Contextualizing Mason Rudolph’s 2017 Pass Attempts Outside The Pocket

As I begin to wind down my contextualization series on Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Mason Rudolph, I thought several might like to see his pass attempts from 2017 that came with outside the pocket.

I identified 21 pass attempts in total in my contextualization notes that fit the criteria of Rudolph attempting a pass after leaving the pocket. Of those 21 attempts, Rudolph completed 9 of them for 180 yards and 5 touchdowns. His longest completed pass outside of the pocket flew 35 yards in the air past the original line of scrimmage and in total, 5 of his completions are considered deep throws longer than 15 yards.

Of Rudolph’s 12 incompleted pass attempts outside the pocket, 5 of them him purposefully threw away out of bounds. Another incompletion was a result of a drop. 4 of his attempts did come on third-down, however, and all four resulted in successful plays.

When watching the linked plays below, do keep in mind that these were selected only because he threw outside the pocket. He did have several other attempts that included him avoiding pressure and then throwing the football while still inside the tackle box.

Overall, I feel Rudolph has great pocket presence and rush escape-ability coming out of Oklahoma State after watching him play dating back to 2014. Even so, he was still sacked 92 times in total during his college career.