Dillon Gabriel - The Good and Bad

There have been many narratives about Dillon Gabriel that have made their way through the fan base through last year and this offseason. I've pushed back pretty hard and highlighted signs of Gabriel's improvement over the first four games of this season, and the goal is to try and bring a balance to how Gabriel is viewed that's more in line with reality.

Against Cincinnati, the Sooners went up against a good front seven, but the secondary was more on Tulsa's overall level than some of the more competent conference teams on the schedule this year.

Let's take a look at what I was able to identify as the "misses" that we saw from Gabriel on Saturday.

On this play Gabriel has a clean pocket and Farooq comes open on the deep post. The radio crew pointed out that Farooq was gassed on this play and not at full speed but I'd like to see Gabriel gauge that better and make this connection regardless.

Gabriel ends up throwing a backwards pass that could have been a disaster. Anthony is running a swing route that Gabriel thinks he's throwing too, but Anthony gets knocked down on the route right before Gabriel throws it. It's hard, but Gabriel has to recognize what is going on and not blindly throw that pass assuming Anthony is where he should be.

Despite being under pressure here, Gabriel has Stoops for a first down and needs to put this ball out in front.

Freeman is open on the seem route on this play and Gabriel doesn't see him. This is a route Stogner ran a couple weeks ago that was covered, but here it was open all the way.

Conclusion

The takeaway for me here is that despite these misses, Gabriel has still shown dramatic improvement in his overall game so far this season. He was still above average on throws across the middle over 10 yards when you look at his passing chart for this week.