Landry Jones Held Onto The Football A Long Time In Loss To Patriots

If it seemed like Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Landry Jones held onto the football quite a long time in last Sunday’s loss to the New England Patriots, it’s because he did.

Jones, who completed 29 of his 47 pass attempts for 281 yards with one touchdown and one interception against the Patriots, registered an average snap to throw time Sunday of 3.55 seconds. In fact, on 28 of his 49 throws (penalty plays included), Jones didn’t get rid of the football for at least 3 seconds after it was snapped. He completed just 16 of those pass attempts of which only 4 of them traveled more than 10 yards in the air past the line of scrimmage.

So, why did Jones hold onto the football so long on Sunday and why wasn’t he sacked at least once during the several times he did that?

For starters, the Patriots decided to only rush three players quite a bit on Sunday. Per the game-charting done by Matthew Marczi, that was 23 times in total which was nearly half of the times Jones dropped back to pass.

Jones was 9-of-16 passing on 3rd downs against the Patriots with one very bad red zone interception early in the game. Only five of those completions resulted in first downs, however. It’s worth pointing out that on those 16 3rd down throws that Jones delivered the football, on average, 3.91 seconds after it was snapped and only 4 attempts were out of his hand in less than 2.78 seconds.

In case you’re curious, Jones and the Steelers offense faced 3rd and 7 or more 10 times against the Patriots and failed to convert 8 times.

On Jones’ 10 deep pass attempts Sunday against the Patriots, he completed just 3 of them. Two of those 7 incomplete passes also included the intended Steelers target being flagged for pass interference.