Quinn Ewers had a meeting with the Saints at the Combine

blackjack said

Ward got sacked a lot at as a junior at Washington St. and had a fumbling problem because his OL was pretty bad. Last year at Miami his OL was much better, he had very few sacks and he cut down on all those fumbles. It tells me he can improve with better coaching and having a good OL also helped.

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Here's Cam Ward's sack rates broken out by school:


Cam got sacked at a high rate both of his years at WSU. At Miami he got sacked about 1 out of every 20 pass attempts. In a game, that's about once every 2 to 3 drives. Sacks like holding calls, tend to kill drives, so it's at least a concern.

The pertinent question is which school did he play at that most mirrors the pressure he'll be under in the NFL?

Greg Cosell pointed out that a clean pocket in college is bigger and less congested than a clean pocket in the NFL. That's why some QB's who are great in college struggle in the NFL. It's also why some solid QB's in college end up doing better in the NFL than some of the QB's that were better than them in college. A QB is under more pressure in a clean NFL pocket than in a clean college pocket. It's more compact in the NFL and there's more congestion.

Getting sacked is mostly a result of a QB either not being aware of how much time they have to get rid of the ball or not accepting when they have to get rid of the ball. The average time for a QB to throw in the NFL is shorter than the average time to throw in college. If the average time to throw Ward got at Washington was close to the NFL average time to throw and the time he had to throw at Miami was longer than the NFL average, then his NFL sack rate might be closer to what it was at Washington than at Miami.

I couldn't find any stats on the average time he had to throw the ball each year.