Originally posted by Absolut Zero
I've got a pickup QB with no quickness, but 45ish Footwork and Speed. He's set to Sometimes rollout and Sometimes scramble. Might switch to Frequently rollout to see what that does.
He does a fairly good job avoiding pressure from a lone side, however if pressure comes from both sides he'll get sacked a lot due to extra movement he'll sometimes avoid one and move quickly into the other. He has on occasion bought enough time against a single free rusher to get a throw off, but that's still hard since Footwork sidestep speed doesn't seem that fast in comparison.
I've yet to coach a vet team, so I'm not sure how heavy of blitzing to expect on pass plays. However it seems like at earlier tiers, this is just asking for trouble. That's ok though, we might have to try putting a little bit of movement into our QB at vet, when we can still respec out of it.
Originally posted by Nyria
I got my QB up to about 30 Footwork by Sophomore. He's around 40 now, with a very small investment in Sprinting and Quickness (still under 20 on those). He's still set to "almost never" roll out, but from when I started putting it in I saw the Footwork help him avoid pass rushers. I've seen other QB's whose stats I knew with similar Pocket Awareness but very low Footwork not able to avoid them as he has. In fact, I wonder how much Pocket Awareness can help if a QB is really immobile.
He's now in Pro and the blitzers have become fast enough his Footwork doesn't help him as much as it used to. He used to usually get away and get a pass off unless rushers got through on both sides, and now he more often gets caught even by one man. I think if I got it up to 50+ or something he'd probably get away more often again, though I don't know if I want to invest the points to do that. I invested a tiny bit in Sprinting out of the concept that perhaps his top speed (Sprinting) influences his speed when shuffling using Footwork (as it could be some percentage of that speed), but on that I have no idea as to whether it actually works. It is clear from my experience that Footwork helps to get away from pass rushers, though.
Yeah, 50+ footwork and pumping speed seems like it's getting too expensive. Maybe we'll try doing a bit of footwork at a time and see if there's any positive results.
Do you guys feel like speed is involved a lot in pocket movement, or just footwork?