Matt Corral profile: Why the Carolina Panthers drafted the QB in the 2022 NFL Draft
The Carolina Panthers picked Matt Corral with the 94th pick in the 2022 NFL Draft.
Matt Corral stands at 6’1” ½ and weighs in at 210 pounds. He was the No. 7 quarterback in a loaded class with Trevor Lawrence, Justin Fields, and others.
Corral took over as the starter for the Ole Miss Rebels a couple of games into the 2019 season and showed some promise before really making an impact as a junior, when he completed over 70 percent of his passes for 3,332 yards and 29 touchdowns, compared to 14 INTs during a ten-game season, which included lighting up Vanderbilt for six touchdowns and leading the way to scoring 48 points vs. Alabama.
This past season, his completion percentage, yards per attempt, and per game all slightly decreased. Still, he took much better care of the ball, throwing it to the other team just five times, and he reached the end-zone 11 times with his legs, becoming a more integral part of the rushing attack overall. For that, he was named a second-team All-SEC member.
Matt Corral's strengths
Corral excelled in that heavy-RPO game for Ole Miss, where he could find leverage advantages and cushions to exploit, along with that ultra-quick release. However, he – and his play-caller Lane Kiffin, for that matter – has gotten better at realizing when defenses are flooding those underneath areas.
He challenges defenses so vertically that it’s tough to zero in on one thing. Corral can spin that ball and attack all areas of the field. You see him stay in a vertical position, with a good bounce on the ball of his feet, and able to rip it once it’s time. He gets it to his targets over the middle in a hurry, excelling on those bullets to dig deep-in and bender routes.
The former Rebels quarterback can throw some lasers with his feet cock-eyed, as he has to pull the ball down and find a target coming from the opposite side, or he crow-hops into some others and fires it on throws in-between the hashes, to not let defenders crowd the catch point.
Even when the safety is triggering down from two-high looks, he can get the ball to his guy over the middle before the collision arrives.
There were several seam shots on tape, whether he's putting the ball slightly behind the target, not to have the safety knock his head off, or with somebody in trail position and putting it right on the front shoulder of his receivers. He can put arc on the deep throws to ideally drop the ball into the bucket of his streaking receivers.
Something apparent as soon as you watch Corral is that he has the quickest feet and release in this draft, with a very compact delivery, where his hand barely reaches the level of his ear a lot of times.
The way he can get skinny to climb and set up throws is tremendous. He has that suddenness in the pocket to avoid rushers and extend plays. Those subtle slides to one side and the ability to create a clean platform to throw from are something you see routinely on tape.
Corral delivers the ball to his outlets and shallow crossers accurately while falling away often if there’s no space or somebody’s barreling at him. Yet, he can also rapidly spin to the left side, make blindside rushers miss or reduce the throwing shoulder, and then get wide to the right when he has to escape the pocket. He shows that feel for angles of rushers and what he can get away with within that area.
You see Corral break off rollouts and dip underneath unblocked defenders off the edge, plus he has a strong lower body to shake guys off or spin away. The way he keeps his eyes locked down the field is remarkable.
Even as he is rolling out to the sideline and dips in a little bit, as he’s looking to become a runner, he’s still constantly a threat to throw it, where he flips it at the very last moment at times. Some of the crazy plays he can make off script are up there with the best in this class.
While we didn’t get many true dropback games or full-field reads at Ole Miss, there are some promising flashes and features to Corral’s play. He throws in some deceptive look-offs to open up throwing windows and then is super twitchy to get his body pointed a completely different way and flip his hips around.
Along with that, he showcases signs of being able to find solutions on the fly and staying calm in the eye of the storm, standing firm, and allowing receivers to get to green grass.
Corral’s pump-fake game is by far the best in the class. He can give that violent shoulder fake on double-moves, get his base pointed towards receivers to sell screens before hitting a window behind it, or get guys out of the throwing lane and change up his arm-angle with his feet not perfectly aligned.
This past season, only 2.1 percent of passes were categorized as turnover-worthy, pointing toward the awareness of how to use controlled aggression rather than constantly pushing the envelope.
Last season, Corral was also heavily utilized in the Rebels’ run game. He can drop the shoulder and churn out yards through contact, often going straight downhill on quarterback draws from empty sets against favorable box counts.
However, he can make guys miss when he decides to take off on scrambles, dipping underneath pursuit defenders and getting guys to jump with pump-fakes. He has surprising speed, not with long strides but rather the high step frequency. He ran for just under 200 yards on 30(!) carries against Tennessee.
Matt Corral's weaknesses
The issue with Corral’s game is that he seemingly has no “off button,” meaning he will throw some balls in windows that others wouldn’t even think about (he’s trying to hit a honey-hole shot on a corner route from one hash to the opposite numbers).
There are a lot of schemed-open throws in that offense and very few anticipatory ones, which he certainly benefitted from, as well as not having that internal clock at times when an ancillary coverage defender will be able to undercut a route at times.
He had one lousy showing against Arkansas when he threw six picks and was late to get it out several times.
There are some instances in games where he predetermines throws and lets it go down the post when his receiver is bracketed while somebody else underneath is open.
Notably, when he has been able to create a secondary play, he lacks the maturity to understand when it’s time to live another day. This past season, slightly over 60 percent of Corral’s pass attempts came off play-action or RPOs – that’s an absurd rate!
Along with that, 607 yards of his total came on screens. It’s so one-read centric with all the RPO concepts, and other than four verts out of two-by-two four verts, there’s just such limited dropback game variety.
The fact that Lane Kiffin would instead call up quarterback draws often on third-and-long is alarming. There’s no lack of toughness as a runner, but at 210 pounds, Corral will need to learn how to protect himself better (the ankle injury in the bowl game hopefully will be a wake-up call for him).
He has to do a better job at protecting the ball with his second half, as he had 23 fumbles throughout his career, including eight last year.
While Corral has zero experience with any NFL dropback concepts, and he will have to learn to make much more complex reads, the ball placement and feel for where he has leverage or open areas to attack is there. You have to dig through his tape to find stuff you will see at the next level, but several things will translate to the next level.
Conclusion on Matt Corral
He was much better at finding the check-down and not forcing something that isn’t there as frequently in 2021. Corral is far from a perfect prospect, but one can be a bit of a burned child by missing on Justin Herbert coming out of Oregon a couple of years ago, where one could not see any growth in his ability to see the whole field and just the simplistic offense he was asked to run.
Instead, one could take a chance on somebody who has some of the things you can’t coach and let him prove that he can learn how to execute NFL passing concepts rather than get somebody who can probably handle those. However, one can still have significant issues in areas that can not be corrected. Because of the drastic difference schematically, he will need a year to grasp the variety of pro passing offenses.
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