Buffs Film Room: How Brendon Lewis can win the starting job

The tweak makes sense, right? Colorado has an extra player in protection, which patches up the weakest point of the offense, but then that player can leak out and provide an outlet to the quarterback. It works almost like a speed option, because the mobile quarterback and his wingman can force a defender to choose one of them and leave the other open.

The Buffs used this delayed-release concept again a few minutes later. This time it’s running back Deion Smith helping with protection—well, he tries to at least—but when CU doesn’t pick up the blitzed, Smith rolls out with Lewis to catch the pass.

While Smith doesn’t pick up the first down, he does set up a 4th & 1, which he converts on the next play.

The Buffs used the same concept the next week, too. Deep in the red zone, Colorado has one more chance to pick up the touchdown before settling for a field goal. The Buffs draw up a rollout to the wide side of the field, but wide receiver Brenden Rice stays behind to block. Once the defense overcommits to the sideline, Rice leaks up the field for an easy score.

Part of me wonders whether Rice actually thought this was a running play. He seemed surprised to see Lewis behind him. But we’re giving him the benefit of the doubt and saying this was all by design.

These little leak out plays all came on third or fourth down and work particularly well with Lewis. It’s easy to see how Lewis’ athleticism can be used in traditional ways—read options, bootlegs, designed runs, scrambles—but it opens up plenty more doors in the passing game.

Brendon’s arm is weak

Brendon Lewis doesn’t have elite arm strength. In fact, you could probably say that he has a pretty weak arm.

Here’s an example from the Oregon game. Lewis tries to make a tight-window throw in the red zone but the ball floats through the air and the window closes up before it gets to Brenden Rice. Somehow, Rice still comes up with the ball.

Lewis made the right decision but the ball took forever to get to its destination.

For reference, here’s a fairly similar throw from JT Shrout during his time at Tennessee

Lewis loves the short ball

The caveat to those numbers is this: Lewis only threw 7.8% of his passes deep. Out of those 189 quarterbacks mentioned above, only two threw 20+-yard passes less often than Lewis.

What’s more, Lewis ranked 205th out of 212 quarterbacks in mid-range attempt percentage; he only threw 14.3% of his passes 10 to 20 yards downfield.

So what does that all mean? Lewis threw a lot of short passes and many of them were thrown in the middle of the field. Take a look at the passing distribution for yourself:

Not including passes behind the line of scrimmage, Lewis threw as many passes within 10 yards of the line of scrimmage and between the numbers as he did to the rest of the field combined.

For reference, here’s JT Shrout’s final season at Tennessee:

Living in the middle of the field isn’t a problem, but a little more diversity—namely those deep balls—would definitely help.

Lewis made much better reads in the middle of the field as the season progressed. Let’s dig into those.

First, here’s a simple little RPO from the Oregon game. Lewis can either hand the ball off or hit his receiver at the sticks to convert the third down.

Here’s a good read from the Oregon State game. The Beavers are running some sort of zone defense and Lewis knows that Penry is going to come open between the two defenders sitting a couple of yards downfield. He stands patiently in the pocket and hits his receiver when the time comes.

Let’s give some props to the freshman receiver, too, for realizing what’s developing in front of him and sitting down in that gap. The offensive line deserves credit for giving Lewis time to let the play develop, as well. Imagine how different this play could have looked if they’d been beaten like we saw in the very first clips up at the top.

While Lewis made good reads in the middle of the field late in the season, his accuracy was hit or miss. In this next clip, Montana Lemonious-Craig draws the defenders across the field and La’Vontae Shenault trails him with nobody left to cover him. The play should be an easy first down.

But, Lewis puts the ball a little bit behind his receiver and it’s a turnover on downs.

Lewis sees that Broussard is going to split the coverage and waits despite pressure coming from one of the best edge rushers in the country. He hits his target and picks up the first but, once again, if he’d been able to put the ball out in front of his receiver it could have been a big play.

Picking up that first down is a far cry from this third-and-medium against A&M, where he can’t see Brenden Rice coming free right in front of him. (The poor guy did get smacked by that pass rush though.)

Here’s another example Lewis not making any sort of reads from early in the season.

Honestly, I don’t think anybody was going to come open. Still, if he hadn’t put all of the gas in the tank on that ball, it probably would have been six points going back the other way.

Lewis made freshman mistakes

We’re going to end this on a high note.

But first, we have to talk about some of the very lowest notes.

For the most part, Lewis erred on the side of caution and avoided the problems that most young quarterbacks struggle with. And by that I mean he only threw one interception for every four starts, which is one of the absolute best marks in the nation regardless of experience.

Some of the mistakes were pretty gross though. Including this one.

This is the patented Brendon Lewis rollout that ends with a throwaway up the sideline. But there’s a catch.

It’s fourth down.

Why would you ever, ever, ever, ever, ever throw the ball away on fourth down? It doesn’t make sense in any circumstance. Ever. At least throw the ball up to somebody downfield and see if they can make a play. Or take off upfield and try to break four tackles or however many would be needed.

Try something. Anything.

But don’t just give up on fourth down.

Yes, the game was out of hand. But once again never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever throw the ball away on fourth down. And Lewis did it twice last season.

Here’s another bad decision.

Don’t throw the deep ball out of bounds on third down. Especially when the target is in single coverage. If it’s intercepted, then it’s basically as good a punt anyway. And if it’s in bounds then who knows, maybe your wide receiver will make a great play in contested coverage.

Ahem…

Give the receiver a chance. Especially on third down. And even moreso on fourth down.

Again, for a freshman quarterback the number of “dumb mistakes” was very small. But they were out there. And it’s probably safe to assume those will be gone next season.

Brendon might be an absolute stud

We saved the best for last.

How many quarterbacks can do this?

Brendon Lewis was far from perfect as a freshman.

He was thrown into the fire and didn’t look like he belonged until the second half of the season. Even then, there was plenty to clean up.

But, outside of the cannon arm, Lewis has just about everything you could hope for from a 19-year-old quarterback.

He has plenty to clean up. His short-range accuracy is at the top of the list, since picking apart the middle of the field is always going to be his bread and butter in the passing game. He needs to continue to improve at working past his first read, too.

Plenty of the changes seem like they need to come from other places though. The offensive line needs to be better for any quarterback to be successful, but particularly one who wants to throw the ball up the middle. The coaches need to ask him to push the ball deep more often, too.

Lewis showed why the coaching staff was excited about him last season, and there’s no reason to think he won’t be even better the second time around… if he can beat out his competition and win the starting job.

But Lewis finally had his first QB1 moment against Oregon State and, if all goes well, it could be the first of many.