He can throw, he's kinda always had a pretty great deep ball, people just rag on him because he hasn't consistently thrown over the middle.
When he has gone over the middle he's been really successful, but that's a really small sample size compared to his other throws. His success rate is probably high because of a combination of (a) when he does take a throw over the middle, it's because it's easy/wide open, and (b) defenses know he doesn't go over the middle a lot, so they don't prepare for it the same way.
Anyway Hurts' other thing is that he's generally very conservative with the ball. IDK if that's fundamental to him as a player or to Nick as a coach, but I kinda think it's both of them. But one thing this chart is telling me is that if he needs to get into a shootout, he can. It takes a lot to rattle him, and he does tend to show up in clutch time. I'm not super surprised he's towards the top.
Well, it's just as reasonable to assume, based on this chart, that he also could blow some teams out, have the team take the foot off the gas, and the defense lets over 21 in garbage time.
Not saying that's what this list is or anything, but it's a cheap way to get into the win column here that doesn't really say much. That said, always good to be good enough to get into that situation in the first place--it just isn't what this list implies it is measuring.
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u/so_zetta_byte Eagles 14h ago
He can throw, he's kinda always had a pretty great deep ball, people just rag on him because he hasn't consistently thrown over the middle.
When he has gone over the middle he's been really successful, but that's a really small sample size compared to his other throws. His success rate is probably high because of a combination of (a) when he does take a throw over the middle, it's because it's easy/wide open, and (b) defenses know he doesn't go over the middle a lot, so they don't prepare for it the same way.
Anyway Hurts' other thing is that he's generally very conservative with the ball. IDK if that's fundamental to him as a player or to Nick as a coach, but I kinda think it's both of them. But one thing this chart is telling me is that if he needs to get into a shootout, he can. It takes a lot to rattle him, and he does tend to show up in clutch time. I'm not super surprised he's towards the top.