Carson Wentz's mechanics already looked improved

I don't believe Carson Wentz' mechanics were as terrible as some people suggested last season, but it was clear at times his mechanics were not very good at all. Improving your mechanics must be incredibly difficult as a quarterback and every quarterback will spend every offseason working on his mechanics no matter how good they are. With the media getting their first look at Wentz in 2017 on Tuesday, I was really interested to see if his mechanics look like they had improved at all.

Luckily, NJ.com had some footage of Wentz throwing that I could slow down and take a look at. Now I know what you're thinking, it doesn't matter if Wentz' mechanics have improved in the offseason, can he keep it up during the season? Wentz' mechanics could look great in the offseason when he's thinking of nothing else, but can he keep it up when the bullets are flying and he's thinking about what coverage the defense are playing? The odds are his mechanics will regress in season at times and it's something he will always have to work on as does any quarterback, but it's still interesting to take a look at his mechanics now.

Wentz' release wasn't slow last year, despite his bad mechanics his release was actually pretty quick. But he did have a big issue with dropping the football pre-release. This can slow down your release and also makes it easier for a defensive lineman to swat the ball out of your hands. Wentz' release looks much tighter and more compact here and you can see the ball stays a lot higher prior to the release.

Here are another couple of examples of the same thing in slow motion again. Once again, you can just see how much more compact Wentz' delivery is and also how he isn't dropping the ball as low pre-release. This is only a minor change but it can have a significant impact. Even if dropping the ball pre-release only slowed his delivery down by a quarter of a second, that can still have a difference on the outcome of a play. It will also help improve Wentz' velocity, which was already very impressive last season as you saw on those deep out routes he threw to Jordan Matthews a lot.

I went back and found a video of Wentz throwing at OTAs last season at around the same time by Valley News Live, and you can see a huge difference.

You can see just how low Wentz is dropping the ball pre-release and his release looks nowhere near as compact as it does this year.

This obviously doesn't mean Wentz' mechanics are fixed and he also has to work on his footwork, but it shows a clear improvement from year 1 to year 2 in his delivery which is what I wanted to see. Wentz has a long way to go yet, but it seems clear that he's willing to put the work in and will continue to improve on his mechanics as his career progresses.