Just Win Baby said:
Jackson had a career completion percentage in college of 57.0%, and his best season was his last, at 59.1%. In the current passing era, say the last 15-20 years or so, have there been any QBs who were sub-60% passers in college who ended up being "very good" NFL QBs?
Same issue applies to Josh Allen (career 56.2%).
I don't know the answer to this question, so it isn't a loaded question. Jake Locker (54.0), Tyrod Taylor (57.2), Trevor Siemian (58.9), and Jacoby Brissett (59.5) all fit the criteria, and none are/were good NFL passers. It's a small sample size, and Jackson is more athletic and was drafted higher than most of these guys, so it probably doesn't mean much, though I seem to recall Football Outsiders having done some work to show that college completion percentage is among the strongest predictors of NFL QB success.
Completion percentage is an important metric to consider and has been for as long as I have been watching football.
60% is considered the standard because teams want more than a coin flips chance of completing the pass, considering the other risks involved with passing the ball. As Parcells once said, when you throw the ball a lot of bad things can happen and only one of the outcomes is good.
The completion percentage is a large factor in calculating QB rating because of its importance. I used to have the view that a WR with less than 60% catch rate is hurting their QB rating enough that the QB or coach may lose trust in that WR. A QB needs most of their receivers to be catching 60% or more of their targets for the QB to maintain that completion percentage.
However the way the NFL is now, that bench mark is much higher. Recently QBs have been throwing 70% or more over a full season. Sam Bradford did that recently. The level of execution is much higher at the NFL level than it is in college. I think it would be a mistake to compare college QB completion percentage to pro numbers, but there you go.
All of these numbers are pretty useless without context however. The type of offense the QB is running, the protection, the receivers all have affects on completion percentage. An obvious example would be
Cam Newton who has been below 60% completion rate almost every year of his career. Part of that is because Cam is inaccurate. Part of him being inaccurate is because he is throwing on the run a lot of the time. Until recently Cam has been taking deep shots down the field with a higher frequency than most QB do as well. These are lower completion % throws. Now the Panthers have McCaffrey and Cam is throwing it short more often to him and what do you know? Cam currently has a 68.5% completion rate over 9 games. He has never been this good in any season prior to it. I don't think Cam has changed, but the offense he is running and the personnel he has to work with has.
From watching Jackson play first hand I have seen him throw a very accurate ball. He has good pocket awareness and can move the defense out of position by extending plays. Similar to Watson he can function as a point guard who can distribute the ball to the open guy and use his legs to extend plays in the process of doing that. I think he is going to be a great QB in time.
Considering that Joe Flacco is not throwing the ball better than Jackson has (very dissimilar sample sizes) I do not really see why they are so reluctant to make the switch if they are.
There is a lot of pidgeon holing of Jackson in peoples narratives about him that I think stem from other issues and biases people have and that they haven't watched Jackson play enough for them to draw such conclusions. In this case the voice of ignorance is louder than the voice of the more informed.