QB Corner: A final look at Tyler Shough's Weighted On-Target Percentage profile
Tyler Shough had the best week at the Senior Bowl, but what does his ball placement and accuracy profile look like?
As we continue to work through this 2025 NFL Draft crop of quarterbacks and their ball placement and accuracy, we have arrived at Louisville Tyler Shough.
Gathering some steam right now after he left Mobile, Alabama as the top quarterback of a lackluster group at the Reese’s Senior Bowl, Shough even has The Athletic’s Dane Brugler calling him a “Sneaky QB3 candidate.”
There is a lot to get to the bottom of, and of course, my method is to chart these guys and figure out just how accurate they are. So I charted a seven-game sample size from Shough to give myself a clearer picture.
How accurate was Shough in 2024 in his one season with the Cardinals and how does it compare to the rest of the class of gunslingers? Let’s talk about the Oregon to Texas Tech to Louisville quarterback and what he has to offer one NFL team at the next level.
A massive hangup with Shough’s 2025 NFL Draft report
So here is the deal with Tyler Shough right off the bat:
He will be 26 years old within the first month of his rookie season after playing seven collegiate seasons. Why did he play seven collegiate seasons? Because of his injury history and a medical redshirt that prolonged his career in addition to the COVID free year of eligibility granted.
He was a member of the 2018 recruiting class and Justin Herbert’s backup quarterback for two seasons at Oregon. Yes, that Justin Herbert, who has now played five NFL seasons.
This season at Louisville was Shough’s first healthy season since 2020 and has never played more than seven games. As a member of the Texas Tech Red Raiders, Shough suffered a broken collarbone in 2021, a shoulder injury in 2022, and a broken fibula in 2023.
NFL teams will know exactly who they are getting in Shough as he enters the NFL, and this will scare many of them away.
However, we are looking at strictly film here and charting for ball placement and accuracy. Injuries aside, what does Shough’s Weighted On-Target Percentage profile look like?
Looking closely at the charting profile of Tyler Shough
The willingness to unload the football deep down the field jumps off the charts when watching Tyler Shough. Not only does he have an elastic arm with plenty of zip, but he was on-target on over 58 percent of his looks of 25 yards or more down the field.
This is above average historically and third in this class behind a likely top pick in Colorado’s Shedeur Sanders, and Ohio State’s Will Howard.
Shough does not opt to throw the ball outside of the numbers often, both a personal choice and design of the offense to keep his eyes working over the middle. On a limited size throwing outside the numbers at the intermediate level, however, Shough connected at an exceptional 73 percent.
Again, this is well above average and second to only Sanders in the 2025 NFL Draft class of quarterbacks.
Shough is below average throwing over the middle of the field though, on-target at just a 67 percent clip. This is the third-lowest in the class.
The Achilles heel in Shough’s accuracy and ball placement profile, and the unironic reason I have a hangup, is his inaccuracy working the short game. What I’ve found is that the majority of lapses in the short game stem from the inability to get the ball out on time. Shough is no different in this regard.
It’s an automatic floor sinker when a quarterback cannot operate on time, and only Alabama’s Jalen Milroe has a worse on-target percentage under 10 yards in this class. It makes me question just how quickly Shough is digesting information post-snap.
His ball placement and accuracy profile is the weirdest in the class though. Shough has the lowest raw accuracy percentage in the class at just 75 percent, but given his ability to connect at the most explosive levels of the field, his Weighted On-Target Percentage receives a significant boost.
Overall, Shough’s ability to consistently connect deep down the field and along the boundary, allowing his receivers to create explosive plays for the Louisville offense, brings his final Weighted On-Target Percentage to 66.89 percent.
This is good enough for second in the class to Sanders and an above-average number for quarterbacks drafted over the last three years.
What quarterbacks closely align from a WOT% perspective?
Tyler Shough is within one percent of both Ole Miss’ Jaxson Dart and the previously mentioned Will Howard. As discussed in Dart’s profile, there is not much reason to place him above Howard given the body of work from the Ohio State quarterback came against the best competition while Dart’s is inflated against teams like Furman, Georgia Southern, Middle Tennessee State, and the ghost of Wake Forest.
Shough argues to go above both of them. While Howard’s deep ball came in more accurately, the frequency at which he throws it is extremely gunshy. Meanwhile, Shough has no issues throwing the ball deep down the field and was on-target at an above-average clip doing so. Dart is below average in this regard.
Outside the numbers is about the same respectfully between the three quarterbacks with Shough connecting at the highest (but least frequent) clip.
So yeah, all of Shough, Howard, and Dart belong in the same tier, but there is a massive reason to question whether any of them is better than a quarterback in Spencer Rattler who went in the fifth round a year ago (without disregarding some other aspects of his profile that caused him to drop that far).
Let’s wrap it up
Shough belongs in the same tier of quarterback as Howard and Dart, but not any higher or any lower. We tend to want to create a quarterback prospect in a class where there are a limited number at the top of the class, but Weighted On-Target Percentage allows me to tier it as it is.
The age and injury history that has prolonged Shough’s college career will weigh heavily in the minds of NFL teams come April, but his profile is identical to the other Day 3 options. And his arm and tools are even better.
There are still plenty of questions to ask about Shough’s complete draft profile, but his ability to give his receivers the chance to create an explosive play is not among them.
While I’d still prefer Howard (assuming it’s the Howard we saw in the four-game stretch against his best competition), this could result in him being the first of the group coming off the board in the 2025 NFL Draft.