I’ve always thought of playing quarterback as making a series of split-second risk-reward calculations. At its core, throwing a pass amounts to making your best evaluation of the defense, determining the likelihood
of success for a given throw based on that evaluation, determining the yield of success if it works, and determining the downsides to failure (with the biggest failure being an interception). Oh, and you have to make all these calculations in like one millisecond, because much more than that and the opportunity has passed. Easy, right?
In situations when you have to process so quickly, you have to rely on your priors, or the things that you already know. An easy prior when facing the New York Jets is that cornerback Sauce Gardner is one of the league’s best and has been for some time. Given that context, a quarterback is probably going to be a bit leery of throwing in his direction, even when he’s struggling like he has been this season according to public datapoints such as PFF grades.
But priors are tough to get over sometimes and despite those struggles, quarterbacks still seem hesitant to challenge Gardner much so far this season.
As shown, Gardner is in the bottom right quadrant that is labeled “targeted less, bad defense.” What this means is he’s allowing catches when targeted, but he isn’t being targeted all that much. You will see a similar determination on Denver Bronco cornerback Patrick Surtain, who is also considered one of the league’s best and apparently has experienced similar struggles.
What this means (to me) is that teams and quarterbacks still know that Sauce Gardner is capable of being Sauce Gardner. Even when struggling, Gardner is scary, which is the sign of a truly elite player in my opinion. In the end this reputation allows his struggles to be minimized because teams don’t seem sure if it’s just a mirage.
While Gardner might be skirting on reputation for now, it likely won’t last forever if he doesn’t pick up on his current level of play. If the Jets want to start winning games, then it would be helpful if that pick up happened in short order.
