It's hard to tell with just one camera angle. I don't remember on the original broadcast if they showed another view of the play. Regardless, Fasano is running in his direction and it appears as if he is square with Fasano. Fasano isn't exactly an agile guy, I'd venture to guess that he would be running straight into the guy if he was led.
WHA What?! lol...Are you trying to get people to see what clearly isn't there? The defender was 2 yards away when the ball hit Fasano's hands. He's right there in the frame...lol...jeez
Count the hashmarks. The defender was 2 yards away (maybe 2 1/2) when the ball hit Fasano in the hands...lol
That's what it looks like, but to be honest it's hard to tell. It's definitely no more than 5 and it appears to me to be less than that. I wish there were more angles of the play.
Dude what are you talking about. You guys are complaining he didn't lead Fasano. Well Robinson is squatting and starting to shoot downfield when Henne is about to throw it. Henne waits a second for Fasano to get off of Abraham and puts on his back shoulder. Look at Robinson. If Henne leads Fasano he goes right into Robinson. I honestly have no idea how people decide to see what they want to see to fit what they want to believe.
The angle isn't the best, but the hash marks don't change in distance because of angle. Look where the defender is when the ball hits Fasano in the hands. 2 to 2 1/2 yards away. lol...I wish I could freeze the frame and post it like that.
Alright. I've got the screen paused right now at the point where the ball hits Fasano on the hands. It's paused there right now. It's the overheard "normal" view so you can see hash marks and everything. Vertically speaking, just purely looking at the hash marks, the defender was almost exactly 4 yards upfield of Anthony Fasano as the ball is clutched in Fasano's ill-fated grip at this very precise moment. Now we proceed to the next camera view which is the horizontal view. Pause. Ball is currently in Fasano's unreliable hands. Where is the front side defender? Not even in the frame. That means he is currently to the west of the numbers. The numbers are 6 feet tall. Front shoulder placement would have put the ball right at the same longitude as the top of the numbers. You actually have to fast forward it to find out what longitude the front side defender was during this time. When you do that, you see that the defender was actually a good 9 feet west of the very bottom of the numbers, which means he was 15 feet west of where the ball should have gone if it had front shoulder placement. This means that the defender is still at the moment of the catch at least 15 feet north and at least 15 feet west from Anthony Fasano. That puts him almost exactly 7 yards away from Fasano at the moment he's got his hands wrapped around that ball.
That's a good question. I can't tell either. That would move the throw out of the "ball placement" category and into the "pocket presence" category. Remember, it IS ultimately up to the quarterback to make sure he gets that ball out and doesn't have his arm hit while he throws it. You manipulate your throwing platform if you have to, slide your feet, etc. But I like the question, it's possible what you say could be true.
I literally cannot understand why that throw is being considered "poor." Is there no gray area between a perfectly placed ball and a poorly placed ball? Because that seems to be what is being argued here. Some might say it's mere semantics but to me there's is quite a bit of difference between a ball with poor ball placement and "less than ideal" ball placement. Also, virtually no one seems to be acknowledging that Henne's arm was hit on the throw. Given the way his arm was hit any disruption of the throw would be to bring it back more to the middle of the field.
I understand what you're saying. Just understand that to me, it's about the route. For me, a 13 yard throw to a player crossing east to west, if your ball placement is such to where he has to turn his hips, cross his feet, and reach back for the ball while still trying to run east to west, that is "poor" placement. Pretend he caught the ball. The placement forced him to spin completely around. Many NFL tight ends wouldn't even be able to do that without falling. This is a YAC league, and the quality of the throw all but ruled out any YAC.
So he's "almost" 4 yards upfield? Before you said at least 5 yards cause he's not in the frame. lol So with you're film he's 3 yards and change upfield? However, now you're changing the parameters and including not only upfield but sideline to sideline? However, do you think the defender is going to travel 15ft then turn 15ft or cut that off and hit Fasano? Even with this 15 x 15 he's a little more than 3 yards away as long as he's not ******ed and follows the "straight line rule".
Whole lotta pissing going on over a single pre-season pass/drop/int. I can't wait to see how the boards explode when it actually matters. I'm in the "catch the damn ball, Fasano" camp, but seriously, the amount of scrutiny this thing is getting is absurd. And look, I just added to it..I hope you're all happy :-p
He looks to be about 4 yards away and as soon as he comes into frame he is starting to run towards Fasano just before the ball hits off his chest and bounces up. It looks to me like Fasano would have been drilled if he had caught the ball originally. I don't think leading Fasano would have resulted in an INT but he probably would have gotten hit hard had he caught it. I think it was an OK throw by Henne that should have been caught. Nothing more nothing less. Don't see why this is such a polarizing debate.
I wish they had the floating camera on all games like they do for the Sunday and Monday night games so we could have a birds eye view and really see the exact position of each player.
If we don't expect our TE's to catch balls like that , then I suppose we are happy with our TE situation. I am not happy with our TE situation , and of course I expect that ball to be caught. Period .
I haven't seen too many posters (if any) disagree with the notion that it wasn't a perfect throw. The disagreement is entirely centered around the degree to which it wasn't a perfect and the resulting degree that the interception was Henne's fault. Which is sort of a silly thing to have a 20 page argument about, but that's where we are as fans. But the reason, I think, that this argument is happening is because just about everyone acknowledges that Henne needs to improve from last year. Even his staunchest defenders admit that -- for all the bad things that happened that might not have been his fault or his doing -- he still didn't rise above it. While a great many other people have made their judgements and are more than ready to walk away. Therefore, on the one hand this throw is being used as an example of how it's the same ol' Henne. Same ol' accuracy problems. Same ol' issues with ball placement. Etc, etc. Nothing's going to change this year. While on the other hand people are trotting out all the mitigating factors that are going into it: location of other defenders, the fact that Fasano got two hands on the ball, the fact that his arm was hit. No one is being particularly objective. There's too much at stake, too much history, too much tape study and for anyone to ignore. The problem is that all these negative things could be true about Henne and this throw not be an example of them. One need not be a homer or a member of the Patience Brigade to say that there is a difference between a less than ideal throw and a poor throw. That this early into camp, the timing on a route where Fasano hits into a defender at the top of his route and peels off might not be perfect from either man. This throw has basically been turned into a microcosm of Henne's career however you want to look at his career, and I disagree with that. Like a piece of abstract art it can be taken apparently however you want to take it. I just feel like it is a poor choice for this kind of showdown. Or maybe it isn't. One side attacking and the other side defending has been basically this entire debate since the middle of last season. One side attacking a play, the other side talking about all the reasons it wasn't Henne's fault.
For me it's simple. Pause at the catch, now many feet north of Fasano was Robinson. He was about 15 feet north of Fasano. You can't tell how many feet west of Fasano he was at the catch because Robinson's not even in frame when Fasano catches the ball in the second angle. But when the came adjusts, which is well into the catch and interception, you see that Robinson was at least 15 feet west of Fasano. √(15² + 15²) = 21.2 ≈ 7 yards I know people are thinking, hey we're overanalyzing this. I don't. I think we're over-arguing it. Judging distances on a football field comes pretty quick to me because of all the work I do evaluating quarterbacks. To me, judging the distance of a throw is very key in keeping perspective on the all-important issue of accuracy, and so that I've gotten pretty quick with it. That's how I judged just by eyeballing that Robinson was probably about 6 yards away from Fasano at the point of the catch. I wasn't exactly right, it was more like 7 yards, but Robinson's closing fast anyway so I don't know that it matters. Either way he's a cornerback (and not a very physical one) and Fasano is a tight end and this is Fasano's job, catch a ball in traffic, absorb hits and run with the ball after the catch. Hard to do that though when the ball is behind you to where you have to flip your hips and turn all the way around to secure the catch, while your momentum still has you traving east-west. That's poor ball placement because it's not really conducive to yards after the catch. The fact that it was an interception rather than just a catch with no yards after catch, that's more on Fasano obviously, which I think we ALL have said from the start.
If you go helmet to helmet he's just over 3 yards upfield. If you take it from his feet you'll be at 4. At same moment where you pause the CB is already driving up the field, (:24). By the :25 mark the players are essentially together. I went and looked at it in the video editing software and Robinson's head/shoulder is on the ATL 43 yard line, and Fasano is between the ATL 46 and 47 yard line. Its no more than 3.5 yards, which is just over 10 feet away. If the ball is front shoulder Fasano continues outside and into the direct path of the CB. The CB drove immediately where he thought the pass and Fasano would be, he broke down when the ball popped up. But if that ball continued Fasano's motion towards the outside the CB is likely going to meet Fasano pretty close to the ball and Fasano meeting. Also, while small, the difference in ball placement does result in a longer throw, only adding time. It won't be on the order of a second, but it will add time into the equation. Time which also allows the defender to gain ground on the play. It may be half a foot, it could be an inch, I don't know but it occurs for both players at the same time.
And analysing football tape isn't yours. Please Mr. Football God...show me what part of my post is incorrect. Did you initially state he was AT LEAST 5 YARDS away because he wasn't in the frame or not? Did you then state that after further review he was "almost 4 yards" away or not? Did you then claim that he was 15 ft north (just more than 3 yards) and 15 yards west (again, just over 3 yards) away or not? Did you claim that he was at least 7 yards away due to these numbers or not? Do you understand that football is a game of angles or not? Do you understand that the defender wasn't just going to follow the box you made or not? Do you understand that Fasano was also closing the distance or not? Do you understand anything other than "Henne suck!"?
1. I disagree with a "helmet to helmet" assessment of the distance. For one thing helmet to helmet hits are illegal. For another, the mass comes from the body, the force comes from the body, and therefore I judge the distance from the body's core. 2. I agree that Dunta Robinson would have continued bearing down on where Fasano would be instead of on the ball itself. This means that Fasano would have had plenty of time to secure the ball and would already be running by the time Robinson could try and tackle him. And if you're a 270 lbs Anthony Fasano with your feet under you, one would hope you'd have a fighting chance of breaking Dunta Robinson's tackle attempt. Of course, even if the ball were caught, we never would have gotten the chance to see if the 270 lbs Fasano with his feet under him in stride could have broken Dunta Robinson's tackle, because the placement of the throw precluded any RAC.
Thats fine, his feet are as I said half a yard back as he is leaning (driving forward). So the difference is somewhere in the middle. I can live with that. But it still puts us under 4 yards of vertical distance at the instant the ball touches Fasano. If we are in that range then Robinson won't be 15 away vertically. 4 yards is 12 feet and we're not there in terms of distance. Long story short I think the end result of 7 yards away is a on the high side. Just based on you saying he was 15 feet, 5 yards vertically away. If he's 4 or under it will affect the end distance. In the end, I just think the ball was thrown better where it was, than leading him. I think it would have lead to an equally unacceptable outcome in the end. Not that Robinson is Bob Sanders, but......
We're splitting hairs if we're going to argue about 6.4 versus 7.1 yards. Yes, I may be off with my 15 foot vertical assessment (you're probably closer at 12 feet), but my 15 feet horizontal assessment was in all likelihood understated, and quite possibly significantly understated. By the time we can even see Robinson in the horizontal view of the play to where we can get an idea of how far west of the bottom of the numbers he was, it was well into the catch and interception, and if he'd been traveling toward Fasano all that time then it naturally means he's already closed some of that horizontal distance. I therefore stand by my 7 yard assesssment as a bare minimum guestimate of the distance. Either way, Robinson wasn't really a factor in the placement of the throw. The goal is to get that ball on Fasano's front shoulder so that he can secure the ball quickly and start working on turning the corner, or break the cornerback's tackle attempt using his 6'5" and 270 pound frame. In fact if Henne read the field and made a conscious decision to throw behind Fasano, that's another example of his inability to see the field clearly leading to overly-conservative decision making.
You stay with 7, I think it will be closer to 6 if not under by a bit. Its not like Fasano had to reach back for the ball, it did hit him in the hands, and neither arm was extended outside his frame. His hands were up, and in the end he should have caught that ball. I don't put that on Henne there. If we disagree thats fine. It wasn't a great throw, but it certainly wasn't a bad pass where the receiver was lunging backwards for it.
If there is was a scale of passing the ball from perfect - great - good - decent - poor - horrible - tragic, I would rate the throw as poor.
Fasano had to turn his hips, cross his legs and spin around in order to catch the ball. Most tight ends can't really do that while still moving east-west, and be expected to get any RAC. It was what it was. It was a poorly placed ball that should have led to a catch with little to no RAC, but led to an interception instead. If you're going to throw the ball with poor placement, you risk those things. Get the ball on the front shoulder, we're not having this conversation. In fact, we could be having a conversation about how underrated Anthony Fasano is, citing how he broke through Dunta Robinson's poor attempt at a low tackle and rumbled for an extra 20 yards or so on a nicely placed and timed short ball from Henne.
No offense but when there's a a defender clsoing on you as you're about to catch a passs you're not at all comforted by the illegality of helmet to helmet hits. I won't rehash what others have already said ill just say that had Fasano caught the pass no one would be praising him for making a great catch. It was a routine catch made more difficult by the fact that Fasano was entering the radius of a closing defender moreso than the pass being a few few inches off target. If it wasn't intercepted it'd be a non issue, like the pass Bess dropped or the miscommunication on the fade to Hartline.