Sometimes when watching one of Jameis Winston’s less polished games, it seems like he has regressed since last season. If you look at the numbers, however, he’s made quite a bit of improvement.
When under pressure, Winston has a QB rating of 84.0. Much higher than last year’s 58.5. his completion percentage while under pressure is just 48.5 but, it’s still up almost 6% from last year.
When he’s not under pressure, his QB rating drops all the way down to 53.0. In college, his QB rating when not being pressured was 87.0 in 2013 and 64.0 in 2014 so that’s definitely not one of the improved areas. While being pressured in college, his ratings were 29.2 in 2013 and just 5.0 (Yes 5.0) in 2014. So I’d say he improved by leaps and bounds in that department.
Throwing outside the pocket is another area of growth for our young QB. Last year he threw 5 touchdowns outside of the pocket. This year he has 10 already, more than any other QB in the league. The last QB to have more than 10 touchdowns outside of the pocket was Brett Favre in 2009 when he threw 11. Jameis will almost certainly beat that number considering he still has 7 games left to play.
Winston finished the 2015 season with 22 touchdowns and 15 interceptions, a 1.47 ratio. He started out a little rocky to begin this season, throwing 9 touchdowns and 8 interceptions through week 5, just a 1.13 ratio. Since the bye week, however, he’s thrown 10 touchdowns and just 2 interceptions. so with a total of 19 touchdowns and 10 interceptions with 7 games left to go, it seems like he’s on pace to make that another improved area.
There is one area that coaches, Winston, and the fans all know that he needs to improve on and that’s his accuracy on the deep ball. Last year he was just 31.7% on throws of 20+ yards. This year he’s about the same overall with 31.4%. Those numbers were much lower in the first 8 weeks but, since week 9 he’s completed 57% on his throws of 20 yards or longer. Hopefully, this recent trend of being a little more accurate means we’re finally seeing some light and the end of that very very long tunnel.
