Game of the Week: Hasselbeck's Colts will give Steelers a run for their money
In going from Andrew Luck to Matt Hasselbeck, the Colts experienced a tradeoff.
Luck is a highly-skilled passer who can push the ball down the field and has the athleticism to escape the pocket and get conversions with his legs. Both of those qualities are positive, but in relying upon them, there's obviously a significant assumption of risk.
Downfield throws require long pockets to develop, and also send the ball into low-percentage areas of the field. And quarterbacks who like to moonlight as running backs sometime end up sidelined with lacerated kidneys.
"I know my limitations," Hasselbeck, the current starter, explained in mid-November. "That might actually be a strength. But I have a lot of limitations."
And though he has limitations, he's been a better Colts quarterback than Luck in 2015 by nearly every conceivable standard. That's fact, not opinion. Luck (1,881 yards, 15 touchdowns, 12 interceptions, 74.9 quarterback rating) has been banged up most of this season. Hasselbeck (1,023 yards, seven touchdowns, two interceptions, 94.4 rating), the quarterback with less risk in his game has provided a greater net football return.
The biggest problem with consensus evaluation of quarterbacks has always been trying to connect the dots between measurables and high-end quarterback play.
So let's look at the threat Hasselbeck poses for the Pittsburgh Steelers this Sunday.
HASSLE-FREE QUARTERBACKING
Every defensive coverage has weaknesses, some greater than others. In studying Hasselbeck, one of the hallmarks of his game late in his career has been the ability to avoid the traps a defense sets and send the ball to the lowest-risk areas of the coverage. This is masters-level stuff because most defenses do their best disguise what it is they're about to do.
Setting traps with smoke and mirrors to force turnovers and sacks has been the engine behind the Steelers' defensive philosophy for years.
Naturally, avoiding these doesn't have anything to do with a 40-yard dash time, or how far or hard Hasselback can throw the football. It's a read, decision, and execution — each one where "limitations" matter very little.
The following example is from last Sunday's Colts' win over the Bucs. Head coach Lovie Smith and the Tampa defense like to play a lot of Cover 2. The middle linebacker in Tampa's defense acts as a de facto deep-middle 1/3-dropper, but because he starts in the box prior to the snap of the ball, he has a long ways to go to get to his pass responsibility.
With no play action here, the middle linebacker can retreat and hurry to his drop, creating a soft spot in the area he's vacating. That's exactly where Hasselbeck immediately goes with the ball for an easy nine-yard completion (below).
Cover 2 also has an additional weakness, but one that's of a higher risk to exploit: the area deep and to the outside between the corner and safety's zone drops (denoted by the red circles above).
Would a quarterback be wrong to try and force the ball in there? No, but it's obviously a much riskier throw because of the longer amount of time the quarterback has to wait for those routes to develop, the length of time the ball will travel in the air, and the two downfield defenders who will be converging on the throw.
Passing on those deeper throws when a higher percentage throw was the better play has been the most prevalent difference between Hasselbeck and Luck. Luck would obviously be better at completing that riskier ball. But neither should be attempting that riskier pass on a regular basis if something better is available.
For that, Matt Hasselbeck has been a revelation for this Colts offense, and a steadier option against a Steelers group that still ranks as a Top 10 takeaway defense.
TAKE WHAT THEY GIVE YOU
Hasselbeck's willingness to go after precisely the one thing that's most vulnerable against a particular defensive look has been his greatest asset. Against that same Tampa 2 coverage example from above, there are many possibilities in any given pass call. The Colts may come to the line with something in mind for a vertical receiver like Phillip Dorsett on the outside, but that all goes out the window when coverage presents a different weakness.
In the example below, the Bucs get caught standing in a Cover 2 shell. That immediately sends Hasselbeck's focus back to the middle linebacker. If his play call doesn't include a play-action fake, the linebacker will bail quickly and the hole will be in the low part of the field (like we saw earlier and in the top example below). If there is a play fake, the likely hole is now behind the middle linebacker (bottom example below).
Rather than having to read the whole field and force the football into higher-risk areas, the game has been reduced to a two-man cat and mouse game with Hasselbeck at the helm. As the play advances in the slide below, you can see the middle linebacker is froze by the run fake, allowing the space for the Colts slot receiver to build into that deeper middle hole area for a big-play completion (see below).
This is an important illustration in that the 2015 version of Luck vs. the 2015 version of Hasselbeck isn't a simplistic conversation of downfield vs. short passing — it's risky vs. smart passing. The completion here still ends up being a big, "downfield" pass play.
So what happens when there isn't an immediately obvious coverage vulnerability? That's when all of Luck's ability's should put him ahead, right? Not so fast.
The example below shows a situation where the Bucs aligned in a two-deep safety look but stemmed after the snap of the ball into a three-deep look. The difficulty is that there's no way for Hasselbeck to know this because his back is turned to the coverage as he carries out his run fake to the running back. He must diagnose the new coverage in an instant when he turns, or he could be sending the ball into a trap.
The real skill in what Hasselbeck does in this completion has far less to do with the velocity or distance of the throw — but with the recognition. The combination of a zone coverage and a middle-of-the-field safety tells him that the deep-over route will be available to him because there's typically a soft spot between flat droppers (linebackers) and deep-dropping cornerbacks (a weakness of Cover 3).
If Hasselbeck had stuck with his pre-snap read of Cover 2, his eyes would have been concentrating on areas of the field where completions would be unlikely. But the quick mental transition to a Cover 3-beater was a very high-level play that you simply haven't seen much of from Luck this year.
These kinds of plays are not something Luck's incapable of, clearly — he's completed those balls himself in the past. But he's regressed in that area, throwing far too many interceptions while trusting his arm talent to carry him through.
That problem for the Indianapolis Colts has been largely eliminated with the insertion of Hasselbeck into the lineup, and should bode them well against a Steelers team that's often frenetic in their pre- and post-snap movement.
To say that the Colts have been better at quarterback with Hasselbeck in 2015 isn't to say that Luck isn't still the future of the franchise, nor that he shouldn't immediately be reinserted into the lineup when he's healthy enough to play.
This isn't a banal "who's better" debate.
The lesson here is very simply that Andrew Luck needs to learn to play more like the veteran Hasselbeck. Luck's extra talents are of little use until he masters the little stuff of high-level quarterbacking.
Against the Pittsburgh Steelers, Hasselbeck's expert grasp of the little things gives his Colts a nice boost as they head into Pittsburgh for their important Sunday Night Football tilt.
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Matt Chatham played for the Patriots and Jets over nine seasons in the NFL, winning three Super Bowls. He is also the founder of footballbyfootball.com. You can follow him on Twitter