Brian Hoyer was recently named the starting quarterback of the Houston Texans over Ryan Mallett after a lengthy QB competition during the offseason. We’re going to take a look at what Hoyer offers as the Texans QB and see why he was the guy O’Brien chose for the job.

To do this I watched 6 games from Hoyer’s 2014 season. I picked what I considered to be his 3 best and 3 worst games in an effort to find the best and worst that he has to offer as a quarterback. The games are:

The Best

Completions Attempts Completion Percentage Yards Yards Per Attempt Touchdowns Interceptions Week 3 vs Baltimore 19 25 76.0 290 11.60 1 0 Week 4 vs Tennessee 21 37 56.8 291 7.87 3 1 Week 7 vs Oakland 19 28 67.9 275 9.82 1 0

The Worst

Completions Attempts Completion Percentage Yards Yards Per Attempt Touchdowns Interceptions Week 6 vs Jacksonville 16 41 39.0 215 5.24 0 1 Week 11 vs Atlanta 23 40 57.5 322 8.05 0 3 Week 13 vs Indianapolis 13 30 43.3 136 4.53 0 2

Release

The first thing I want to talk about is Hoyer’s release. It’s a very quick release, even with his wind up. Hoyer can get rid of the ball very quickly and this is extremely helpful when he’s under pressure.

Watching his motion you can see a pretty consistent pattern.

Hoyer doesn’t draw his arm back very far when he goes to throw. He brings the ball back and then quickly brings it forward. Even his windup is a very quick and fluid motion that allows him to get the ball out quickly.

Short/Intermediate Accuracy

The next thing I want to talk about is accuracy. First we’ll take a look at his short to intermediate accuracy.

On this throw he places the ball perfectly for Miles Austin to make the catch.

On this play Hoyer threads the needle and finds Jordan Cameron on the sideline while under pressure.

You’ll notice though, that the throw to Cameron was very close to the defender. Hoyer isn’t going to place the ball too well, but he will give his receiver’s a fighting chance at making the catch.

On this throw Hoyer is on the run and throws a nice touch pass for his receiver.

Deep Accuracy

His deep ball is not quite so good. Hoyer’s deep throws tend to be underthrown and slightly off target. He’s not a threat to burn the defense with a deep pass, but he does have the ability to hit his targets so his deep ball does need to be respected.

On this throw to Travis Benjamin, Hoyer doesn’t quite get enough behind this ball to hit Benjamin in stride. However, the ball is still thrown well enough that the defender doesn’t have a good chance to break up the pass allowing Benjamin to make an adjustment and make the catch.

On this throw Hoyer does a good job of reading the defense and is able to get this ball to Taylor Gabriel when he’s wide open. Hoyer loads up as Gabriel passes the deep zones and fires the ball to him. This ball travels about 55 yards in the air. Gabriel makes a good adjustment to the throw and does a good job of making sure he catches it by grabbing the ball and falling to the ground.

Hoyer does have a problem with underthrowing his receivers however. It’s not too prevalent as he often puts enough air under the ball for his receivers to adjust, but he will miss short sometimes. An example of this:

No real reason for Hoyer to miss short on this pass, he just simply didn’t get his whole arm behind the throw.

Overall Accuracy

Overall I wouldn’t describe Hoyer as accurate, but I would say he’s a fairly consistent passer. His throws are usually catchable, they’re just not always placed well.

During the season I noticed a pretty big shift in Hoyer’s accuracy from the beginning of the season to the end. During the latter half of the season Hoyer’s throws seemed more irratic and prone to just missing the target.

Here’s an example of that:

Not only is that a very bad decision, but it’s not even close to where Gordon is. I’m not entirely sure what Hoyer is thinking on this throw, but it wasn’t very well thought out.

On this throw Hoyer sails the ball completely over Hawkin’s head.

On this play, Hoyer just completely misses Gabriel on this deep throw.

To me, 2014 is a tale of two halves for Hoyer. The first half of the season Hoyer seemed to be playing with confidence and was doing very well. In the second half of the season, Hoyer looks pretty unconfident in himself. His body language after plays is really concerning to me. He looks very frustrated, likely with himself, but also with the situation on the team. To me, it’s very clear that Hoyer’s accuracy and decision making stems from his confidence. If he’s confident while making his reads, then he does a much better job of finding his receivers and hitting them. This shouldn’t really come as much of a surprise as most people are better at their jobs when they’re confident in not only themselves, but their job security. Hoyer couldn’t really be confident in either area during the second half of the season last year and I believe that’s what lead to his massive downturn.