Kyle Allen didn’t have his best game against San Francisco – in fact, in the spectrum of Kyle Allen performances, this one would probably be towards the bottom of the pile. Of course, that is likely the mis-step that will make it much easier politically for the Panthers to bring Cam Newton back in once he is fully healthy, whether that is next week or in a few weeks’ time, but with Kyle Allen being the starter for the Titans game and perhaps longer, it is worth examining whether the San Francisco performance was a significant outlier or whether there were signs of the 49ers performance over the past couple of weeks – the only difference being this time the Panthers didn’t win.
So then, what was it that went wrong for Kyle Allen against the 49ers and is that something that is likely to show up again against the Titans, even if not as badly?
Throwing The Ball
Of course, everything that a quarterback does will, usually, end up in the ball being thrown, and this is an area where Allen has actually done a decent job throughout his time in Carolina. His accuracy wasn’t terrible on Sunday by any means, but there were a couple of throws that he might have completed in other weeks that just weren’t quite there. Either the receiver wasn’t quite able to catch the ball while staying in bounds:
Or Allen just wasn’t as accurate as he needed to be:
These aren’t easy throws, but good NFL quarterbacks made these throws. Allen has also had a handful of easier misses per game throughout this season, such as the following:
These throws aren’t a mile off – and every quarterback has these misses, but it would be foolish to pretend that these haven’t been part of what we’ve seen from Allen over the past month:
However, what’s more concerning is the fact that Allen hasn’t really been able to connect with his deep ball after tossing one deep to Curtis Samuel against the Saints last season. A couple of times on Sunday, Allen looked to go deep and didn’t really get close:
Yes, in both cases he ended up getting pressured and some of it may have been due to high winds in San Francisco, but some of that is just him holding the ball unnecessarily – and what’s more, this is something that had been part of Allen’s game throughout this season as he has struggled to lead receivers going deep, consistently underthrowing receivers and forcing them to work back to the ball and win contested catches:
Allen’s accuracy on Sunday was pretty much what we have seen to this point – he makes most of the easy throws but the deeper he gets down the field, his accuracy gets less and less impressive, with his deep ball really failing to connect. However, it’s hard to say that this is something that was much worse on Sunday than other games this season, and to be frank, the Panthers didn’t lose the game on Sunday because Allen missed a couple of sit-down routes, so what else went wrong?
Up Next: The Underlying Issues
