Tape Tells All: Jake Luton's Week 9 Performance

November 11, 2020

Justin Carter breaks down Jaguars QB Jake Luton's Week 9 performance and evaluates whether he is a fantasy football riser at QB going forward in the 2020 NFL season.

The Jacksonville Jaguars have a new starting quarterback. As Gardner Minshew II deals with a hand injury, the team has turned to rookie sixth-round pick Jake Luton to man the QB position.

In Luton's first NFL start, the Oregon State product threw for a surprisingly high 304 yards, going 26-for-38 with a touchdown and an interception. He added a 13-yard rushing touchdown as well.

Are we seeing the beginnings of a major underdog story? Was it a fluke? Let's see if we can figure that out.

Background Information

Luton's path to the NFL was rocky.

It started at Idaho in 2015, when he appeared in three games and was 51-for-80 for 403 yards with a touchdown and four interceptions. Luton was a red-shirt Freshman that year. Following that campaign, he transferred to a two-year school, Ventura College, to play in 2016. After throwing for 40 touchdowns that season, he transferred to Oregon State.

His 2017 ended after just four games due to injury, which eventually led to him getting a sixth-year of eligibility, which is probably the only reason he's in the NFL. He exploded in 2019 throwing for 28 touchdowns -- his worst at the Division I level before that was just 10 -- and 2,71 yards.

Luton didn't really seem like he was on a path to the league until last season, but he's here now. And with Minshew sidelined -- and looking less and less like the future in Jacksonville -- Luton is getting his chance to show whether or not he can stick in the league. Thankfully, head coach Doug Marrone decided to go with the rookie as the starter over veteran backup Mike Glennon, who has the misfortune of being Mike Glennon and thus would not move the fantasy football needle at all if he were in this spot.

Anyway, enough background on Luton. Let's talk about his debut game.

The Game

So, let's talk about Luton's NFL debut. And before we dive into the film, let's talk numbers.

Per Sharp Football Stat's box scores, Luton had a 55 percent successful play rate in Week 9. He was 6-for-11 for 130 yards on third downs, producing five first downs. His touchdown and interception both came on third downs. In the red zone, Luton was 1-for-1 for a loss of one yard as the Jaguars leaned heavily on James Robinson when they were inside the opponent's 20.

Luton was right around the middle of the pack in terms of air yards per attempt for quarterbacks this week.

Anyway, let's watch a few plays.

Luton got started early with this 73-yard touchdown on his second pass of the game:

Pretty nice deep ball! Sees Chark streaking down the field and delivers a well-place and well-timed shot to him for the big touchdown. That quick strike followed by a quick Texans touchdown made it look like this game had the makings of a barn-burner, but things slowed down a lot after this.

But anyway, yeah, this is a nice play. And considered Minshew ranks just 21st among quarterbacks in deep passing completion percentage at 41.4 percent. Luton was at 50 percent for this game, and while I'll caution you to remember that SMALL SAMPLE SIZES ARE UNRELIABLE, I'll also remind you that hey, maybe it's okay to project when you're projecting someone to be better than someone who hasn't been that good?

Let's actually mainly focus our video attention to the deeper throws, since completing short throws doesn't tell us as much. Anyone can check down to Chris Thompson, right?

Here's a throw to tight end Tyler Eifert for 17 yards. Throw looks like it comes out just a little harder than it ideally should have and Eifert does wind up needing to make a pretty good play to catch this one.

Of course, a different angle here shows that maybe Luton had to throw it a little left of Eifert to make a Texans defender didn't have a play on the ball? Hard to say. But good arm strength, fairly decent ball placement, and a first down.

How about the interception?

Yeah, looks like some major communication issues between quarterback and receiver, plus there's the bad decision to fire into triple coverage. Luton looked like a rookie here, making the kind of play you really, really wish your quarterback didn't make. It looks like he threw the ball a little long because there were two defenders on James O'Shaughnessy, but that just resulted in the football dropping right into the arms of the safety. Yikes.

Fantasy Impact

So, the first part of answering this requires us to answer a different question: will Gardner Minshew get his job back?

Considering there were already whispers that he'd be replaced before the hand injury, I'm skeptical that a healthy Minshew just walks right back into the starting job. Minshew's a fine player, but I think Jacksonville knows there's a cap on what Minshew can do as a starting quarterback.

There's probably a cap on what Luton can do and that cap will lead to the team drafting Justin Fields at No. 2 overall in the 2020 draft -- no, we aren't going to pretend the Jets win their way out of the No. 1 pick and Trevor Lawrence -- but we don't quite know that for sure yet, so why not keep giving Luton a shot?

Still, that uncertainty has to be factored in somewhat, which lowers the fantasy projection for Luton, since we can't be sure that he's going to stay in this role.

But still, as long as he is serving as the starter here, his deep ball looks...encouraging, though not great. And as the Jaguars Defense continues to falter, the game scripts shape up to be a plus for the Jags passing game moving forward.

Here's how I see Luton doing: projected volume should make him a solid QB2 play, though I'm worried about a lack of touchdowns. Remember: his only touchdown this week was on the first series and it was a LONG one. That's not sustainable, and the Jaguars will need to let him throw in the red zone if he's going to able to be counted on as a high-end QB2 play.

Overall, Luton seems like someone you should add if you need quarterback depth, and a potential streaming starter each week based on how bad the Jaguars are and how often Luton will be asked to throw the ball.

But he's probably not, like, a future NFL long-term starter or anything, even if he turns out to be a better fantasy starter than a lot of other current starting quarterbacks.

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