Strengths, weaknesses of Graham Mertz entering 2024 season: 'He didn't throw the ball into harm's way, almost to a fault'

The Florida Gators need to take a step forward in their third season under head coach Billy Napier. To do that, the offense is going to look to veteran quarterback Graham Mertz to take a step forward.

Ahead of the 2024 season, Clark Brooks joined Andy Staples for Andy Staples On3. There, he broke down the strengths and weaknesses of Mertz. In particular, he explained that throwing downfield has proven to be a major concern for Florida’s signal caller.

“He was still the secondary option in both [Wisconsin and Florida’s offenses] but his average depth of target against his hardest opponents went down by three yards over year,” Clark Brooks said. “He targeted behind the line of scrimmage on 30 percent of his attempts. It was the highest in the SEC, and he joins Will Rogers and Mac Jones as the only SEC [quarterback] to have a double-digit checkdown rate. He did not throw the ball into harm’s way, almost to a fault.”

Prior to coming to Florida, Graham Mertz played four seasons with Wisconsin. Between the two schools, he has a career completion percentage of 63.7 percent. His best full season for completion percentage was 2023 when he completed 72.9 percent of passes. That’s in no small part because of how often he was checking down the football.

“I would like to see a lot more aggressiveness, particularly downfield. Only 14 percent of his targets were contested. He was not throwing the ball to people unless they were fairly wide open or he was absolutely forced to, which again, did not happen far too often with a very low interceptable pass rate,” Brooks said. “So, for me, I need to see that downfield stuff because you think he’s a different quarterback than he was at Wisconsin. Well, I’ll remind you. He struggled to hit people downfield as a Badger and he struggled to hit people downfield as a Gator.”

The next thing that Clark Brooks pointed to was the uncatchable pass rate for Graham Mertz. That’s a rate that shows how he struggled throwing the ball downfield.

“Looking at uncatchable pass rate. This is different than accuracy percentage. Accuracy percentage, in my lingo, are perfectly placed passes that do not cause the receiver to make an unnecessary adjustment to make the catch. Uncatchable pass rate on passes beyond 15 yards down the field, 45 percent. Lowest in the SEC. You can’t blame pressure for that because his figure still remains in the 40s when you look at him just passing clean in those instances. So, beyond 10 yards in general, below average in accuracy, below average in general by SEC standards. You can probably see why the staff didn’t want him to throw the ball down the field,” Brooks said.

“Look, we just mentioned how teams want to limit mistakes and find edges that way. I do not, personally, think Florida is built up that way. I think they need to provide themselves more margin of error. Throw down a little bit more, and if Mertz really wants to be in this conversation to be a draftable quarterback, no one is going to take him seriously unless he starts producing downfield.”

At that point, Andy Staples made the argument that part of why Graham Mertz was risk-averse in 2023 came down to the defense struggling and not wanting to put that group in a bad position. However, if that improves they could hypothetically take more shots. However, Clark Brooks disagreed that the scheme might change.

“The schematics are going to be the same. This offense is going to be motion heavy, play action heavy. It’s going to lean into aggressive tactics. So, that’s why from where I sit, it’s ultra frustrating that the scheme is trying to get that stuff. It’s just not executed,” Brooks said.

“So, I found it really interesting, one of their portal additions this spring, Elijhah Badger. One of the best dudes after the catch in college football…and outside of Oregon, they’re the only team returning two receivers that averaged over eight yards after the catch. So, that aligns with the idea that they’re gonna lean into the short stuff again and put the onus on the receivers to do the heavy lifting. So, that’s a good sign but please just target downfield a little bit more for my sake.”