Luke Braun's Film Room: The J.J. McCarthy Diaries — Figure Skating and the Deep Ball

In Luke Braun's latest film room, he evaluates a critical weakness of J.J. McCarthy's game: the deep ball. Also, Luke manages to talk about feet again.

Photo by Gregory Shamus/Getty Images

[Luke Braun originally wrote and published this piece in February as part of a series examining one element of quarterback play from each of the six top quarterback prospects in the NFL draft. I have pinned it to the homepage until Braun completes a more thorough film study on McCarthy]

There may not be a single play in sports that is more aesthetically pleasing than the perfectly thrown deep ball. It’s intoxicating to watch the ball travel so far, yet fall so effortlessly into the bucket of a receiver’s arms. There is beauty and tragedy in a cornerback in almost perfect coverage who still can’t make a play on the perfectly thrown pass. 

In fact, drop what you are doing and watch Randy Moss catch deep passes for a few minutes. It’s good for your soul.

You’re going to need those warm, happy memories swirling around in your brain. We’re watching J.J. McCarthy attempt to throw deep.

The deep pass is, in my opinion, the worst thing McCarthy has to his game. I don’t mind McCarthy on the whole, but he is woefully inaccurate on deep passes outside the hash. 

McCarthy is not generally inaccurate. McCarthy’s PFF accuracy percentage of 68.42% is higher than that of Caleb Williams, Drake Maye and Jayden Daniels. He leads the top six draft quarterbacks in their “Accurate plus” category, which is for passes that catch receivers perfectly in stride or otherwise throw defenders out of the play.

It’s just this particular kind of throw. It’s a strangely specific struggle. How is he so much less accurate on that particular pass than he is everywhere else on the field?

Answering this question was surprisingly difficult, and required me to learn a lot of the subtle differences between a deep pass and a short or intermediate one. Deep passes present not only the challenge of distance, but also trajectory and timing, which means you have to approach them differently.

How To Master The Deep Pass

There are plenty of universal habits you want to see in a quarterback, regardless of the depth of a given pass. We can start with those principles and then hone in on how things change for the deep pass.

For example, aligning your feet on a deep pass is the same as aligning them on a regular one, but with a smaller margin for error. As I wrote about with Jayden Daniels, having your feet and eyes aligned properly is the only way to consistently deliver an on-target pass. The longer the ball, the more impact a small misalignment can have.

When I wrote about Michael Penix and the biomechanics of a throwing motion, I mentioned the wind-up. Typically, you don’t want the ball to dip below the waist, since that takes longer and exposes the ball to reaching defensive linemen. But on a deeper ball, it might have to dip a little lower.