I think Brian (whoever he is) is right and Lazar is wrong in the above analysis. You can see the safety start to jump the cut and Mac holds the ball for another beat or half second. At that point, Mac still has the capability of going to Thornton who has beaten his coverage
TL;DR: I absolutely agree with you to a point (about Mac going to TT), and this was a
huge wasted opportunity where Mac was able to have the luxury of a Time to Throw of 3.36s.
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1) Assuming a max 58 air yard throw taking about 3.1s in the air from Mac from the NE 22yd line, TT with the post route would catch it in the middle of the field at the CIN 20yd line about 6.46s post snap.
2) Up until the start of Mac's throwing motion (3.12s post snap), the safety was cheating towards TT's side and was at the 50yd line taking too sharp of an angle. Based on his combine, he'd travel the 30yds to the catch spot in 3.65s (6.77s post snap) at the absolute optimistic best, and that's being extremely generous, so he'd be .31s too late (3yds at least). (He's facing/moving the wrong way to start, body's facing 135deg from where he needs to be running to, etc). People have to remember that 10yd times are way slower (1.58s for the safety Bates) than 10yd flying times (.91s for TT avg from 20yd-40yd, so it should be faster than this).
3) At that time (start of throwing motion), TT was at the NE47 having started his break at the NE44. A trip to the middle of the field at the CIN20 would be about 36yds of running. At this point, it's a matter of figuring out how fast TT can go tracking the ball running in a straight line. I'm guessing around 22mph (wild guess as they don't measure this), which would get him to the spot right on time with a chance to catch in full stride.
20.45mph or 10yds/s - 6.72s post snap reaches the CIN20
21.5mph or 10.5yds/s - 6.55s
22mph or 10.76yds/s - 6.47s
Combine 11yds/s avg from 20 to 40 (22.5mph) - 6.39s
4) If TT were running a Go or a very skinny post (catch around the numbers), the safety would have zero shot. TT and the safety would have to run about the same distance to the same spot with TT having a running start. Depending on how fast TT can get there, I'm guessing Mac would release the throw as quick as 2.75s - maybe closer to 2.9s while TT's at the 45-47. The latest Mac would have to
decide to throw in this case (start of throwing motion) would be when TT's at the 42-43 (EDIT: very close to where Mac was "at the top of his route" according to Lazar above).
5) Can Mac do a pump fake for once? FFS.
Summary - TT is wide the f open on that post.