Stetson Bennett’s ideal place with the L.A Rams would be on the practice squad, and despite the belief by most that he was too good in Saturday’s preseason game to cut him, the quarterback may actually less likely to make the 53-man roster based on how he played against the Saints. A deeper look at his already-average passing statistics in the second preseason game show a quarterback who:
- Can’t consistently throw an accurate pass beyond 15 yards
- Had the majority of his completions on short, routine passes
- Sailed way too many balls over the heads of his intended receivers
- Relies too heavily on shotgun formation and play-action designs meant for rookies like Ty Simpson
- Still lacks the size, arm strength, and ball placement to be an NFL quarterback
No matter what you hear this week, nothing that Bennett has done in the preseason disproves that he’s the reason
that the Rams drafted Simpson.
Les Snead felt that L.A. needed a potential franchise starter, so he drafted Simpson knowing that it wasn’t going to be the 28 (soon to be 29) year old Bennett with zero career NFL games under his belt. Not zero passes. Not zero snaps.
Bennett has never been active for an NFL game. But after rushing for two touchdowns (and wildly over-throwing several opportunities to pass for at least one), the narrative on Bennett has shifted dramatically just one week after the same people were saying that Simpson should be kicking him to the curb without passing Go.
However, as you’ll see in this passing chart I created by watching the first half of the Rams-Saints game again, it’s not just the Rams who won’t have a place for Bennett:
Nobody in the NFL cares. If he’s cut, it’s almost certain that Stetson Bennett would clear waivers.
Where would he go?
First of all, there are definitely more than 32 quarterbacks better than Bennett. There are at least 50.
Using that as a caption for a highlight of Bennett turning down potential passing opportunities to run around the Saints’ second/third-string defense for a rushing touchdown is not a logical 1:1.
Where would he go if he was cut?
- Nobody else in the NFC West wants him: Seahawks, 49ers, Cardinals all have 3 QBs they’re keeping
- Other McVay tree coaches are set with QBs: Packers, Vikings, Bengals wouldn’t be interested
You’re talking about maybe at most the Jaguars with Liam Coen, if they decide that Bennett offers them more than Nick Mullens. But…why? Mullens isn’t good, but he’s been with Coen since last season, there’s nothing left to teach him, he’s familiar with how to help Trevor Lawrence week to week, it’s unlikely that a team is interested in disrupting the room at this point of the year unless they have to, like an injury happens.
Besides, Coen doesn’t know Bennett. They never overlapped in L.A..
And it’s like that on most teams. They’ve been developing quarterbacks already, and they also see that Bennett doesn’t have a future as an NFL starter. He’d just be what he is on the Rams right now, which is a third-string QB.
He’s a third-string quarterback who might get the backup job out of necessity.
Instead, the Rams could — and probably should — risk cutting Bennett, clearing waivers, and putting him on the practice squad. The team would keep two quarterbacks, but in the event that Stafford got injured, sign Jimmy Garoppolo.
That’s the most logical plan.
Because pass-to-pass on Saturday, Stetson Bennett was more bad than good. And the “good” was not NFL-level good. It was just “preseason good enough”.
No, I’m not former NFL zero-pass attempts quarterbacks Kurt Benkert (I’m being snarky, but I acknowledge he generally knows more than I do) but I’m also not motivated to lie to you. There’s no clickbait here. It’s simply an acknowledgement of what really happened in front of our eyes, not narratives, stats, and a single highlight that keeps getting passed around.
A year ago this week, Bennett passed for over 300 yards and three touchdowns against the Chargers. I promise you, he’s not any better now than he was the last three years as a quarterback no team wanted that badly.
Stetson Bennett passing chart vs Saints
Notes:
- Play Action or Shotgun? I’ll keep track
- First-Read is my opinion, but a first-read is easy to diagnose
- Second-Read is a little trickier, but not really
- “Routine” is my opinion too, but I think we’d agree 95% of the time what is routine
- Somewhere along the line I missed a pass because I charted 30 out of 31
- Watch the Game Highlights yourself
- Watch Bennett’s Highlights
Pass 1 – Routine pass, LOS to Presley 9 YAC (Play Action)
Pass 2 – High sideline pass to Daniels (Shotgun) incomplete* (1st read)
*could be complete
On the Daniels pass, let’s call it a serviceable pass that works, but not good enough ball placement to give Daniels a better shot of keeping his feet on the ground to catch it. Roughly 20 air yards.
Pass 3 – Routine pass, 7 yards to Presley (Shotgun) (2nd read)
Pass 4 – Presnap motion by TE Klare, Routine 1st-read pass to Klare 3 yards (Shotgun)
Pass 5 – Under Center: Almost runs into RB, deep shot overthrow to Scott (1st read)
On pass 5, Bennett is under center and it appears that he’s supposed to run play action, but miscommunication with running back almost causes him to run into Jarquez Hunter on accident and disrupt the play. Basically it looks like it’s 25% play action
Pass 6 – Routine pass, 4 yards to Bachman (Shotgun) (2nd read)
Pass 7 – Routine pass, 5 yards to Daniels on 3rd-and-6 (Shotgun) (1st read)
Pass 8 – High difficulty pass, 20 yards to Scott (Play Action) (2nd-ish read?)
This is the throw that people are talking about the most. It’s 4th-and-1 because the previous play did not go past the sticks, and Bennett is throwing under pressure of two Saints. He appears to turn down at least one receiver (Daniels in the middle of the field perhaps) if not two, prior to then throwing this one over the top to Scott. That’s good.
What’s not so clear is why he turns down a wide open Jarquez Hunter standing six yards away from him and putting up the mailbox sign “I’m Open! I’m Open!”
It could be that Bennett is not tall enough. It could be that Bennett didn’t see him. It could be the defender standing in between the two players. These are all good answers. It doesn’t change the fact that IF Bennett is able to see Hunter or IF he’s tall enough or IF he can throw the ball over the defender here, it’s so obviously the pass he has to make. It’s fourth down and Hunter is going to walk to the sticks if Bennett sees him. Instead he takes the shot with a far lower percentage of success and nearly overthrows it.
And this other angle, which people are using to say that the pass was impressive, actually makes the decision look even worse relative to Bennett’s open receivers in the middle of the field:
Pass 9 – High difficulty pass, 27 yards incomplete to Bachman (uncatchable*) (Shotgun) (1st read)
*It’s uncatchable but the defender #22 is called for defensive holding, so we’ll never know how accurate this pass would have been. Bennett may have thrown it because he saw holding.
Pass 10 – Routine pass, LOS to Klare but DROPPED (PA) (1st read)
Pass 11 – Difficult pass, incomplete too high to Waters (Shotgun) (4th read?)
This is interesting. 1st-and-Goal, 11 personnel, Bennett goes through his progressions left to right and seems to turn down all four receiving options until he just throws an uncatchable high pass towards Jordan Waters that could have been intercepted. Seriously, the ball is about I’d say one yard away from being a diving interception by the defender. Furthermore, Bennett could have run the ball.
Ironically, because he runs for two touchdowns in the game, Bennett didn’t take the obvious run here and throws a ball that could have only been caught by the Saints. His pocket had collapsed, but I wouldn’t say he was under pressure. There was nobody in front of him, but he chose to pass the ball five feet over Waters’s head.
Pass 12 – Not even sure what this pass is. Incomplete, not close to anybody (Shotgun) (???)
Miscommunication? It’s second-and-Goal from the 14, Bennett drops back, he stares at one receiver the entire time, he’s not under pressure, and he throws it at least six yards away from Klare. Nobody was close to it and it falls incomplete.
Pass 13 – Routine pass, 6 yards complete to Daniels (Shotgun) (1st read)
Third-and-Goal but gave team no shot to score a touchdown. The extra six yards don’t help the field goal team.
Pass 14 – Routine pass, 5 air yards to Daniels, YAC picks 4 more yards (Shotgun) (1st read)
Pass 15 – Routine pass, LOS to Klare for 0 yards (PA) (1st read)
Pass 16 – Routine pass, 5 air yards to Pressley, 4 YAC picks up 1st (Shotgun) (1st read)
Pass 17 – Difficult pass, 12 yards to Bachman (PA) (1st read)
Better play here by Bennett, as it’s not just a little dump off as the previous three play-action rollouts have been. It’s a harder completion to fit into a tight window and Bachman comes down with it for a first down. This is the first play-action pass of the day that actually looks hard. And as I wrote on Saturday, Bachman was the best receiver on the team in this game, not Daniels. Bachman had a hand in making sure this was complete.
Pass 18 – Deep sideline pass, Incomplete to Pressley, wildly uncatchable (PA barely) (1st read)
Pass 19 – Somewhat difficult, 17 yards to Bachman (27 air) (Shotgun) (1st read)
Definitely among Bennett’s best throws, because he doesn’t sail it. Bachman still jumps to catch it, although I don’t know if he had to do that, and Bennett knew from the snap that he was going to throw that pass, to that player, from that distance. He completed it to give the Rams third-and-3.
Pass 20 – Routine pass, 6 air yards to Daniels, throws behind him off-target incomplete (Shotgun) (1st read)
Pass 21 – Difficult pass, 20 air yards to Daniels, overthrown, incomplete (Shotgun) (1st read)
Pass 22 – Routine pass, another LOS play-action to Daniels for 4 yards (PA) (1st read)
Pass 23 – Routine pass, 5 air yards to Connors, wildly overthrown incomplete (Shotgun) (1st read)
2-minute drill begins
Pass 24 – Routine pass, 5 air yards/5 YAC to Daniels (Shotgun) (1st read)
Pass 25 – Difficult pass, 16 yards (25 air?) to Scott (Shotgun) (1st/2nd read?)
If this pass wasn’t high, then Scott was jumping a foot in the air for no reason. It seems like maybe Bennett checks the flat before going out to Scott, but it may have not been a serious look.
Pass 26 – Difficult pass, 16 yards (25 air) to Daniels on the sideline (Shotgun) (2nd read?)
Pass 27 – Medium pass, 11 yards to Daniels (Shotgun) (1st read)
Pass 28 – Difficult pass, 18 air yards to sideline, wildly high incomplete (Shotgun) (1st read)
Pass 29 – Routine pass, 9 yards to Daniels on comeback route (Shotgun) (1st read)
Pass 30 – Medium-Difficult, 5 air yards incomplete back-shoulder Daniels (Shotgun) (1st read)
I didn’t chart the runs. I’m not cherry picking, I’m just more interested in what the quarterback can do as a passer. If Bennett is Lamar Jackson, surely we expect him to pick up more plays with his legs. The question that Sean McVay has to answer though is “How good of an offense can I build around Bennett when I’ve built a team for Matthew Stafford?”
Well, look, you like runs against these backups. Fine.
Will Stetson Bennett outrun Fred Warner? I doubt it.
And by the way, 100% of the plays of Stetson Bennett being used online to highlight how great he played are the three plays you see above: 2 runs, 1 pass that was surprisingly completed but shouldn’t have been thrown.
Routine Passes: 12-of-15, 80 yards
Of the three incomplete passes, Bennett had one drop, one throw behind his intended receiver, and one throw way over the head of Dean Connors near the goal line.
This is half of Bennett’s pass attempts and 63-percent of his completions.
You can challenge my “routine” definition, that’s totally fine. These are my rules, but they don’t have to be your rules.
Difficult Passes: 4-of-8, 64 yards
All four incompletions were totally uncatchable passes. The four completions picked up an average of 16 yards per attempt. Bennett’s deepest shots were not close to being caught.
But he had several sideline throws that were impressive, especially the first one to Daniels (albeit still too high), his one interesting play-action pass to Bachman (the other PA passes were not worth writing about), and a couple of his throws in the two-minute drill.
On the whole, Bennett is still not a very accurate quarterback beyond 10-15 yards, by NFL standards. In fact, he’s probably just “bad” in terms of throwing accurate passes with good ball placement beyond 10-15 yards, and even some of his short throws were un-catchable. One of those passes was nearly intercepted and should have never been thrown.
Bennett is a shotgun QB
In Shotgun: 66% of the time
Play Action/Under Center: 33% of the time
Bennett went 13-of-22 out of shotgun (59% completion rate) and averaged 5.5 yards per attempt.
On play action, Bennett went 5-of-8 for 45 yards with one drop and one time he almost ran into the running back (maybe that’s the RB’s fault?). That’s 5.6 yards per attempt.
Last season’s splits for Stafford were the same:
Shotgun: 66%
Play Action: 34%
But there are KEY differences, not just in stats (Stafford completed 68% of his throws and 8.4 Y/A out of play action) but in the types of play action plays. Stafford isn’t just faking a handoff and rolling to his right for a one-read dump-off to the tight end in the flat. He’s peering down the field 30 yards for Puka Nacua.
So Bennett is clearly more comfortable playing out of shotgun, probably because it’s far easier to do than play from under center and not just hand the ball off. Play action causes the QB to turn his back to the defense and then come back and find an open receiver, which is hard to do if you’re reading the defense. But in Bennett’s case, easy to do because almost all of the plays except for one or two were designed rollouts that had a wide open TE/WR at the line of scrimmage. It’s easy for any quarterback in the NFL to do that.
The one time he had a different type of play-action, he almost ran into Hunter, he had one mission (throw a deep bomb to Scott), and then he overthrew him.
That was the entire goal and design of the play. It wasn’t to run play-action and read the defense. It was “Let’s take a shot into the end zone here, Stet” and it was almost a disaster.
Reading a Defense
1st read: 70%
2nd read: 14%
3rd/4th read: 3%
Unclear to me: 13% (mostly 1st or 2nd though)
As long as you can just tell Stetson Bennett what to do before every play and then that guy is wide open, the offense will run fine, sort of. Most of the time.
Bennett completed 75% of his throws that were a first read AND routine, but he only completed 40% of his throws that were first read and NOT a routine pass.
Second read he was actually more successful, going 4-of-4 total.
What the Rams will do
I think Saturday’s game makes it very possible now that the Rams will start Ty Simpson on Thursday against the Chargers and let him play the entire game. Then comes the surprise:
Cutting Bennett and trying to get him onto the practice squad.
Because that’s where he belongs.
Not because of my opinion. Because that’s an accurate representation of how well he’s played in the preseason — over his entire career and Saturday — and how unrealistic it is to expect Bennett to replace Stafford in a game and not have it be a total disaster.
