Dylan Raiola

I seem to remember that holding the ball too long was a knock against him when he was in high school. Essentially, he was so much bigger and more talented that most high schoolers that he didn't need to worry about it. If so, this may be as simple as a bad habit he had that shows back up when he's under nearly constant pressure.

That said, I think he's getting more grief than he deserves. I don't think his pick last week was that bad. On that play, it looks to me like the Michigan state player dropped back and then crosses behind the ref as Dylan is starting his release, so he just loses him behind the ref:
 
quesadilla said:
I seem to remember that holding the ball too long was a knock against him when he was in high school. Essentially, he was so much bigger and more talented that most high schoolers that he didn't need to worry about it. If so, this may be as simple as a bad habit he had that shows back up when he's under nearly constant pressure.

That said, I think he's getting more grief than he deserves. I don't think his pick last week was that bad. On that play, it looks to me like the Michigan state player dropped back and then crosses behind the ref as Dylan is starting his release, so he just loses him behind the ref:
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I watched a few games of his senior yr. I was surprised how bad his line was
 
Getting the ball out faster, or throw away, would be beneficial for sure. Similar to Shedeur Sanders....Great completion rate at the expense of a crap ton of sacks. Less routes in the patter? Check down sooner? Personally, I'd love for him to be taught how to actually be more fleet of feet. Dude runs with cinder blocks in quick sand. Unsure how to improve that. He's a good QB, who gets no national attention save played out comparisons to Mahomie. He could be great, but OL and pocket presence have to improve. An actual dedicated run game would be huge. Believe we called 60% passes against Mich St when the wind was blowing 30 mph....Still no #2 after 2 weeks of "waiting to see something we haven't seen before"....
 
Corn Train said:
I really think settling in on a starting OL and rolling with it is going to help everyone going forward. I’m confused about why we didn’t use a tool like say, Fall Camp, to sort that out instead of doing it in season
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You mean spring, fall, first game or 2? Like the RB room.....Kind of concerning tbh. I'm with you. Only thing I can think is our DL is not the 2024 DL. Maybe on good vs good the OL looked good. Not because they were, but because the DL was struggling. I do give the staff credit to try and rework both sides as needed. In the past I think we'd see the staff(s) ride with their first picks and not change much or try to adapt the players. Some good and bad stuff on film to work on. Hoping that we get the W against Maryland. A tough 1st road game.
 
lo country said:
You mean spring, fall, first game or 2? Like the RB room.....Kind of concerning tbh. I'm with you. Only thing I can think is our DL is not the 2024 DL. Maybe on good vs good the OL looked good. Not because they were, but because the DL was struggling. I do give the staff credit to try and rework both sides as needed. In the past I think we'd see the staff(s) ride with their first picks and not change much or try to adapt the players. Some good and bad stuff on film to work on. Hoping that we get the W against Maryland. A tough 1st road game.
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They sure talked up Ives a lot for him to basically be a ghost.

But I do think they were looking for Parker to be in the mix more until injuries got in the way.
 
Corn Train said:
I really think settling in on a starting OL and rolling with it is going to help everyone going forward. I’m confused about why we didn’t use a tool like say, Fall Camp, to sort that out instead of doing it in season
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Holgorsen really really hates pre-snap penalties and mental errors. All coaches do, but I get the sense it's just not something he wants to tolerate and he doesn't want to play guys who have that problem. My read on it (no inside info) is Gottula and Pritchett were the best overall tackles during camp, but due to the mental mistakes Holgorsen didn't want to commit. Something changed over the bye week, because Pritchett wouldn't have survived the MA or false start the first 4 weeks. Maybe Holgorsen had a change of heart over the bye week, but my guess is Rhule put his foot down and said we're going to play the better players.

Also a quirk that I assume has to do with recruiting promises - Pritchett was mainly a RT for Bama last year, he played a couple games at LT when Proctor was hurt but generally was RT. Gottula had pretty much exclusively played LT until last week. Maybe we flipped them because we were more confident in Gottula adapting easier, but Pritchett still has more experience at RT. My guess is we told Pritchett we would let him play LT when we recruited him, and most other teams probably wouldn't commit to that. I do think having the set line with the most talented players will pay dividends down the stretch.
 
Husker_In_WI said:
Holgorsen really really hates pre-snap penalties and mental errors. All coaches do, but I get the sense it's just not something he wants to tolerate and he doesn't want to play guys who have that problem. My read on it (no inside info) is Gottula and Pritchett were the best overall tackles during camp, but due to the mental mistakes Holgorsen didn't want to commit. Something changed over the bye week, because Pritchett wouldn't have survived the MA or false start the first 4 weeks. Maybe Holgorsen had a change of heart over the bye week, but my guess is Rhule put his foot down and said we're going to play the better players.
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My read is they finally decided that he was the best talent and others weren't going to get it done. So they had to get him on the field and live with a few mistakes so that he's out there all the time (and others aren't).
 
lo country said:
You mean spring, fall, first game or 2? Like the RB room.....Kind of concerning tbh. I'm with you. Only thing I can think is our DL is not the 2024 DL. Maybe on good vs good the OL looked good. Not because they were, but because the DL was struggling. I do give the staff credit to try and rework both sides as needed. In the past I think we'd see the staff(s) ride with their first picks and not change much or try to adapt the players. Some good and bad stuff on film to work on. Hoping that we get the W against Maryland. A tough 1st road game.
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I hadn’t really considered it till now but yeah I’ll bet Butler not having his defense really firing off until recently probably inadvertently served up the koolaid to the OL during camp. I had some of it as well
 
BigRedBuster said:
I know I've heard many people talk (including coaches) about Dylan needing to get the ball out quicker. What I don't know is, is that pretty much all on him in that he's not seeing the quick pass targets fast enough?
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Mavric said:
I'm sure it's a little bit of everything. As I've said a couple of times, he takes longer to throw against pressure than when not pressured. Which seems backwards.
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I've seen it suggested that it might be due to the way he reads the defense.

He's top-tier at pre-snap reads and envisioning how the play is going to develop. But you're not always gonna get it right - sometimes the defense throws things at you that you're not expecting.

That explains his couple 'what were you thinking' INTs - the defender just plain wasn't where Dylan expected him to be, and he didn't notice the mis-read in time. It also explains why he's slow to release sometimes - if his initial read is wrong, he has to mentally reset and re-read what the defense is doing.

He's practically the opposite of most QBs we've had in the last 15 years or so, who sucked at pre-snap reads and were much more instinctive 'if it feels good, rip it' passers.
 
Good post, @Toe.

A couple things that might help quite a bit:
  1. We need to work our opponents' edge rushers to the outside, we're just constantly getting crashed down the middle. Surprisingly, it was Lindenmeyer who did this really well on the long throw to Barney (which was the play that shifted momentum back to us). He worked the pressure to the outside, Raiola steps up and out, and then finds a guy way downfield.
  2. Dylan might have to learn to bootleg out a little earlier if his initial read of the play turns out to be wrong.
Either way, when Dylan has an open guy he hits him. His talent level is way up there, and physically he's a beast of a pocket passing QB in terms of strength, IMO.
 
Undone said:
Good post, @Toe.

A couple things that might help quite a bit:
  1. We need to work our opponents' edge rushers to the outside, we're just constantly getting crashed down the middle. Surprisingly, it was Lindenmeyer who did this really well on the long throw to Barney (which was the play that shifted momentum back to us). He worked the pressure to the outside, Raiola steps up and out, and then finds a guy way downfield.
  2. Dylan might have to learn to bootleg out a little earlier if his initial read of the play turns out to be wrong.
Either way, when Dylan has an open guy he hits him. His talent level is way up there, and physically he's a beast of a pocket passing QB in terms of strength, IMO.
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I think both of those points are spot on. I would also like to see some designed rollouts and semi bootleg plays just to move the pocket a little more.
 
Husker_In_WI said:
Yeah, it would be really nice if that was publicly available. I do rewatch the 40 minute versions of the games and try to figure out what's going on, but it's impossible without all 22. According to Holgorsen several of the sacks were big plays waiting to happen, but I'd be curious to see them. The only blatant "he probably should have thrown that" I can find was this 3rd down - he's looking right at the slant and the DB is blitzing. Maybe he wasn't confident he could fit it around/over him, or thought another defender was driving on it? Or maybe looking left is just part of the play design to freeze the LBs? Ended up checking it down to EJ for no gain, but he was looking right at the blitzer for the first second.
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Like maybe you throw this one (and he thought about it), but it's probably not a first down so scrambling is defensible:
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Probably ran himself into trouble when he didn't need to here, but Key didn't pick Lindenmeyer's guy like I assume he's supposed to so the initial concept wasn't there. But I do wonder if this is the one he was talking about running into a sack with receivers wide open, can't tell what the receiver at the top of the screen (Hunter or Mills) was doing. Also hard to blame him for panicking a bit, this was shortly after the 3 sack drive.
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We also came really close to some huge screens. This play might have been a TD, and the underarm looked really dumb. But I'm not sure what else he's supposed to do, the defender did a good job closing quickly and making this difficult.
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This was also a huge play waiting to happen - if Barney splits the defenders and Evans picks off the safety, it's at least 15 yards and potentially a lot more.
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Then you have the two sacks where Holgorsen said receivers were open for TDs, and a couple other near misses. I came away from the rewatch feeling less bad than it seemed live, but I'd really love to actually see the entire play and not just the protection and short routes.
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These are a few of the plays that stood out to me watching live. The slant is curious because you typically want to throw where the blitz is coming from. The missed screen to EJ was brutal. There was a play earlier in the game where he passed on a post that stood out to me. He's risk averse & probably lacks supreme confidence in his WR's.
 
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