All-Twenty Tuesday: Bucs QB Ryan Fitzpatrick

At the exact time of me writing this portion of the column, Buccaneers quarterback hasn’t been suspended officially. However, as we’ve learned over the years, when Adam Schefter reports something, you can usually take it to the bank with a 99.9 percent rate of guarantee. So, when he reported that the NFL is planning on suspending Winston for the first three games of the 2018 season late last week, we all were faced with accepting the news.

Though it doesn’t look like Winston will be out there with the Bucs to start the year, the season will, in fact, go on, and for the Tampa bay Buccaneers, it will go on with Ryan Fitzpatrick as their quarterback. Baring one heck of a training camp coming up from third-string quarterback Ryan Griffin, expect the Bucs to treat this year’s missing Winston much like they did last year when Winston hurt his shoulder. Fitzpatrick played in a total of five games for the Buccaneers, although against the Cardinals and Saints he didn’t start, but rather, took over at halftime. On the year, Fitzpatrick threw for 1,103 yards with seven touchdowns and three interceptions with a 58 percent completion percentage.

Beyond the numbers, was there enough in Fitzpatrick’s 2017 film to think he can salvage a win or two to start 2018? Let’s take a look.

Believe it or not, there are a lot of similarities between Fitzpatrick and Winston’s game. Both have kind of a “let loose” mentality when it comes to throwing the ball, though Winston is the more talented one where Fitzpatrick is the more experienced. You see those discrepancies when you pop on their tape.

With Fitzpatrick, he doesn’t really need a warm up. Where younger, more inexperienced quarterbacks may need a drive, a quarter, a half, a game or even two to really get their confidence going, Fitzpatrick doesn’t. The throw above was his first pass of the game after coming in for Winston following his initial shoulder injury. For him, it was an easy read of the zone coverage after the blitz backed off. That’s a veteran move to not get rattled with all those defenders crowding the line – he knew where they were going after they were bluffing.

The second clip once again showed Fitzpatrick’s instinct ability to beat zone coverage. That throw is way more difficult that Fitzpatrick made it look. He had to buy time in the pocket, wait for DeSean Jackson to turn around and had to float the ball perfectly over the dropping linebacker to get it just out of his reach, but no further up the field so Jackson could catch and run.

Again, that’s from years of repetition. Fitzpatrick may not always be the most accurate, but there’s a reason he’s one of the highest-paid backup quarterbacks in the league. It’s because he can come in and make throws like that right away. There is no adjustment to the speed of the game or in lack of preparation.

When it comes to deep ball chemistry, honestly, with how off Winston seemed on too many of his deep ball passes last year, I don’t know how much of a difference there is between the two. Fitzpatrick may be better.

The Cardinals game is where Fitzpatrick totally let it fly. The Bucs were down big when he took over, and he ended up throwing for 290 yards with three touchdowns and two interceptions in just over one half of football. Like we discussed last week with Winston, Fitzpatrick is sort of his own gunsligner when it comes to how he plays the position. At his best, he’s pushing the ball down the field – though with intermediate velocity more than distance. Fitzpatrick showed us last year that he can absolutely come in a run Dirk Koetter’s vertical offense with some success for a short period of time.

Honestly, it does not get much better than those two deep ball throws we just highlighted to Mike Evans. Fitzpatrick started the season connecting well with Evans, struggled a bit in the middle, but then reconnected with him before Winston came back, so I wouldn’t worry about a lack of emphasis or too much of a drop in chemistry between Fitzpatrick and Evans early on in 2018.

I get that the Bucs were down big in the game against the Cardinals, but Fitzpatrick still has to know when to hold back on the bomb.

Jackson was, at no point, open in the play above; not in the pre-snap, not during the drop back and especially not when the ball was thrown. If that ball would have connected it would have been despite a lot of factors, and that’s something you want to limit, even as a gunslinger quarterback.

Unfortunately, though, that’s just something you’re going to have to live with with Fitzpatrick. He’s going to take his chances; he’s going to try to win.

Perhaps that’s the mentality the Bucs want, though. For a team that people are already stating are 0-3 to start the season, having a quarterback like Fitzpatrick, who does play like he has nothing to lose sometimes, could be a decent strategy to catch ones of these talent three teams they start 2018 with by surprise.

I can sit here and type until my fingers fall out that “Fitzpatrick has to be more cautious of turnovers,” but that’s every quarterback, and, in fact, I’d be a hypocrite of a writer to say that after just seven days ago I published a pieces saying that touchdowns are more important that interceptions hurt. The bottom line is that Fitzpatrick threw two interceptions in that game and it didn’t matter because he threw three touchdowns. Now, I don’t mean that it didn’t matter literally. Obviously you don’t want to turn the ball over. But the mentality that gets you those three scores is the one that puts you at risk, too.

To get one or two wins out of the Saints, Eagles and Steelers, he’ll have to roll the dice.

I’m not even going to talk about Fitzpatrick’s outing versus the Saints because it was a check-down fest that ended very poorly for any offensive output. So, on to the Jets game we go.

Fitzpatrick did a nice job of gaining some chemistry with Jackson during this game. I’m not sure if it was just an emphasized game plan or whether he was looking Jackson’s way on his own, but the two connected on more than one occasion, and as a bonus, it was in ways that involved a good amount of yards after the catch.

Though this wasn’t one of the throws that featured extra yards after the catch for Jackson, I wanted to point it out in reference to Fitzpatrick’s ball velocity that I briefly mentioned before.

I believe this is one of Fitzpatrick’s better traits. Within about 20 yards of the throw, Fitzpatrick can maintain a velocity that can really get the ball in some tight windows. We’ll highlight this even more later, but when he gets rolling and also combines that with good ball placement, he can make some really, really nice throws on the back shoulder or just when leading receivers.

But when you push that distance a bit farther, you see Father Time creep up on Fitzpatrick. When passes are targeted beyond 30 yards and he tries to hit the receivers on a rope (fast), sometimes there isn’t the juice on the pass that he thinks there is for say throws of 20 yards. That’s sort of the sweet spot for Fitzpatrick’s velocity. I know it’s obvious that the farther the distance the more the speed of the ball drops off, but I feel like I’ve seen it be drastic drops with Fitzpatrick, more so than other quarterbacks. This is also just for throws in which he’s trying to zip the ball in there. When he leans his shoulder back and tries to just catapult the ball for distance, he can get it a good amount of the way down the field.

But, as seen above, a drop in velocity allows for cornerbacks to recover. You never want that.

There was more evidence of that in the Miami game.

Watch in the clip above. You can see Fitzpatrick plant his foot, get the ball out quick and it zipped right to tight end O.J. Howard, who should have caught it for a first down. That familiarity in velocity allowed him to not only make the throw in time, but also correctly place it in front of Howard.

Again, in the clip above, Fitzpatrick not only go the ball to its target, but did so with speed and accuracy within that 20-25-yard range.

That one was pushing about 25 yards from flight to receiver, so, as you could see, he had to step into that one a bit more, but that confirmed what the limit might be for him on those passes that serve him so well. Seam passes like the one to Howard two clips ago seem to be perfect for him. Fitzpatrick could still thrive in a two-TE offense for that reason, and the reason of him being so good when recognizing openings zone coverage.

Here’s an example on the other end of the spectrum. Yes, this throw didn’t have as clean a pocket to step into like the other ones did, but you can see just how much that ball died in the air when he tried to push it on a rope about 30 yards.

People are going to get halfway through this Cover 3 and think, “He’s saying that Fitzpatrick and Winston are the same guy!” No, I’m not, and this right here is the main reason why – arm talent. At age 35, Fitzpatrick just can’t make throw throws like he used to or that a 24-year old Winston can. When you have ball die on you like that, it’s a downhill slope. Fitzpatrick has been able to maintain the velocity on most of his intermediate throws, but when he has to do something like in the clip above, he’s not the same guy he used to be – and that’s okay.

Fitzpatrick not being able to throw 30 yards on a rope doesn’t mean he can’t win football games. It just means Koetter has to know the capabilities of his quarterback.

When he’s not forced to push his luck with velocity, the Atlanta game gave us a few really good example of his pin-point Fitzpatrick can be.

Believe it or not the two clips above are actually different plays, both showing very good ball placement on timing routes.

Fitzpatrick is capable of putting the ball where it need to go, just don’t ask him to do too much off-script, arm-talent-based throws and you’ll be all right.

Fitzpatrick had his fair share of misses last season, as you would expect from a 58 percent completion percentage, but he did a lot of good, as well. there’s a reason the Bucs brought him back as an insurance player knowing this suspension was possible for Winston. Fitzpatrick and Winston are similar in a lot of way, and that bodes well for a similar game plan going through training camp. As long as Koetter is realistic with what Fitzpatrick can do arm-wise, there is room for him to succeed in this offense. If the run game exists enough to balance things out and the defense hold their end of the bargain, an upset or two isn’t beyond belief in the first three weeks.