Hokepoints: The Best Big Ten QB? Comment Count

Seth

acecorn

Nice job picking a QB, Ace. Here's your reward.

While re-watching the M-PSU punt-fest my brother made an interesting comment: "It's amazing what's happened to two of the best quarterbacks in the conference." If you ever again need to point to something to show that the offense means more than the quarterback, this Big Ten season has that in spades. What it doesn't have is an answer to the question: who IS the best QB in the conference?

I have no idea. Of guys I expected big things from, Braxton Miller (injury) and Tre Roberson (transfer) didn't make it out of the preseason, Gardner played his way behind a true sophomore who obviously couldn't play, Hackenberg's been a tackling dummy, and when I got down to Cook my Sparty slappy brother shook his head and declined the nomination.

Lower down, Sudfeld is now out for the season but he wasn't world-beating before. C.J. Brown, true to form, has been keeping pace just behind Gardner; a wrist injury against Indiana has ceded snaps to Caleb Rowe. Nebraska and Iowa aren't getting anything more than mediocre from their 2nd year guys. Trevor Siemian is not a throw deity of any sort. Etling hasn't been good enough for Boiler fans to stop mentioning that Michigan stole Bellomy(!). Wisconsin's QB situation has been awful. Illinois thought they had something when transfer Wes Lunt was picking apart bad defenses, but he broke his leg, which is apparently 4-6 weeks these days.

Everybody's played only a few real opponents, and everybody's been a product of his offense so stats are only a little useful. Last year ESPN's Dean Oliver rolled out his "QBR" metric which is based on Mathlete-like expected points on a 100-level scale; 50 is average. Mouseover the headers for clarification (explanation here):

PLAYER Pass EPA RUN EPA SACK EPA PEN EPA TOTAL EPA ACT PLAYS RAW QBR TOTAL QBR
Connor Cook-MSU 23.2 3.2 -1.6 0.6 25.3 175 81.5 81.3
Gary Nova-RU 25.3 6.3 -4.7 0.4 27.3 187 77.1 78.2
J.T. Barrett-OSU 22.3 8.0 -7.1 0.5 23.7 220 72.3 74.4
Tom Armstrong-NEB 13.2 7.9 -3.8 1.0 18.2 246 63.2 63.9
Jake Rudock-IOWA 25.7 2.6 -3.7 2.2 26.8 193 73.5 60.8
Wes Lunt-ILL 31.6 -2.0 -6.1 1.1 24.3 222 67.8 58.1
Devin Gardner-UM 14.7 5.0 -9.3 -0.1 10.3 210 52.9 56.4
Mitch Leidner-MN 6.8 4.4 -5.9 -0.1 5.2 134 50.7 56.3
Nate Sudfeld-IND 10.9 3.6 -4.4 2.0 12.1 221 54.4 56.2
C.J. Brown-MD 11.7 7.0 -8.0 0.7 11.4 224 52.5 50.0
Tanner McEvoy-WIS 2.1 5.6 -2.2 1.1 6.6 144 51.8 47.4
Trevor Siemian-NW 20.1 -0.3 -11.3 -0.1 8.4 276 46.1 46.2
C. Hackenberg-PSU 16.2 -1.0 -14.2 -0.6 0.3 299 38.1 37.9
Danny Etling-PUR 3.0 1.7 -5.5 -1.1 -1.8 201 35.2 30.7

I pulled the raw QBR in each game to plot it against Football Outsiders' S&P+ so you can see the individual performances in context. Gardner's games are labeled and Michigan's remaining opponents are shown.

chart1

click embigs

[after the jump: trends, discussion]

Here's that again as trend lines, with FCS removed, as well as Lunt and Rudock for too small samples:

chartlinear

A higher line is better. A lower slope is more consistency, a longer line is a greater spread in opponent difficulty, further right means generally tougher competition. Before declaring Gary Nova the king (BIG TENNNN!) let's look over these candidates and their situations in a little more detail.

Devin Gardner's play in the non-conference was so bad his coaches left him on the sideline for a concussed true sophomore with a sprained ankle who was 7/18 for 33 yards on the day. The last may have been the single worst moment of coaching malpractice you have ever witnessed (nominations accepted), and some of the bad play before that has to be on his coaches' insane decision to not make Gardner's legs a part of the offensive game plan, but ultimately Utah and ND were awful performances, and only the too-late return against Minnesota is at all comparable to the other top QBs in the conference.

He has a week to stay off the ankle damaged on the stupid QB sneak before returning to the scene of the greatest crimes ever perpetrated upon his of victimized ribs. Expectations of a record-setting senior year are dead; surviving to the end would count as heroic.

Christian Hackenberg you saw last Saturday. I was gchatting afterwards with PSU blogfather Mike Pettigano and we noted Michigan was by far the toughest defensive line he's faced so far. The Big Ten's deep-as-hell defensive lines all await further down the schedule. Even if there's an NFL quarterback in there as we all expect, it'll remain buried under the mess of that OL.

J.T. Barrett is hard to compare with these rest because he's surrounded by far too much competence. Meyer's simple offense makes it possible to plug in a true freshman and have success, even with offensive line problems (he's taken 13 sacks this year already). Virginia Tech is the only decent pass defense he's faced, and that didn't go well (9/23, 1 TD, 3 INTs), but OSU's averaging 55 points in the three games hence. Barrett's the only quarterback in the conference this year besides the running dudes (Armstrong and C.J. Brown) with a significant amount of rushing to accompany the passing stats.

Connor Cook has been pretty good, but far from perfect. Cook has lost the conservatism; his YPA is up over 9.0, and while on the surface he's maintaining that gaudy TD/INT ratio, when you drop Jacksonville State, EMU, and Wyoming, Cook has 6 touchdowns to 4 interceptions. Another bit of scouting we got wrong on him is the quality of his receivers. We're still biased against them because of 2012, but Tony Lippett has been a Braylon-level outlet; when Cook gets in trouble he tends to throw it down the sideline to his big target. Lippett had 138 yards on 7 catches against Purdue, 104 yards against Nebraska, and 133 on 11 catches versus Oregon; he'd have had more against EMU and Wyoming if the score hadn't gotten to the point where the starters had to sit (he had 3 TDs in those games; and 8 overall).

Gary Nova then? Without the explosion against Michigan he'd have a bunch of great performances against really bad pass defenses and mediocre ones that were expected to be worse, and a total implosion against a really good defense (Penn State's). Take out Penn State and Nova outshines the galaxy. So I guess he had the best first half; if I had to pick a guy right now it'd be Cook.

Comments

zlionsfan

October 14th, 2014 at 4:45 PM ^

Etling has been benched in favor of Austin Appleby, who is managing to make a John Shoop offense not look like a train wreck. Pretty impressive, even with such a low bar.

Appleby's raw QBR in his starts are 98.2 and 45.7, but the former was against Illinois' "defense", so take the usual small-sample-size disclaimer and embiggen it.

On a related note, one thing I will grudgingly admit is that through the first three quarters of every game, the best QB is probably Cook. Fortunately for us all, the fourth-quarter hex Dantonio has brought upon himself is clouding Cook's stats ... even against the weak Boiler defense, he was pretty ineffective in the 4th.

funkywolve

October 14th, 2014 at 5:52 PM ^

While OSU's offense might be simple (I thought Nuss was going to simplify UM's offense??), OSU also had to replace 4 of their 5 starting offensive lineman from last year. 

Also, keep in mind that Barrett and Morris were both 2013 recruits.  While Morris spent most of 2013 as the backup to Gardner and had all the bowl practices to work with the ones, Barrett redshirted last year and so was probably regulated to scout team.  OSU's offense might be simpler, but Barrett looks a heck of a lot better then Morris.

AZBlue

October 14th, 2014 at 6:58 PM ^

I believe the caveat is the simplicity of the PASSING offense. Just as Denard seemed much more effective in the RR offense, the concept of a "QB oh-noes" in a run based spread makes it much easier on a QB than the type of offense that M runs. I haven't watched much of tOSU this year but I bet Barrett looks a lot less impressive on 3rd and longs where the defense can play the pass/ pass rush and he has to go through reads to find the proper receiver. The strength of RR's and Meyer's system is that the defense has to overplay the run which opens up the passing opportunities.

GoBucks11

October 14th, 2014 at 9:42 PM ^

it's been quite the opposite. On 3rd and 6+, Barrett has been 10/19, 146yds with 4TD/3INT, 7.68 YPA, and all three of those INTs came against VaTech. He's looked quite good since then. For comparisons sake, Connor Cook on 3rd and 6+ has been 13/29, 225yds 3TD/1INT, 7.76 YPA. Also, what is really scary, is that this redshirt freshaman is going through his third or FOURTH receiver during a given play. He's going to be good for a long time.

@Ace: FWIW, 7 of those 13 sacks came against VaTech. And it looks like the line has seen improvement since that game, but I'll wait for results against more proven defenses before I think a turn has been made.

Ron Utah

October 14th, 2014 at 5:07 PM ^

I think his team would be winning the Draftaggedon thing at this point.

This was a great post, Seth.  Thanks for some reading material during the bye week.  I've been hoping to hear about Brandon's pink slip for two days, and I'm afraid we've missed our window.  He might be safe after all...

flashOverride

October 14th, 2014 at 7:38 PM ^

Hopefully Cook and that nose depart for the draft in the spring, but I'm sure even if they do, MSU will have a better QB than Michigan has next year. 

EDIT: Sorry, downvoter, Devin Gardner will be in the NFL, and I have seen nothing to make me believe that this coaching staff will have Shane Morris, Wilton Speight, or Alex Malzone playing better than Cook, Tyler O'Connor, Damion Terry, whomever State is starting next year. New staff, you say? Oh, good, (yet another) new scheme to go with the new starting QB. 

User -not THAT user

October 15th, 2014 at 10:35 AM ^

That was effectively an "eff-you" to Devin from an idiot in a position of power.  DG's body language and engagement during the entirety of his time on the sideline from that game confirms as much.

If Hoke REEEEEEEEEEEEEEALLY thought Shane was prepared to run the offense in a capable manner based what he (presumably) had seen in practice, he's even dumber than anyone ever suspected.

Considering it was only the opening game ofthe Big Ten conference schedule with all to play for, it was an incredibly short-sighted thing for a professional football coach to do.  The fact that he wasn't fired immediately after the game is reason why Dave Brandon should have been.

But I acknowledge that this is a textbook definitely of beating a dead horse after it has already left the barn.

bronxblue

October 14th, 2014 at 6:50 PM ^

Great write-up.  I'd agree about Cook being the best in the first half, but it does feel like choosing the tallest midget.  I did catch a couple of his games and have read enough on the Spartan boards to make me think fans aren't too enamored; seems like Terry is the preferred future option, but that could just be people complaining.

The fact Gardner was replaced by Morris shows far more the incompetence of the coaching staff that week than it does some horrible issues with Gardner.  He's struggled obviously, but those defenses he faced were all pretty good, and was between the major and the only reason Michigan nearly beat Rutgers and did beat PSU.  He's not great; at best Michigan need him to be really good to win 3 more games.

I do think Barrett will fall back to the pack a bit; we've seen OSU do this to teams for a couple of weeks and then grind down against better defenses; Rutgers and PSU will be way more illuminative.

bronxblue

October 15th, 2014 at 10:44 AM ^

I'm not saying I agree with it, but I've been to RCMB and TheOnlyColors and seen people calling for Terry at times.  MSU is finally starting to play the better defenses on their schedule; if Cook struggles like he did at times last year and the defense continues to be very good instead of great, I could see that chorus growing louder.

bronxblue

October 15th, 2014 at 10:56 AM ^

That tweet was pretty couched in "if he keeps making throws like that" and was coming from a B1G announcer/analyst-type. 

Cook looks like a good QB, and maybe he'll get drafted early on and get a chance in the NFL.  But people calling him a first-rounder seem to be grasping at straws a bit.

bronxblue

October 15th, 2014 at 11:54 AM ^

Last one (I believe) was Kerry Collins.  I know Drew Brees was selected early in the 2nd round some years ago, but yeah, it's been a long time.  Tthat said, B1G QBs tend to have pretty good success in the league when they get there, considering Brady, Brees, Russell (I know he was an ACC guy too, but still), Hoyer is now starting, Henne has stuck around and been a starter at a couple of spots, Pryor was a starter last year even though the Raiders were a train wreck, etc.  So it isn't all that bad, and consdering some of the botched 1st-rounders in recent years I'm not sure the GMs quite know how to pick good QBs anyway.