So, is this an admission they haven't been hitting them?
Haven't been trying to hit them. This is an acknowledgment of what everybody who's paying attention already knows -- we weren't aggressive with deeper throws until late in close games.
Our normal offense in 2018 was conservative, taking only occasional deep shots. Lal believes that if this becomes a feature of our normal offense in games (as opposed to practice) it will open up the shorter routes, which there are obviously a lot more of. Then it won't require an expert route-runner like Cooper (or the departed Beasley) to get guys open underneath because we will have schemed guys open due to defenders' fear of the deeper routes. ("Tendencied" them open might be more accurate.) In theory, this also helps the running game and screen game, but those aren't Lal's concern.
All the numbers below are from the 2018 regular season. In parentheses is the passer rating on these attempts. This shows how little we took advantage of opportunities with deeper throws in the first three quarters of games. There were 26 QB who threw at or beyond 15 yards past the line of scrimmage more often than Dak Prescott in 2018. (Mahomes had more than twice as many of these throws as Dak.) Whether that's on Linehan or Prescott himself, this is
not the offense that our WR coach said he envisions.
15+yard targets -- ranked by number of attempts
1st-3rd quarter only
1 Mahomes 103 att (100.3)
2 Ryan 91 att (105.0)
3 Mayfield 87 att (106.8)
4 Goff 86 att (97.8)
5 Rodgers 84 att (108.6)
6 Roethlisberger 80 att (105.2)
7 Trubisky 75 att (71.9)
8 Luck 73 att (87.3)
9 Brady 72 att (101.5)
10 Rivers 69 att (113.3)
27 Prescott 47 att (100.8)
Below are the QB who threw 15 yards or deeper the most when the game was close in the 4th quarter/OT. This is the kind of offense Lal is talking about, but as our normal offense -- not just late in close games.
15+yard targets -- ranked by number of attempts
4th qtr/OT, margin one score or less
1 Roethlisberger 26 att (54.6)
2 Wilson 25 att (100.8)
3 Prescott 24 att (131.9)
3 Newton 24 att (46.4)
5 Rodgers 19 att (133.2)
6 Brady 18 att (142.1)
6 Manning 18 att (72.7)
8 Allen 17 att (75.2)
9 Brees 16 att (106.3)
10 Ryan 15 att (154.9)
The above data is from PFR, which lists only two target depths (<15 yards and 15+ yards), but allows you to categorize the attempts by game situation. PFF doesn't do game situation, but does list more specific target depths, which lets you narrow the sample down to just the 20+yard throws, for example. Since the big question is whether we can be successful with the deep ball on a consistent basis as opposed to just late in close games, it's worth looking into a possible correlation between number of deep attempts and passer rating.
Target 20+ yards, 2018 reg season
Deep passer rating (avg rank in deep attempts)
>110 (12th)
90-110 (20th)
70-89.9 (18th)
<70 (13th)
There's no correlation, except that the QB who threw deep the most were generally either very good (>110 rating) or very bad (<70). We do know that Dak was better at 15+yard targets when he attempted more of them, but we don't know what -- if anything -- that says about 20+yard targets over the course of an entire game. Nobody knows, and that includes Sonjay Lal.
