Drew Lock Acknowledges That There is an 'Art' to Avoiding Sacks & Injuries After Studying NFL QBs
The Denver Broncos practiced on Wednesday, after three consecutive days off. Starting quarterback Drew Lock was on the field as a full participant in practice.
“I’m really excited to be back," Lock said on Wednesday. "It feels good to be doing what I love and doing what I was put here to do."
Lock missed the last two starts after sustaining an alarming injury to his throwing shoulder in Week 2. Lock was sacked from behind by Bud Dupree, as the second-year QB stumbled forward. Lock's impact into the turf, combined with Dupree's 250-pound frame and the force of the tackle, was scary to behold.
Although it might come off to some as 'victim-blaming', I've maintained since the injury that Lock could have and should have avoided it. That's not to excuse then-right tackle Elijah Wilkinson for letting TJ Watt blow right by him, flushing Lock from the pocket immediately, nor does it take left guard Dalton Risner off the hook for allowing Dupree through on a stunt.
But if Lock wants to have a long and productive NFL career, he has to be smarter with the football. And he has to know when to get rid of the ball, when it's appropriate to scramble and try to create, and how to listen to the clock inside his head. It would seem that Lock has come to the same conclusion after studying the tape of older quarterbacks to figure out how he can duplicate their success and avoid injury.
“There is an art to it, and I’ve got to learn that art," Lock said. "I watched a lot of football when I was hurt, and I watched a lot of older guys and how they don’t take sacks. They know they’re going to get sacked and they know where their outlet is in order to get rid of the ball. Whether that’s an automatic incompletion when you throw it at the running back’s feet or you sail one out of bounds. It’s definitely part of my game that I can get better at and I worked towards doing that while I was hurt."
It's not just about NFL survival. It's about being smart enough as a quarterback to protect yourself and keeping the long-view of what's best for your team in your mind's eye at all times. That's not an easy mindset to balance when the demand of making the play is so powerful in the moment.
A true competitor doesn't want to throw in the towel on a given play but not everyone can be Patrick Mahomes. If you can be like Tom Brady, though — who outsmarts the rush and throws the ball away often when in the grasp — I think most quarterbacks would take that all day and twice on Sunday.
Lock showed a tremendous knack for avoiding the sack in his five starts as a rookie last year. Pro Football Focus has an advanced analytic stat called Sack Percentage, which measures the percentage of dropbacks where the passer was sacked. Lock led all quarterbacks with at least 150 dropbacks with an 8.1 Sack Percentage.
Drilling deeper, the average time it took for opponents to get home and actually sack Lock last year was 4.30 seconds. Meanwhile, he unloaded the rock on average at 2.83 seconds, according to Next Gen Stats. Here's a list of the top-5 longest times to be sacked from the snap last year.
- Drew Lock: 4.30 sec
- Kyler Murray: 4.11 sec
- Deshaun Watson: 4.10
- Lamar Jackson: 4.05
- Aaron Rodgers: 4.01
Lock was pressured on 36% of his dropbacks last year, which ranked 39th in the NFL. And while the early returns on the Broncos' 2020 O-line haven't been great, the tackle situation is much improved especially with Garett Bolles playing at a near-elite level and Demar Dotson taking over for Wilkinson.
Lock carried that sack-avoidance momentum with him into this season but all it took was one 'hero-ball' type play for it all to come to a screeching halt. Lock was not sacked in Week 1 and just once (his injury play) in Week 2. Meanwhile...
Lock has to take this injury to heart, and hearing him talk about it, it sounds like he has. We won't know for sure until we seem him out on the grass and we can't really be certain he's back until he takes that first hit and pops right back up.
"I’m ready for the first hit just to get it out of there and let it happen and let everyone hold their breath for a couple seconds and I get up and everything’s fine," Lock said. "I’m excited to get back out there."
Head coach Vic Fangio, being the wise gamesman that he is, wouldn't commit to Lock being the starter this week at New England. And why would he? Make Bill Belichick plan for the contingency of facing Lock, or maybe Brett Rypien.
"He (Lock) got a bunch of reps today," Fangio said Wednesday. "We’ll take a look at it—obviously we watched it live—we’ll take a look at the video and it will be a decision that we’ll keep evaluating throughout the week. In light of these weird circumstances—Brett got the full week last week for the most part, so if we did decide to go with Brett later in the week we wouldn’t feel quite as unprepared as we normally would because he did get most of the reps last week.”
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