‘Padilla’s receivers literally had more than 10 drops in one single game.’
In your breakdown. Several aspects go in to drops.
For example, it was easy to see Alex had a shitty mechanical throwing motion. He was already shortish and he threw more of sidearm than overhand ball. His passes frequently arrived fluttering not boring through the air. Harder to catch and easier to defend.
In 2021, where Alex played in 8 games. He played nearly the entire NW game, started 3 more games and got substantial time in half the BT title game. Two halves this season. Played in 10 games-actually 11. Got in once in 2020 and went 1-2. In the 11 career games Alex was over .500 twice (NW 18-28 172, good game) including the garbage time against Michigan where he was 10-15 for whopping 32 yards. Exactly .500 3 times 1-2 for 12 yards in 2020, once in 2021 where he was 3-6 39 yards and once in 2022, 5-10 32 yards. Alex was only 1-7 against Maryland for Christ's sake.
Let's drop highs and lows to eliminate the outliers. So out goes the 1 obvious outlier, 18-28 for 172. Not counting 2020 2 attempts at all and dropping his 0-1 against Indiana in 2021 leaves 48-126 is .380. Since the only low we tossed was 0-1 its is very apparent that outside of that one NW game, Alex doesn't get close .400. That is unplayable bad. Only 3 TDs and 5 interceptions. At least four lost fumbles and only 636 yards. That includes the top yardage game against Minnesota where 60% of the yards were on 2 plays. The 636 is only 5 yards per completion. Petras, a not very accurate deep thrower, averaged 11.2 yards per completion. Alex was a very inaccurate thrower who threw for few yards when he did throw a completion.
Those are the actual facts of Alex Padilla's productivity at QB. Alex played at least 13 quarters with the starters in 2021. Rational decisions start with empirical objective facts. Not argumentative conclusions and definitely not on "but if" scenarios which truly are simply fantastic and amorphous; the product of magic thinking. He had plenty of chances to play and, with 2 exceptions was terrible, not just bad, terrible every time.
The bad QBs are gone. The position is incomparably stronger at this point. Let us all look forward to a proven veteran high quality QB and the very promising youngster behind him.