the middle and didn't have a lot chances to step up into the pocket. I see a lot of improvement. I have feeling we will quite a large leap forward once Simpson returns.

[J. Kapp 11]

Nothing is wrong with that. Maybe we should try throwing it to him beyond 10 yards? I recall one yesterday he was open on that was way over his head. Ponder having a high completion % isn't a negative on it's own. Ponder doing it while averaging 3.9 yards of distance IS though.

Our passing game may not be explosive right now, but it's efficient, and it's a darned sight more than 3.9 yards downfield. And just because we're not playing Brady to Moss '07 doesn't mean the passing game is ineffective. I'd say the lack of deep-ball ability means a) we don't have anybody who can get deep, including Percy, or b) our line can't hold up for more than about 2.5 seconds. It's probably both.

To me, the problem is in game-planning.

We keep trying to establish the run as our identity, and it's not working. We ran the ball on 16 of our first 23 plays yesterday. We were even running on second-and-long in the third quarter after we were down 14 -- all despite the fact that the Colts were selling out to stop A.P. up the middle. To make matters worse, we don't seem to be a particularly good run-blocking team. After the first 3 or 4 carries yesterday, the Colts were consistently getting to Adrian early, just like teams did last year. As great as A.P. is, he can't make consistent yards if he's always being hit in the backfield.

I wish the team would get Adrian in space by swinging him the ball out of the backfield, like Favre did in '09. But either Musgrave seems reluctant to design pass plays for the running backs or Ponder isn't checking down.

[Crax]

Our passing game may not be explosive right now, but it's efficient, and it's a darned sight more than 3.9 yards downfield.

I didn't make that number up. It came from PFF which I posted earlier based on last game.

Of Ponder’s 245 passing yards, only 104 of those were thrown in the air. That means that his average depth of target for his completions was a ridiculous 3.9 yards down field. The rest of the work was done by receivers after the catch.

[smoothoperator]

agree with the above. im getting beyond tired of us running the ball on first down every time as we have ever since we got ap

[saint33]

I didn't make that number up. It came from PFF which I posted earlier based on last game.

while this average of 3.9 yards of passes down field may seem pretty bad, our passing game is averaging 8.3 yards per play, which is currently 7th best in the league. So again, while passing the ball downfield more often is something that definitely needs to happen, the current short passing game is actually one of the most effective in the league. Right now we're just missing the explosive plays.

[J. Kapp 11]

I didn't make that number up. It came from PFF which I posted earlier based on last game.

All I can say is that I hope Jerome Simpson can make a difference on the deeper routes. We definitely need some more verticality to our passing game, but honestly right now, who is Ponder supposed to throw it to? Percy is not a deep threat, really. He can get open in the intermediate routes, but he's never been a long pass threat. Kyle Rudolph is the only guy I see who ever gets open in the 10-15 yard range. Our receivers are not good.

[Crax]

while this average of 3.9 yards of passes down field may seem pretty bad, our passing game is averaging 8.3 yards per play, which is currently 7th best in the league.

And maybe unfairly, I'll give most of the credit to that on Harvin for turning 2 yard dumps and screens into good yards.

So again, while passing the ball downfield more often is something that definitely needs to happen, the current short passing game is actually one of the most effective in the league. Right now we're just missing the explosive plays.

I'm not asking for 50 yard bombs every game. In fact, I'm more concerned with intermediary stuff. We aren't attempting/completing passes even beyond 10 regularly. I'm sure Harvin could run a crossing route across midfield. How about a pick play? Use our 2 TE's for something more than a couple passes a game.

I think this game against SF is going to be eye opening. They were incredibly quick to the ball and good at stopping screens cold. We'll have to complete something beyond 10 yards against them.