The tape from Week 2 of the 2019 preseason is one that needs to locked away for eternity if you’re a Panthers fan – I won’t blame you if you don’t want to read this article. A 27-14 loss to the Bills in the preseason on it’s face is nothing to feel discouraged about, but there weren’t that many standouts on the Carolina side.
In fact, the quarterback play was, for the most part, a disaster. Cam Newton rested, so in his place came Kyle Allen, third-round rookie Will Grier, and Taylor Heinicke. Simply talking about how each quarterback played won’t do this justice, so I went and charted each of their throws to determine how accurate they all were. Keep in mind that accuracy does not equate to completion percentage.
Allen benefitted from two excluded passes; otherwise, his accuracy would have been even less favorable. Grier did better on his accuracy percentage, but the majority of his completions came off of checkdowns and screen plays. Heinicke was pushing the ball down the field more than the other two passers and though he faced weaker competition, he was the only Panthers quarterback to play well last Friday night.
With Ron Rivera saying Tuesday that Kyle Allen would come in after Newton in New England and that Will Grier was still coming along as he prepares for his first season, it is clear that Allen is ahead on the depth chart thus far, but to dive deeper into the race to determine who the Panthers’ QB2 will be, let’s recap each quarterback’s performances from Friday night.
Kyle Allen
Kyle Allen’s performance was largely underwhelming as he struggled as the starter against the Bills. Take the below play intended for Curtis Samuel for example.
Allen has plenty of time in the pocket to get this to Samuel, who is completely uncovered, so much so that no Bills defender is even in the same area code as him.
As such, something’s wrong if Samuel has to adjust to a pass when he’s this wide open.
Allen’s pass is well under thrown and to the naked eye it looked like an interception on the broadcast. Ultimately, this was ruled incomplete when it should have been an easy first down for the Panthers offense.
This play on 1st-and-19 also shows the erratic ball placement Allen displayed against Buffalo.
As the edge pressure against both tackles threatens Allen, he wisely steps up and keeps his eyes downfield. He has the correct decision as well. So what’s the problem?
The problem is that the ensuing pass is way over the head of D.J. Moore.
This is a wobbly duck of a pass, so initially, I suspected the ball was tipped at the line of scrimmage, but upon slowing down the footage I could not find any evidence that the ball was tipped. This pass was well overthrown and just didn’t look right from the start – Rivera said after the game that he felt like the quarterbacks made some good decisions and just didn’t throw good balls.
This was a great example of that.
Up Next: Will Grier
