Throwing styles are a "small" mechanic in terms of the stat sheet, but they have an immeasurable impact on how your quarterback will perform on the field.
We highlighted some additions to the system to start last season, but this year, we had something else in mind! To start off, throwing styles have been simplified for this season. There is now a total of 14 styles compared to 19 for last season. Removed styles include slinger 8, slinger 9, traditional 6, traditional 7, and generic 3.
In previous years, the community often relied on flawed testing for this data, today we introduce actual timing value for each throwing style!
To be clear, this is far from a complete picture, still. Various mechanics have the ability to impact what animations are used under which conditions, but all else being equal, this gives you objective data to analyze.
As an example of that, pressure and backfoot mechanics use different timers. Shorts, medium and deep passes use (various) diffrent timers for each type. In addition, there are some peculiarities between styles that will still result in odditys, which has only compounded difficulties with traditional testing.
Over time, we will look to add additional context, mechanics, and insights. Each style will use a different animation set under different combinations of conditions (various long, medium, short, sidearm, pressure, backfoot, scrambling, etc).
* Insights
If you value being able to throw on run, traditional 5 looks to be the best throwing animations in the game! It should default to another style when not throwing on run, more on that later!
If you value being able to throw on run, slinger 1 looks to be the animation to avoid! It features specific, high throw on run timers.
If mid passes are your bread and butter, slinger 5 could be a steal! It features the best medium timers overall.
If you value the short game, you might want to stay away from slinger 3. It has a 220! timer, and is the only non-generic pass style to have a short pass anim.
Traditional 1 looks great on paper, however we suspect it may suffer from additional branching conditions (Moreso than other styles). If your going to throw under the run, off the backfoot or under pressure, you may be in for a bad time. Or not. Time will tell.
