On Februrary 9, Pro Football Focus tweeted out an image of their 2018 Aaron Rodgers rating, along with his throwaway numbers at the bottom.

Green Bay's leader was once again the Packers' highest-graded player on offense pic.twitter.com/ZSUOORftkJ

— Pro Football Focus (@PFF) February 9, 2019

One of the bits of information that PFF tracks is quarterback throwaways. I wanted to dig a little deeper into those throwaways to see what was behind them. I had a couple decent guesses, but I wanted real answers. Since I couldn't find anyone else breaking it down, I decided to roll up my sleeves and take a crack at it.

I went through all 59 throwaways on the season and made gifs of each one of them. From there, I watched each play on repeat. I honestly have no idea how many times I watched each one of these plays, but I'd estimate I've seen each one of them 30+ times by now. My goal was to find a grouping of categories I could put these in to help make sense of everything. At the end of this project, I had 9 categories. I will be talking about each one of those categories below. Each category will feature an example of the kind of play that made it into that category, as well as the definition for plays that would fit into that category. My judgment is subjective, but I wanted to keep it as consistent as possible throughout this process.

While I would love to post every play, inserting 59 gifs seems a bit like overkill, even for me. Maybe they'll make it up on Twitter eventually.

A huge thanks goes out to PFF Packers for sending me a list of every throwaway and when they occurred in each game. Without that list, this project would have taken much longer or it wouldn't have happened at all. Let's be honest: if it was on me to track down every throwaway on the season, it never would have happened. 

Enough of my yakkin'. Let's boogie.

Pressure At Release

Definition: Rodgers is looking to hit a wide receiver in rhythm, but pressure disrupts the timing as the ball is set to come out.

Number of Throwaways: 11 (18.64%)

In this example, Rodgers drops and pumps to the left. I believe that pump is meant to move the underneath linebacker so Marquez Valdes-Scantling [83] has room behind him. And it works! Valdes-Scantling pops open in front of the safety but behind the linebacker. It's a small window, but Rodgers has Valdes-Scantling open for a brief period. 

However, just as the throw is set to come out, pressure off the edge gets to Rodgers, which doesn't allow him to make the throw. The timing was thrown off.

There's something else at play here. After Rodgers gets away from pressure, he doesn't look to Valdes-Scantling (who is actually open while crossing the field): he looks back to the left at Davante Adams [17]. Adams is running an out-and-up and Rodgers is thinking Adams may have his man beat, especially with the safety moving to follow Valdes-Scantling. Alas, Adams was not open, and by the time Rodgers moves back to the right, pressure has cropped up again and Valdes-Scantling is near the sideline.

Rodgers still could have hit Valdes-Scantling here, but going back to Adams delayed that. I don't hate it. Adams is his guy and Valdes-Scantling is a rookie. Knowing how the coverage was shifting and knowing what Adams can do, looking back to Adams instead of following Valdes-Scantling was the right move here.

Rollout Pressure

Definition: Rodgers is rolling out on naked bootleg and finds a defender has "stayed home"

Number of Throwaways: 5 (8.47%)

Pretty much every play in this category looks exactly like this. Play action to one side, bootleg to the other. At least one defender to the bootleg side doesn't run with the action, so Rodgers turns to find a very large man attempting to remove his arms from his body. Throwing the ball away is a natural defense mechanism. It's preferable to becoming one with the turf.

Quick Pressure: Remain in Pocket

Definition: Pressure forces a quicker throw than Rodgers would like, and the throw comes from the pocket.

Number of Throwaways: 4 (6.78%)

The plays in this category all differ from each other, but the result is the same. Sometimes the pressure is up the middle, sometimes it's off the edge, but they all result in Rodgers throwing the ball away from the pocket. On this play, we see that Rodgers hasn't even set up in his drop by the time pressure is in his face. No chance to flee. No chance to do much of anything other than get the ball out of his hand.

Quick Pressure: Flee Pocket

Definition: Pressure forces Rodgers to flee the pocket before routes have had a chance to set up.

Number of Throwaways: 3 (5.08%)

This is a lot like the previous play we looked at, but Rodgers has a chance to escape here. I thought about combining these two categories, but ultimately felt that they were different enough to keep them separated. Thank you for following along with that riveting discussion.

Due to a mass of bodies collapsing the middle of the line, Rodgers is forced to flee before he has completed his dropback. He's looking for something to develop, but nothing realistic ever does. Instead of risking an interception on their own side of the field, Rodgers chucks it safely out of bounds.

Pressure is a pretty big category, but I felt there were enough different types of pressure to split them up. I also see value in looking at all pressure numbers together, which we'll get into a little later.

No One Open

Definition: Rodgers has time to throw, but no one ever gets open.

Throwaways: 21 (35.59%)

This is a perfect example of the types of plays that litter this section. Technically there is pressure on the release, but Rodgers has 5+ seconds to throw the ball before the pressure forces him to move and absolutely no one gets open. 

Rodgers Hesitation

Definition: Rodgers has a window and time, but doesn't pull the trigger and the window shuts.

Number of Throwaways: 7 (11.86%)

We've got 3 curls, breaking at the same depth. None of the routes are going into their breaks when Rodgers hits the top of his drop, but that seems like an issue larger than this post.

Anyway, he's looking at Jimmy Graham [80] in the middle when he breaks. At this time, Rodgers has a clean pocket and seems to be able to get the ball to Graham, but he hesitates. That hesitation gives the defender enough time to recover. After that, pressure breaks through and it's all over.

I'll say that this was the toughest category by far. Not only was I looking at the routes, but I was attempting to go through Rodgers' progressions with him, then say, "You, sir, missed the timing on that read." That's a nearly impossible task for me, a man sitting at a computer. 

So this was difficult, but it's also easy for me to sit here after watching the same play 30+ times to say, "The ball should have gone to this gentleman right here," while something else entirely to be on the field and seeing all these only once and in real time. 

Busted Play

Definition: A play - usually a screen - designed for one person that is derailed by either the defense or offensive execution.

Number of Throwaways: 4 (6.78%)

Rodgers looks right to try to pull the defense over before coming back to the screen on the left. The Lions linebackers read this well, leaving Rodgers to just throw the ball at the feet of the running back. With linemen releasing downfield on a screen, you can't really look for a secondary option downfield without risking an Ineligible Receiver Downfield penalty. So throwing this at the feet of the running back is the only option here.

Killing Time

Definition: A throwaway designed to run the clock.

Number of Throwaways: 2 (3.39%)

With 7 seconds left on the clock in a tie game, Rodgers didn't want to risk a potential kickoff return for a touchdown (a good thought to have, considering the state of the Packers' 2018 Special Teams play). So he drops back and flings it over the head of Adams in the end zone. There are only 2 plays in this category and they both serve one purpose: to run time off the clock.

Mason Crosby hit the game winning field goal as time expired on the next play.

Late Half Shot

Definition: With not much time left at the end of a half, Rodgers is looking for a deep shot, with a design to throw it away if it's not available.

Number of Throwaways: 2 (3.39%)

With 7 seconds left in the first half and the Packers on the edge of field goal range, Rodgers doesn't want to risk a sack. The Packers run 5 verticals down the field. If there's a bust in coverage, Rodgers would hit that for a touchdown. If you watch his head, you can see him quickly run through his progressions, left-to-right. The defense is in good position so he chucks it out of bounds. Mason Crosby made a field goal on the next play as time expired.

Those are our categories, along with an example for each. Where does that leave us at the end of all things?

And if we roll up Pressure into one category:

The Pressure category takes a slight edge over the No One Open category, with everything else trailing significantly behind. 

Let's look at a little more data, shall we? Everyone loves to talk about numbers. It's always super exciting. I know my children love it.

As I mentioned above, I attempted to assign which of these throwaways fell on the shoulders of Rodgers. As with everything else, this got a little complicated. On some plays I assigned full "blame" on Rodgers, while other plays were only assigned partial blame. I will fully admit that this is extremely subjective, but I suppose this entire exercise is subjective. Don't worry: I didn't assign blame willy-nilly. I swear this is all above-board.

In the end, I assigned blame to Rodgers for 6.75 (11.44%) of the throways, spread out over 10 plays. Given the total number of throwaways, I'd say that's not too bad. That's not too bad at all.

I also decided to look into where pressure was coming from. I got fairly simplistic with this, only giving two distinctions: Edge Pressure or Middle Pressure. I didn't get into twists or who it was against or anything like that. I can maybe get into that at some point, but I felt that was a bit too much depth to get into at this time. Let's face it: this article is long enough as it is. 

My first look is at three of the pressure categories: Pressure at Release, Quick Pressure Remain in Pocket and Quick Pressure Flee Pocket. Due to the nature of pressure in the Rollout Pressure category - namely that Rodgers is running directly into it by design - I opted to leave that category out of this.

To no one's surprise, Middle Pressure takes the cake here, accounting for the majority of pressure in those situations.

Now let's look at pressure on all plays. 

Middle Pressure once again takes the cake. Not by an overwhelming majority, but, again, some of that can be attributed to the 5 plays in the Rollout Pressure category. 

You may notice that the numbers in that second chart only equal 54 plays. That's because 5 plays tracked no pressure at all.

Here are just a couple other oddities, since I've got a bunch of data in front of me.

• Out of the 59 plays, only 11 (18.64%) featured play action. Rollout Pressure accounts for 5 of those.
• 45 plays (76.27%) were run out of shotgun.
• 49 plays (83.05%) featured either a 5 or 7 step drop.
• 36 plays (61.02%) were run from the left hash.
• 15 plays (25.42%) featured a blitz by the defense. 7 of those plays (11.86%) ended up in one of the pressure categories.
• 6 plays (10.17%) occurred on 3rd down with the Packers in field goal range. 5 of these were in the No One Open category. (I considered Field Goal Range to be within 53 yards, which was Crosby's longest field goal of the year)
• Rodgers threw the ball away a total of 22 times (37.29%) in field goal range. They didn't score on 6 of those drives, with 4 of those coming in Crosby's abysmal 1/5 performance in Detroit.
• On the drives the Packers did score, they scored in an average of 2.25 plays after the throwaway, and they scored an average of 3.94 points.
• Rodgers had an average release time of 3.44 seconds while in field goal range, with a maximum time of 7.18 seconds and a minimum time of 0.88 seconds.
• Outside of field goal range, Rodgers had an average release time of 3.80 seconds, with a maximum time of 9.03 seconds and a minimum time of 1.39 seconds.
• The average release time for quarterbacks in 2018 was 2.7 seconds.

What have we learned from this?

• 74.58% of the throwaways came as a result of either quick pressure or a result of not having anyone open.
• When pressure was a factor, it leaned in the direction of being up the middle.
• While some of this certainly fell on Rodgers, his culpability was less than it is made out to be. 
• Rodgers had a tendency to release the ball a little quicker when in field goal range, but that time was still above the league average for release time.

Thanks for following along! This project was a ton of work and I still feel like I only scratched the surface. I hope you learned something from all of this. I know I certainly did. If you have any further questions on any of this, feel free to hit me up on Twitter. I have two accounts because I do not think highly of myself as a person: @DustyEvely and @All22Talk