Josh Hoover Analysis

Zach Smith · 2026-08-31T23:47:52+00:00

Twenty Drops Josh Hoover completed 65.9% of his passes last year and that number is a lie. His receivers put twenty balls on the ground, the worst rate of any quarterback I studied. Five of them came in one game. Here is what TCU's quarterback actually is. By Zach Smith Somebody is going to pull up Josh Hoover's stat line this fall, see 65.9% and thirteen interceptions, and tell you Indiana got a guy. They're wrong, and I can prove it with one column. Twenty drops. That's what TCU receivers were charged with in 2025, a 6.8% rate, and it's the worst of any quarterback I've studied this offseason. Dante Moore's guys were at 5.8%. Mensah's at 5.1%. CJ Carr's at 4.9%. Julian Sayin's receivers dropped six balls the entire season, a 2.0% rate, and Sayin is walking around with a 76.8% completion percentage because of it. Take the drops and the throwaways and the batted balls out of Hoover's number and he's at 73.2%. Seven and a half points of his stat line went straight through somebody's hands. Five of them came in one game I pulled the Kansas State tape at random because I wanted to see him against a real defense. Turns out I picked the perfect one. Twenty-six of forty-seven. Three touchdowns, no picks, 376 yards. His charted completion percentage that day was 55.3%. His receivers dropped five. In one game. A 16.1% drop rate, the worst single game of his season, and his adjusted completion percentage that afternoon was 70.5%. Fifteen points of separation between what he did and what the box score says he did. And that's what it looks like on tape. First scoring drive, he holds the safety with his eyes all the way left, comes back, and drops it in the window between the linebackers with juice on it. Anticipation, eye control, right on the guy. Dropped. Later he throws a beauty on a stalk-and-go and it goes through a set of hands. Down at the two, hard run action, he floats a gimme touchdown in there and his receiver has already drifted out of bounds before the ball arrives. No field awareness at all. Route running was mostly nonexistent. Perimeter blocking was worse. That kid was fighting his own huddle. He can spin it Not "for a college quarterback." The ball comes out of his hand. Twenty-plus yards downfield: 54 attempts, 743 yards, ten touchdowns, a 91.6 grade. Twenty of those fifty-four were big-time throws, a 30.8% clip. Ten of his twenty-eight scores came on the hardest throw in football. The arm action is what I like. Quick release, real whip through it, the thing I spend all spring trying to coach into guys with a towel. He keeps his weight back. Transfer is clean. He can throw from positions he has no business throwing from and still get life on the ball. He's got a pretty ball. Lance Armstrong pretty. The best one on the tape is a red zone fade. Ninety-five percent of quarterbacks at this level put air under a fade and say a prayer. Hoover drives it, puts it on the face mask, and makes his guy catch it with late hands. Flat trajectory, perfect placement, touchdown. That is a professional throw. The thirteen picks are real too I'm not going to sit here and tell you the drops explain everything. Twenty-one turnover-worthy plays in 2025. A 4.4% rate. That's the worst of anybody I've charted, and unlike Mensah, who got away with his, Hoover's turned into results. Thirteen interceptions. Three in one game at Houston. Two at Arizona State in a game where he also had six big-time throws, which tells you exactly who he is. Ten to nineteen yards is where he dies Look at where he grades by depth and the whole thing snaps into focus. Deep, 91.6. Short, 79.4. And the ten-to-nineteen window? A 74.1. On 103 intermediate attempts he completed 53.4% with four picks and nine turnover-worthy plays, an 8.3% rate. Sayin, Mensah and Moore all grade above 90 in that same window. He's thirty points behind them in the exact area the NFL cares most about. That's the speed out. He's a count late, takes a little hop instead of it being rock and throw, and puts it on the inside hip. You cannot do that. Miss outside. Every single time, miss outside, because inside is where the pick six lives. Throw it out here and it's a completion or it's nothing. Throw it in there and it's six the other way. He did it twice against Kansas State and one of them should have been returned. Nobody in this class handles a blitz better Now the fun part, and it surprised me. Hoover graded an 83.5 when he was blitzed and a 72.4 when he wasn't. He's the only quarterback I studied who is better against extra rushers than a standard four-man rush, and it isn't a small gap. Nine touchdowns to four picks when teams brought heat, at 8.7 a throw. That's the play I lost my mind over on the tape. Kansas State brings seven against empty. Brother, you cannot bring seven. Somebody has to be uncovered. The second that seventh guy shows, Hoover finds his slot to the right and rips it out. Watch how fast he sees it. Watch how fast the ball is gone. That isn't a lucky rep. It's a season-long trait and it's the best thing in his profile. Structural pressure is a different animal. Clean, he's an 85.9 with twenty-three touchdowns and a 2.22-second release. Pressured, he's a 51.1, completing 49.3%, holding it 3.74 seconds. Nineteen sacks on 102 pressured dropbacks, an 18.6% pressure-to-sack rate, worst in the group. He knows what to do about a blitz. He has no idea what to do about a pocket caving in. The rest of that Saturday He's not a runner and I don't need him to be. Nineteen scrambles on the year. But he uses his legs to extend. Play action, nothing there, he takes off like he's going, gets the defense to bite, and pulls up. Twenty-plus yards. That's not athleticism. That's competitiveness. He also feels stuff. There's an RPO where he's loaded on the little bender, the safety comes downhill to cut it, and right as he's about to let it go he says nope and whips it to the flat with his body all wrong. You have that clock or you don't. Two mistakes are his and I'm charging him for both. A busted play where the line is blocking stretch, the back is running stretch, and he turns the wrong way. You can watch the exact frame he realizes it. Bonehead. And a ball sailed to a running back under pressure with his right tackle getting his dick kicked in. Step up and dump it. That's it. That's the whole answer. Also go find the snap where the TCU left tackle doesn't get beat so much as spontaneously combust. I couldn't tell you whether that man was having a seizure or an orgasm. What Cignetti is getting His season grade is a 76.8. Lowest of anybody in this series. Sayin 92.9, Moore 90.2, Carr 85.1, Mensah 84.1, Hoover 76.8. I'm not going to dress it up. I've got him at a B minus. A live arm, a quick release, an elite deep ball, real touch, enough athleticism, and the best blitz recognition in this class. Attached to a 4.4% turnover-worthy rate and a hole in the middle of the field. He's careless. He's raw. He spent a year throwing to the worst hands I charted. Curt Cignetti has built a career on this exact quarterback. Solid, talented, a little sloppy, and nobody has squeezed him yet. I'm not telling you Hoover is a first-round pick or that Indiana is cutting down nets. I don't think he's the prospect Fernando Mendoza is. But clean up ten to nineteen, get him on time on the speed out, and put actual hands around him, and that 65.9% is going to look like a completely different number. He's got a chance. As an option for Cignetti? Really, really not mad about it.