Analysis of Matt Leinart

Most interesting part to me:

The one thing that has always impressed me about Leinart is his ability to pick up yardage.

Despite starting only 16 career games and filling in a handful of others, he has 3,893 career passing yards. In his first year, he had 200 or more passing yards in eight of his 11 starts, including a 405-yard game against the Minnesota Vikings.

Last year, when he started a full game against the Tennessee Titans, Leinart had 220 yards passing on 31 attempts. That is impressive for a backup that was not expected to start leading up to that week and who didn’t get many first-team reps in practice prior to the week leading up to that game.

Leinart has not shown a lot of problems moving the ball between the 20-yard lines. If he can hold on to the starting job and play all 16 games, I would not be surprised if he finishes with 3,500 yards passing in 2010, which would put him near the middle of all starting quarterbacks.

The problem is touchdown passes.

In that start against Tennessee in 2009, Leinart was held to zero touchdowns and zero interceptions, and they lost that game 20-17. Leinart has only three starts where he threw for more than two touchdown passes, and two of those came in his first three starts. The Tennessee Titans gave up 31 touchdown passes (30th in the NFL), but Leinart managed none against them. He just has not shown that when the ball is inside the 20-yard line he can make the necessary throws that score points and win football games. He has had the skill position players to do that, but for whatever reason he could not capitalize.

almost 2 years ago JoeCB1991 0 comments 0 recs |