CJ Carr Analysis

Zach Smith · 2026-08-31T23:49:42+00:00

Look Right, Throw Left Pat Narduzzi built a coverage that reads your quarterback's eyes and breaks on his front hand. I game-planned against it in 2012 and got it wrong. Notre Dame got it wrong last year, and CJ Carr wore two of the four biggest mistakes on that tape for it. By Zach Smith Before we talk about CJ Carr, you need to understand the coverage that shows up three separate times on the Pitt film. Narduzzi brings six. Normally when you bring six you've got five defenders left for five eligible receivers and you're stuck in man. He doesn't do that. He rotates a guy to the post, drops two underneath, and then every one of them quits caring about the receiver in front of him and stares at the quarterback's stripe and his front hand. The second that hand comes off the ball, all of them break to wherever he's looking. All of them, at the same time. I know it works because it beat me. We went to play Michigan State in 2012 with no plan for it. Got it fixed by 2014 and then made a living on it. The answer is not complicated. Look right, throw left. Look left, throw right. The entire thing is built on your eyes telling the truth. Notre Dame never did it. On that tape Carr throws a pick and an incompletion into it, on time and confident both times, and Narduzzi's corner just has a better plan than the offense does. That's not a quarterback error. That's Mike Denbrock. And when I pulled Carr's full year, it turned out that was the theme. He pushed it further than anybody in this class I've now charted Sayin, Mensah, Dante Moore, Chambliss, Hoover and Arch. None of them threw it downfield like CJ Carr. His average depth of target for the season was 10.6 yards. Higher than Mensah at 9.4, Sayin at 8.7, Moore at 8.3. He threw twenty-plus on 20.4% of his attempts, the highest rate in the group. And only 14.0% of his throws came behind the line of scrimmage, the lowest screen-and-dump rate of anybody. Then look at what happened when he did it. Sixty-one deep attempts. 961 yards. Eight touchdowns. Zero interceptions. A 91.1 grade with twenty big-time throws. He fired bombs all season and never gave one away. Twenty-one big-time throws on the year at a 6.5% rate, twenty-four touchdowns to six picks in twelve games, a 113.0 rating. First year as a starter. 5.4 That's Carr's average depth of target against Pitt. Half his season number. Second-lowest of his year. I said on that tape that Notre Dame barely asked him to do anything. RPOs, screens, flat routes, check downs, a couple free plays, and almost nothing down the field. I was going off feel. The number says it flat out. They took the most aggressive downfield passer I studied all offseason and turned him into a quick-game operator against the one defense on earth built to eat quick game alive. Narduzzi's corners sit on hitches. Do not hand him hitches. The result was the worst game of Carr's season. A 50.7 offense, a 46.7 passing, twenty-one of thirty-two for 212 yards, 6.6 a throw, two touchdowns and two picks, with three turnover-worthy plays. Highest turnover-worthy rate of his year at 8.1%. For comparison, in the games they let him rip it: 91.6 against Purdue at 18.6 a throw, 90.4 at Boston College at 11.5, 85.1 against Navy, 83.9 against NC State on a 15.4 average depth of target. Same kid. They blitzed him more than anybody, and it worked Defenses blitzed CJ Carr on 42.3% of his dropbacks. Highest rate of anybody in this series. They did it because it worked. He graded an 85.3 when he wasn't blitzed and a 75.7 when he was. Sayin and Mensah were both fine or better against extra rushers. Carr, like Dante Moore, is worse. When the pocket actually broke down it got uglier. A 91.3 kept clean, a 48.7 under pressure. 69.9% completions down to 47.6%. Time to throw jumping from 2.22 seconds to 3.59. Every quarterback in this series has that collapse so I won't pretend it's unique to him. The blitz split is his own, and it lines up with the tape. A screen thrown into pressure for six the other way, and an offense with no answer for a six-man look. He doesn't run. He also doesn't get sacked. This is the strength almost nobody will notice. Carr scrambled nine times all season. Fewer than Julian Sayin's eleven, and I roasted Sayin for it. But he took eight sacks all year. Eight. A 10.5% pressure-to-sack rate, best in this entire series. Sayin was 16.1%, Mensah 15.6%, Moore 16.7%, Hoover 18.6%. He doesn't run from pressure. He throws through it. His release when clean is 2.22 seconds, fastest I charted, and he had ten throwaways all year. That's a quarterback getting the ball out on time and living to see the next down instead of eating eight yards. I'd still like to see him extend one. But he solved the same problem a different way and the number proves it. The best rep on the tape has nothing to do with throwing There's a run play early where Carr sees Pitt in a quarter shell and reaches over to cut a receiver's split down. He's telling the kid to get tighter so he can crack the safety, because that safety is Pitt's run-support player. A first-year starter identifying the coverage, identifying the run fit, and fixing the alignment at the line so his blocker can reach the guy who's coming. That's high-level football IQ in the run game, and nobody gives quarterbacks credit for that part of the job. The arm's easy to see. Quick release, live arm, the ball jumps out of his hand and it looks effortless. His front hand works like a wall he throws against, weight balance is good, footwork in the quick game is clean. What needs fixed He'll drop the slot and throw damn near sidearm. Randy Johnson-ish, low and around. Some of it is by design on RPOs. But there's a roll-out throw late against Pitt that shows the real problem and it starts at his feet. His first step is backwards. He doesn't gain ground, so he never gets his hips around, so the only thing left is to sidearm it. Terrible throw. Gain ground on that first step and half of this goes away. His weight also transfers too far forward and the ball flutters instead of spinning tight. Season-long, his 65.2% completion and 73.2% adjusted are the lowest in this series, though a chunk of that is throwing it 10.6 yards deep on average. Throw it further, complete fewer. Two mistakes against Pitt are his. There's a play against quarters where the post is wide open, the coverage has basically left that guy uncovered, you clear it out and it's a huge play. Take the post. It's right there. He comes off it and goes to a drag with a linebacker sitting on it. Against Narduzzi that's suicide, because his guys aggressively match and jump concepts. Brett Favre interception all day long. Then the pick six on a screen into a blitz. Denbrock called nine hundred screens that game and none of them worked, so he isn't clean here either. But you do not throw a screen into pressure. What keeps me high on him: neither one was a bad throw. They were bad decisions with fine ball placement. That's the half you can coach. Around him The offensive line was the worst thing on that tape. Center walked backward all game, never generated movement even on double teams. Left guard is a liability. Left tackle has started forever, is better than he was as a true freshman, and still had two false starts and gave up a hit that nearly got Carr killed. The right guard I like. He's twitchy, he can move. That's one out of five, and Pitt had a rusher living in the backfield. To be fair: Carr was pressured on 24.0% of his dropbacks for the season, the lowest rate in this series. It wasn't a disaster every week. Against Pitt it was. The skill guys are the other story. Jeremiah Love is a stud and it's not a discussion. The spin move and the acceleration to finish are Braxton Miller stuff. Jadarian Price had one gorgeous run, one badly premature cutback and one truly awful blitz pickup, and I've got questions about the first-round talk. Where I land B plus, and the season number backs it. An 85.1 offense, an 83.5 passing, first year as a starter. Josh Hoover was a B minus for me. Carr is a clear step ahead with less experience. He's even with Julian Sayin and behind only Darian Mensah in this series. The most encouraging thing isn't the arm. It's that his worst game of the year was the one where his coordinator took the downfield passing game away and asked him to throw hitches at a defense that eats hitches. Fix the sidearm stuff. Gain ground on that first step. Keep the eyes moving against teams that read them. And let him throw it ten-plus yards downfield the way he did all season. He's got a real chance to be an A in year two, especially with Quincy Porter and Mylin Graham showing up. Notre Dame just has to coach him like it.