
apparently a decent qb who got stuck behind an awful line and struggled with the coaching change
Perhaps a second round talent but still a reach because they for sure could have had him in the 4th round.
This season completion percentage when adjusted for drops, spikes, etc. was 64.0 percent, which was 120th in the nation. In 2014, he was 105th. Every accuracy number you look at sees Hackenberg struggle, and the tape shows the same thing.
Even when under no pressure at all this past season, he completed just 61.9 percent of his passes. That’s the same completion percentage Cardale Jones managed on
allplays, not just pressure plays, and Jones is a player whose accuracy is seen as a negative.
Completion percentage can be affected by many things, but if you dive a little deeper and look specifically at his ball placement, things get even worse. Hackenberg completed 192 passes this past season, but when we charted ball location for quarterbacks in this draft class, 55 of those catches were badly located passes. He was only accurate on 48.1 percent of attempts when throwing to open receivers. By comparison, Cody Kessler was accurate on 73.2 percent of his attempts to open receivers, Carson Wentz was at 61.2 percent. Even Cardale Jones, our inaccuracy comp in this exercise, was 5 percent better when throwing to open guys.
I have never seen a quarterback consistently miss as many wide receiver screens as Hackenberg. Receiver screens are supposed to be high-percentage plays. In college, the average receiver screen pass is only off-target on 4.75 percent of attempts. In the NFL that figure becomes 3.45 percent, and the worst mark any QB has posted over the past three seasons is Chad Henne, at 8.47 percent. Last season, Hackenberg was off-target on 15.8 percent of his receiver screen passes — around five times more inaccurate than the average NFL QB.
PFF’s play-by-play grading scale works from minus-2 to plus-2 in 0.5 increments. Minus-1.5 and minus-2 throws are catastrophic plays that usually result in a turnover. Hackenberg has 37 of them over his college career, equivalent to a catastrophically bad pass on 3.1 percent of his attempts. Jared Goff, by contrast, threw one on 1.1 percent in 2015. Even Michigan State QB Connor Cook, whom we have noted throughout his draft evaluation for his bad habit of reckless throws, threw one on 1.5 percent — or less than half the rate of Hackenberg.
Don’t get me wrong: Hackenberg’s line was not good at Penn State, but it wasn’t the prohibitive collection of uniformed turnstyles that they’ve been made out to be, either. As a unit they surrendered 135 total pressures in 2015, which is bad, but 15 other teams managed worse, including Goff’s California Bears (154). 45 other offensive lines surrendered pressure at a greater rate than Hackenberg’s line last season. And in 2014, we charged Hackenberg with eight of the sacks he took, which is five more than any single lineman gave up.
In fact, since he has been the quarterback, Hackenberg has been directly to blame for more sacks than any single lineman blocking for him, and that doesn’t even touch the ones he was indirectly at fault for by being unable to effectively diagnose the pressure looks he was presented with.
Much of the positive buzz around Hackenberg as a prospect has to do with the fact that he looks the part of an NFL QB. But while Hackenberg can make every throw you can think of, and does have some beautiful passes in his tape, the frequency with which he is able to produce them is concerning.
In 2015, Hackenberg produced a pass graded at plus-1 or higher (a stat we have taken to calling “Big-Time Throws,” much to my distress) on 2.68 percent of his attempts. 151 QBs were better than that, and only nine were worse.
Why Christian Hackenberg doesn't have a draftable grade