MCalibur

[Ed: In case you were wondering what that business about dolla bills was...]

At Wednesday’s press conference, Brandon made reference to Michigan’s mediocre compensation package. I knew that Michigan didn’t pay top dollar for coaches, but when I heard Brandon refer to it as “middle of the road” and “unacceptable”, dude/etts… how can that be? It’s Michigan; we have scratch if nothing else. So, I embarked on a mission with the following objectives: 1) Define middle of the road and 2) recalibrate the coaching salary budget. I have learned, at the very least, a meaningful chunk of the explanation to a few issues we have observed.

For this study, I used USA Today’s Database of coach’s salaries for 2010.

What is Middle of the Road?

  To answer this question a more sophisticated look is needed than my reflexive answer: the average or 50th percentile of the population. In Michigan’s case, the population could mean at least three things.

All FBS schools, pop.: 120. Pretty straight forward as to who’s included here. Middle of the road would be top-60 money. No way, Michigan has more money than Indiana, let alone Louisiana Monroe. This population is out.

All BCS AQ schools, pop.: 66. Again straight forward and more reasonable. Middle of the road is top-33 money. A useful benchmark.

“The FBS Hegemony”, pop.: 15 (or so). I have some ‘splaining to do here. Before 1980 college football was pretty different from what we see today: scholarship limits have changed, the passing game has been allowed to evolve, and the Florida schools have emerged. Not to mention the basic amateurism and substitution rules changes that occurred prior to 1970. In college football, anything before 1980 is simply a by-gone era.

As such, I define the “hegemony” as those schools who could plausibly win a mythical national championship in the modern era. To determine these I’ve looked at the schools who have actually won one since 1980,  only 19 schools qualify. Of those, only 12 have won an MNC since 1990 and still could: Alabama, Florida, Florida St., LSU, Miami, Michigan, Nebraska, Ohio St., Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, USC. Since Notre Dame gets special BCS consideration, they’re in. Then there’s another rotating crop of schools that could plausibly vie for an MNC today (Penn St, Georgia, Virginia Tech, Auburn, and Oregon) but haven’t done so in the last 25 years. Fifteen feels like a good number to work with, though I think a reasonable argument could be made for 20. I’m going with 15. So, middle of the road for “the hegemony” would be top-8 money.

Assessing Michigan’s Compensation Package

For simplicity’s sake, I focused my attention on University-based pay for Head Coaches and their staff (total). Of the 112 programs available in the database, the $2.5M Michigan paid Rich Rodriguez in 2010 is better than middle of the road for BCS schools (top-12 in FBS), but basically middle of the road (9th out of 15) for MNC-plausible schools included in the database.

When it comes to assistant coaches, things are different; unfortunately for everyone involved. In 2010, Michigan peeled of $1.8M in compensation for former Coach Rodriguez’s staff ranks in the 73rd percentile for the 112 programs listed (top-31 money) but dead last amongst the big dogs. Who among us is willing to pay more money for better defensive assistants? No one, I’m sure… /s.

I sooo don’t want to rehash but it’s clear that Rich Rodriguez had a specific vision for what he wanted his defense to be capable of and there he knew just the guy to do it (not shown at right). The word on Hoover street is that Jeff Casteel just liked West FUCKING Virginia too much to come to Ann Arbor. OK. Homeboy earned just over $372k last year. Allow me to visualize a phone call between Rich and Jeff circa Thanksgiving 2008:

RR: Hey! Jeff, buddy, pal, friend-o-mine;  how goes it?

JC: Aiight, I guess. I kinda miss my homies and it sucks being Brian Kelly’s bitch, but the squad is doing ok down here and I’m super glad that I didn’t uproot my family to move to Michigan and deal with THAT cluster-[bleep], you know?

RR: Totally... *sigh* [collects himself] So, how would you like to bring your sweet-ass defensive coordinating ability and concepts to ace deuce next year? Our helmets got wings… ah? AH? Have I ever told you that you raise me up so I can stand on mountains? That, with you around, I can walk I stormy seas? That I am strong when I am on your shoulders? That you raise me up to more than I can be?

JC: Yo… get a grip, G. What have those hippies done to you, yo?

I dunno, bro; I kinda like it here and like I said, it looks like you have a cluster-[bleep] on your hands--

RR: I’ll pay you $750k a year.

JC: Hey, Stewart! Eat a [hot dog]! See you tomorrow, Rich, buddy, pal, friend-o-mine.

*Click*

Or something like that. By “like that” I mean verbatim.

Gerg was our second highest paid assistant last year at $270k, but really he only made $5k less than Magee. Guess what the top two assistants in the hegemony averaged in 2010 excluding Muschamp…about $425k. We had the lowest paid offensive and defensive coordinators by at least $25k and we were $100k away from middle of the pack.

Nope, that won’t do for a team trying not to suck. Bill Martin made many mistakes, but being cheap is the only one I find impossible very difficult to forgive.

It goes on. You get the picture but, in case you don’t here’s a chart; gotta have a chart:

That thar is bullshit.

How Much Would You Pay to Not Suck?

$6.5 Million per year, exactly. No less than $5.7M

Jim Harbaugh commanded a salary at that Nick Saban / Mack Brown level ($5M per year). Pretty steep but I’d shell it out this very second… Anyway, Meyer, Stoops, Miles, Tressel are at the $4M range. To be the program everyone used to thinks of when they hear MICHIGAN--you know, part of the hegemony. Right?—we need a head coach worth at least $3M (Mark Richt) and probably more like $4M (Jim Tressel - $3.5M)If you’re going to beat Tressel don’t you have to, you know, beat Tressel?

As for assistants, the golden ratio fits very nicely: 62% of budget on head coach, 38% of budget on the rest of the staff. That equates to a total budget of $6.5M.

But Wait, There’s More…

I think Michigan should be will to pay top dollar for the ultimate prizes (Bowl Wins, B1G Championships, National Championships). We need escalators for each accomplishments for everyone on the staff. Something like this:

Bonus Structure:

Staff - Bowl Win: +5% Salary

Staff - B1G Championship: +10% Salary

Staff – National Championship: +35% Salary

All cumulative. So, winning a National Championship would increase each staff member’s pay by 50%. At a budget of $5.7M, a national championship would result in an outlay (salaries and bonuses) equal to Alabama’s base 2010 salary budget ($8.4M).

Boom, let’s get to work.

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Assistant type folk I’d like to see M land/go after once we have a horse:

• Chuck Heater – Formerly DB / co-DC at Florida; played at Michigan with Dave Brandon.
• Teryl Austin – Formerly DC at Florida; DB coach for two Super Bowl Teams (Seattle 2003, Arizona 2006); defensive backs coach in prime Carr years (1999 - 2002).
• Scot Loeffler – Coached and/or recruited Tom Brady, Drew Henson, John Navarre, Chad Henne, Ryan Mallet at Michigan.
• Phil Bennett - Impressive 2009 national ratings in sacks (3.62 sacks/game), rushing defense (17th, 106.31 yards/games), scoring defense (19th, 19.77 points/game) and total defense (23rd, 319.31 yards/game). In 2010 Pitt ranked 9th in total defense (304 ypg).
• Bill McGovern - 2010 Eagles ranked #1 nationally in rushing defense (80 ypg),  13th in total defense (310 ypg), 19th in scoring defense (19.5 ppg)in the ACC in rushing defense, allowing just 103.2 rushing yards per game.

Everyone but McGovern is currently available AFAIK. It’s guys like this that make me most nervous about not having an HC locked down right now. I’d feel much better about Brady Hoke if I knew who he would have in tow with him if he were to be hired.

Still, I prefer to find someone who commands a $3-4 M salary.

I have a confession to make. It’s early afternoon on First Game Day’s Eve and I’m completely hammered. No worries though, both of the people on my floor who haven’t cut out early have no clue. No one does. All they see is the normal me, the guy that strives to be level-headed, logical, and mostly stoic except for when dramatic effect warrants a reaction…or when I’m really mad. So, yeah I guess I’m not stoic at all, whatever, forget that part. They see the kind of guy who writes longer-and-more-rigorous-than-any-report-he’s-ever-been-paid-to-write diaries explaining why, if you just look at the data, things just won’t be that bad and maybe even OK. What they can’t see is that the suppressed side of me, the Mr. Hyde Id that balances the Dr. Jekyll super-ego, is stammeringly, staggeringly, rockstaringly HAMMERED drunk on maize and blue kool-aid.

Since around the middle of the second quarter of Wisconsin v. Michigan 2008, my MGoPsyche has been in all out Sportscenter Y2K Emergency mode. You know yours has been, too. The lights go out, the back-up generator kicks in, a roid-raging Mr. Hyde Mark Macguire is bashing a hapless keyboard with a baseball bat as if it were a detractor who is wrong on the internet, and a crazed Dr. Jekyll Charlie Stein with a maize and blue tie cutting of circulation to his brain screaming “follow me, follow me to freedom!” yeah, that commercial precisely illustrates the mgoboard any time any news event has happened since 2008, probably sooner than that.

Well now, on this First Game Day’s Eve 2010, my inner Hyde will no longer be contained and he’s saying, “you’re dumb, Jekyll, Michigan’s winning 10 this year.”

Who’s coming with me?

That’s crazy, right? We have two quarterbacks therefore we don’t have one, we don’t have a running back, our linebackers run around the second level as if they were herding cats, and our secondary sucks. Look at the data, Hyde. When your team has a defensive outlook that bad and plays in a BCS conference, 6 or 7 games,8 if we’re lucky…that’s all we can expect. But, what about Missouri 2008, Tennessee 2007, UCLA 2005, and Wisconsin 2005? Here are some table points on each of those teams:

The common thread running between each one of those teas is the fact that they all had terrible secondaries, and it showed on the field. Despite that, despite getting unmercifully torched defensively, they all won 10 games in their respective seasons. In Wisconsin’s case, they got outgained in EVERY GAME and usually by way over 100 yards. Those are thourough ass kikcings, y’all. Yet, there they are with a 5-3 Big Ten record en route to 10 wins.

Teams outperform their statistics every year, tell me that Michigan can not. Go ‘head.

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Can I get a hell yeah?

Here’s the thing that makes life so interesting. The theory of evolution claims: only the strong will survive. Maybe so, maybe so. But the theory of competition says: just because they’re the strong doesn’t mean they can’t get their asses kicked. Thats right.

See, what every long-shot, come-from-beyond-underdog will tell ya is this: the other guy may in fact be the favorite, and the odds may be stacked against you; fair enough. But, what the odds don’t know is this isn’t a math test. This is a completely different kind of test. One where passion has a funny way of trumping logic.

So, before you step up to the starting line, before the whistle blows, and the clock starts just remember, out here, the results don’t always add up. No matter what the stats may say and the experts may think and commentators may have predicted, when the race is on, all bets are off.

Don’t be surprised if someone decides to flip the script and take a pass on yelling ‘uncle’. And then suddenly, as the old saying goes: we’ve got ourselves a game.

Effin’ A.

Follow Me. Follow Me to Freedom!

All of us—rivals, apologists, detractors, optimists, pessimists, and “realists” (pick a side, pansy—we all come to mgoblog because we have something in common: we’re obsessed with Michigan. We’ve spent nine months analyzing and rationalizing and consoling and infighting amongst ourselves as we descend upon the internet like thunderhead of locusts devouring every shred of any and every bit of information for insight into Michigan Football.

When the season ends, logos and pathos will have to cope with the exact same record. Your particular tact is merely a pre-coping mechanism. Well, Logos sucks. Logos tells you to consider the consequences before you have the time of your life. Logos tells you that the party wont be worth the hang-over. Logos tells you to make peace with never walking again. Fuck logos.  Gimme pathos. Heaps and heaps of pathos. It’s time to let Mr. Hyde out the box. It’s time to descend upon all these assholes mounted up on our maize-and-blue, rainbow-maned pegasuses pegasi flying unicorns, with blood shot eyes in a Zima induced psychosis. It’s time to lose our voices even if it means that we have to rip out our larynxes and throw them on the field*.

Blessed be the tie that binds us. Blessed be the Michigan Wolverines.

Go Blue.

*a bit much? nah.

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I had originally planned on unveiling a hype video that I’ve been working on for the last week and a half or so here but the swarm of MGoLocusts has already sniffed it out. Well done, MGoBlog. Aywho, at the risk of being accused of spamming the board, here it is in case you didn’t see it.

[Author EDIT: despammed]

I guarantee you that no one on our team is cowering in the corner, begging, hoping, pleading for 7 wins.

[Ed: bump!]

Back in April, I wrote a diary called Blue Moon in my Eye in which I developed a regression model that could be used to develop a projected win total assuming that reasonable estimates had been used as inputs. At the time I thought that the team would be capable of winning at least seven, probably eight, and maybe even nine out of thirteen games this season. Since then, things have, uh, how do you say … changed. With the loss of Woolfolk, how do those numbers change?

The New Blue Moon

Before I get to that, there’s a good reason to update the model. In April, I mentioned that turnover margin is meaningful factor in regard to outcomes, but I lacked enough data to break it out specifically and therefore decided to leave it as a lumped parameter; turnovers were doomed to fade into the ether that is Intercept. No more, the NCAA has finally included turnover data in its database and now there is enough data to mix into the model. The new model has an improved R-squared value (0.752 as improved from 0.675) using just three end-of-year factors: offensive yards per game, defensive yards per game, and total turnover margin. Last time I didn’t include the model because it was mine, my own, my … preciousss. That was incredibly lame and nerdy (both with holding the coefficients and referencing LOTR) but we’re talking stats here so no one should be surprised. Another reason for divulging the goods is, now that there are four dimensions, a chart would be useless. Behold, the Blue Moon Model coefficients:

• I left the P-Values in there for those who know what that is. For the rest of you, it suffices to say what I said last time: that ish be money, yo.
• The second column (Normalized Coefficients) is there to demonstrate the relative importance of each factor; in short, defense is a skosh more influential than offense and turnover margin is a little over half as important as both.
• The use of the model (first column) is simple, start with the intercept then multiply the other the coefficients with their interrogation values and add everything together.  Use it to gamble at your own peril. Until such a time as you can accurately predict end of year stats for these categories, the model is only good for using as a platform to base sophisticated guesses off of.
• Probable influential factors that are embedded in the 25% of the variation not explained by the model (1 – R_squared) are:
  • Return Teams effectiveness. Good return teams will establish good field position thus reducing OffYds/G.
  • Coverage Teams effectiveness. Bad units will allow the other team to establish good field position thereby reducing DefYds/G.
  • Field Goal Kicking effectiveness. If you get into field goal position and miss, you’ll have a lot of yards but nothing to show for them.
  • Penalties. Penalty yardage will increase/decrease your production depending on if they’re called on you or them but doesn’t necessarily change how effective each team is at controlling field position.
• In round terms, factor influence on winning percentage breaks down to 30% Offense, 30% Defense, 15% Turnover Margin, and 25% Other Things.

Shine Down on the Big Ten (and it’s self-absorbed neighbor)

Below is 2009 Big Ten Data and Blue Moon Model expectation (BMM Expect).

I am not a man. I began as one, but now I am becoming more than a man, as you will witness.

– Francis Dolarhyde, Red Dragon

After the Iowa game last year, my nervous system instantaneously rushed to the precipice of meltdown every time Denard Robinson stepped onto the field. Mixing equal parts of anxiety and exhilaration yields a volatile cocktail. There were times when I couldn’t stand up because I was so nervous; only once or twice but, regardless of frequency, that ain’t right. Trembling calves, bated breath, dilated pupils, thumping heart. Then, a money Chewbacca impression; happy or sad, the reaction was the same. I can’t have been the only one.

There was good reason for such a strong pavlovian response. It seemed as though the outcome of  a play with Robinson under center was the random result of the flip of a coin—tails: utter disaster, heads: spectacular success, on edge: just another play. Denard threw interceptions at a nauseating 13% rate on 31 passes. However, he also scored touchdowns 7% of the time on 100 total touches. Forcier only produced TDs a little over 3% of the time. Think about that for a second, Forcier had 399 touches last year and scored 13 TDs…Denard, theoretically, could’ve had 28. Those numbers are ridiculous to quote because Denard touched the ball so infrequently last year, but it isn’t fair to quote his turnovers without also quoting his TDs.

Anyway, eight months later we are faced with another batch of the cocktail, this time with a twist. A full offseason and a spring practice session have apparently yielded a thrilling prospect, Denard can throw. Maybe we can actually stomach the elixir and keep it down. That prospect sparks at least two questions. The first, how much could he have realistically improved? I mean, there’s improvement, and then there’s being good; the latter is not guaranteed. The second question is, who do you play, Tate or Denard? In this diary I hope to rigorously estimate an answer to the first question and hopelessly flail at the second.

Author note: This got long. Real long. My bad.

In this diary I build off of the foundation laid out in the White Rainbow entry over the weekend to size up the QB around the Big Ten as well as other QBs of particular interest to Michigan. This is a list of player expectations going into the season based on the investigations I’ve conducted previously. This list is presented in order of worst to best expected year end pass efficiency for each category.

Before I begin, I wanted to share a technique for ranking QBs that came to me after I published the White Rainbow diary. In that diary I talk about how I think passer rating does a decent enough job at determining large differences between players but a poor job at distinguishing subtle differences between them. Well, after playing with the numbers a bit, it looks like taking the average ranking for all four categories yields a method for differentiating players with similar QB ratings but vastly different subjective quality.

The following table* shows an excerpt of the NCAA QB rankings for the 2009 season.

If you take that same data and rank each player for each of the four categories then average that ranking, you end up with what I’m calling the QB Prism Score yielding the following final ranking.

Notice how this technique improves differentiation between similar QBs using the exact same data and very simple math (rank and average). At the very top we see that the all three guys had awesome numbers, but Tebow had the worst INT % of all of them. The method distinguished Clausen as a higher overall performer than Moore and Tebow.

A similar thing occurs when looking at Big Ten QBs. The traditional passer rating ranks Daryll Clark, Kirk Cousins, and Scott Tolzien as virtually identical passers; Prism score separates them substantially.

Now look at the log jam between Ricky Stanzy and Ben Chappell; only 5 passer rating points seperate 7 players. The Prism Score breaks these into main groups: Elliot-Kafka and Williams-Stanzi-Pryor-Chappell-Forcier.

Some bunching still exists but the bunches are smaller.

Anyway, I thought that might be a useful and easy technique for people who are so inclined to apply. On with the purpose of this diary.

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Returning Players

Adam Weber, SR, Minnesota

Adam was ranked 98 - of - 100 in NCAA passer rating for 2009. I would actually rank him 100 - of - 100. His completion percentage, yards per attempt, and interception rate were terrible, especially for a redshirt Junior in his third year as starter. His touchdown rate ... I'll be good and listen to Thumper's dad ("if you don't have anything nice to say..."). Eric Decker did get hurt, but that's not the reason Weber wasn't throwing TDs. Of his 13 TDs last year, 5 were to Decker, 5 were against Michigan State, and the other 3 were flukes. OK, so that last part was mean. Recall that MSU's secondary was worse than Michigan's in 2009.

Going into 2009, Minnesota had 10 returning offensive starters available to them; that was a mature squad. My previous QB-centric work has shown that by year 3 as starter, QBs are what they are. Adam Weber is bad at passing. Phil Steele thinks Weber will end his career on a high note, I don't. Alas, I think Thumper's dad is disappointed in me.

Side Note: Minnesota's D only has 2 players returning and Phil Steele points out that they play USC, Penn St., Ohio St., and Iowa at home so they'll have to go on the road in order to try and win. That's just mean. Short Minnesota; with leverage. When do we play them again? Oh ... sweet.

Ricky Stanzi, SR, Iowa

I make no bones about it; I think Stanzi is hugely over rated. He throws a worse ball than Brady Quinn and is inaccurate to boot. I tried to find a picture of him throwing a pick but couldn’t confirm the result of the pass shown. There’s a 5% chance that what you’re looking at is a pick (no joke) so I’m assuming that it is until proven otherwise. Relax, I’m mostly kidding.

Anyway, last year he actually had the highest rating of the next four QB in this list, which were in a tight cluster, but his high YPA and solid TD rate obscured the fact that his completion percentage and INT rate were the worst of the bunch. The two categories he was good in, YPA and TD rate, are highly influenced by things outside of the QB himself (receiving corps, O-Line, run game, opposing defense). The two things he has direct influence over, Cmp % and Int rate, he was really bad in.

Coming into his third year as starter he should improve somewhat and has McNutt and DJK returning but loses Bulaga and Moeaki. Net, net, I think Iowa sees modest improvement in their passing efficiency. The problem is, they need more than that.

Now excuse me, I’m about to get kicked out of the country by the Americanzis.

Ben Chappell, SR, Indiana

Apparently, I hate senior quarterbacks with oodles of experience. That has nothing to do with the fact that Michigan doesn’t have any, I swear.

In all honestly, I think Chappell is a fine QB and a great find for Indiana. He has progressed nicely so far and should take another step forward this year if Indiana’s O-Line can absorb the losses of two 4-year starters. Maybe, maybe not.

As far as the quality of his passer rating he is the opposite of Stanzi; He did the things he could control (Cmp %, Int %) well, but didn’t do so well in the things he needed help in (YPA, TD %). The latter two categories should take a step forward this year as IU’s top 5 WRs return this year. Again, if the O-line holds up IU should be a pretty saucy passing team.

All in all, I expect there to be a significant gap between Stanzi and Chappell. He’s slotted here because the support he has around him isn’t as good as that of the others ahead of him.

Tate Forcier, SO, Michigan

Originally I was going to do a spotlight diary on Forcier similar to one I’m working on for Denard Robinson but, since Forcier is more of a known quantity in terms of style and actual production evaluating his prospects is much more straight forward.

As most Michigan fans know, Forcier was a Godsend for Rich Rodriguez in 2009. From his pedigree to his tutelage by Marv Marinovich to his early enrollment, Forcier’s freshman performance didn’t exactly come without signal. Based on my previous work on QB maturation, Forcier’s freshman year was solidly that of an average true freshman 5 star recruit which is well above that of the typical first year starter. Considering that 5 star QB recruits almost always go to very good, if not elite, football programs and are therefore surrounded by elite and mostly mature talent (see Chad Henne), Forcier proved that all the fanfare that accompanied his arrival in Ann Arbor wasn’t just optimistic hype. And he sustained a meaningful injury to his throwing shoulder early in the season.

What’s more remarkable to me is that as polished as he was, he still showed room for tremendous growth. In terms of performance metrics Forcier was ahead of schedule in completion percentage and YPA, and he met expectations for TD rate and INT rate. The four picks he threw in the Ohio State game took his INT rate from 2.5% to 3.5%. If he had maintained the INT rate had going into the game—resulting in 1 INT and 3 INC instead of 4 INTs—his final passer rating would have been 2 points higher with all else being equal.

Those keeping track will note that, true to his hype, Forcier was ahead of schedule in terms of the self-controlled parameters (Comp. %, INT %) and solid in the team help parameters (YPA, TD %). Michigan has a stable of high potential receivers with extensive starting experience and development time and also has the best offensive line it has had since 2007. With reasonable personal development and the supporting cast he has around him, Forcier has every opportunity to be all Big Ten this year. Michigan might not have a senior QB in the strict sense, but it has one in the practical sense.

As insurance against Michigan slappy-ism, I’m placing him further down the list than I think he’ll end up.

Terrelle Pryor, JR, Ohio State

Say what you want about TP, no one would think twice about him if he weren’t a baller. As a true freshman, he a had a high passer rating that met the long term quality thresholds establish in the White Rainbow diary. Last year was a step back statistically for him as he regressed in completion percentage, YPA, and INT rate; his TD rate remained solid though. The regression makes some sense between the expansion of his responsibilities in OSU’s offense and the breaking in of new contributors at the skill positions.

Another difference between his freshman and sophomore years is that Pryor ran less often in 2009. This is a bad idea; if Pryor is allowed to flash his running ability explicitly, opposing defenses must respect the threat which would leave easy opportunities in the passing game. Josh Nesbitt is the uber-example of this effect. Nesbitt rarely throws and is inaccurate (46.3%) when he does, but when he connects, the result is a big play. Nesbitt’s YPA in 2009 was a staggering 10.5 accompanied by a good TD rate (6.2%) and solid INT rate (3.1%). I’m pretty sure Nebitt’s YPA was the highest (by over a yard!) in the FBS, and certainly the highest in BCS conferences. He’s not a great passer, but that doesn’t stop him from doing extensive damage when he throws.

This season Ohio State has everybody coming back except for the tight end. Pryos has already shown how much damage he can do when he puts it all together; if you don’t know, ask Oregon. This year he will be better and will have high quality support around him. The result is likely to be an emetic wave of OSU/Pryor hype. Chin up though, chances are that this is his last year on campus.

Kirk Cousins, JR, Michigan St.

Cousin’s superiority over Keith Nichol in 2009 was apparent to everyone except Mark Dantonio. Maybe Dantonio had a problem with the fact that it looks like Cousins likes to rub his butt up against his lineman’s during a wind up. Personally, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. Even though it was his first year as starter, Cousins put up the numbers of a seasoned veteran. His YPA of 8.1 was above the threshold of good QB play, and his Comp.%, TD rate, and INT rate were just a hair’s width away from the thresholds; that’s close enough.

Coming into 2010, Cousins will lose his top receiver in Blair White along with a bunch of other knuckleheads who ain’t going out like dat, son. But, because of Dantonio’s preference for only disciplining players that are either expendable or not worth the heat of benevolence, Cousins has some good to very good WRs retuning in B.J. Cunningham and Mark Dell, along with non-knucklehead Keshawn Martin.

The challenge for Cousins will be finding enough time to hook up with his receivers. MSU loses 3 starters from a so-so offensive line in 2009. I don’t expect that to slow Cousins down too much though.

Scott Tolzien, SR, Wisconsin

Tolzien and Cousins were neck-and-neck for best returning passers and based on 2009 numbers alone, Cousins actually wins. Both had the same-ish YPA and Tolzien had a better completion percentage, but Cousins had a better TD rate and lower INT rate along with an adequate completion percentage. However, when you look at the team Tolzien has coming with him, his prospects for 2010 look higher and that give him the nod in my book.

The Badgers have a monster offensive line coming back all of which are either returning starters of have substantial starting experience. Running back John Clay was the Offensive Player of the Year in 2009. Tolzien has his top wide receiver back, too. So yeah, there’s absolutely no reason why Wisconsin’s passing attack shouldn’t be very, very good this year.

I don’t have much else to say except that I think Bucky Badger is dumb, and that makes me feel better. What? That’s totally germane to the topic of this diary.

Newcomers

Nathan Scheelhaase, RS-FR, Illinois

Scheelhasse was a rivals.com 4 star recruit who also received offers from Iowa, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and bunch of other solid programs according to Rivals. That’s solid endorsement, but his supporting cast is likely to be a drag. The Illini need to establish all new receivers this season and also need to replace two multi-year starters on the O-line. Beyond that, Illinois is bringing in a new offensive coordinator this year, so there are strong headwinds against Scheelhaase.

Kevin Newsome, SO, Penn State

Despite grim sounding early returns, 4-star and one time Michigan recruit Kevin Newsome should be the guy for Penn State this year. He has been around for a year and therefore has time invested in a collegiate strength and conditioning program, play book study time, technique development. Penn State has to find a new combination at O-line, but there’s plenty of talent available to make that happen. They have their top 2 WRs retuning as well as really good running back in Evan Royster to take the heat off.

Dan Persa, RS-JR, Northwestern

Persa was a rivals.com 2-star recruit in 2007 who’s biggest offer besides NW came from West Virginia. So, theoretically, Rich Rodriguez thought this guy had some skillz. Northwestern has a solid supporting cast around him with all 5 starters on the O-line returning this year, as well has two WRs who each caught more than 40 balls last year and the teams leading RB (Kafka was the team’s rushing leader in 2009). I wouldn’t be surprised if he ended up having a better year than all of these guys.

Robert Marve, RS-JR, Purdue

Marve originally committed to Miami (FL) as a 4 star recruit in the class of 2007. He also received offers from Purdue,  Michigan State, and Alabama. He started as a RS-SO at Miami but split time heavily with Jacory Harris. He was suspended for the first game in 2008 for disciplinary reasons related to his arrest for a misdemeanor mischief charge during his redshirt year. He was also suspended for the bowl game for missing class. Oops, I got carried away with the Google-stalking. What can I say, I was fascinated. Besides, I think its worth wondering how this kid handles adversity. This is basically the anti-Tom Brady story.

He transferred because of an apparent falling out with HC Randy Shannon; but Jacory Harris flat out beat him head to head that year. Marve was pretty inaccurate (54.5%) and had an extremely high INT rate (6.1%) and a low YPA (6.0). Marve is coming off a torn ACL suffered just before fall camp last year. His knee is probably fine now, but he had to have missed a lot of pratice time rehabbing his knee rather than working on his accuracy and timing with the receivers.

If he’s grown up since his Miami days Marve has a shot at being the best new QB in the Big Ten saving for a certain someone. Purdue returns the Big Ten’s most prolific WR of 2009, Keith Smith, but is pretty thin at OL.  The running game took a big hit when Robert Bolden tore his ACL this spring so a lot of pressure will be put on Marve to produce.

Other QBs of Interest

Kyle Havens, 5th Yr, UMass

I wasn’t going to write anything about UMass because they’re an FCS team that was sub-500 last year and who lost their top rusher and receiver from that team, but then I saw this video from the spring and figured people might get a kick out of it. Madre. Same team, dude.

Anyway, I thought it’d be rude to link that video and not do a write up so here it goes. Havens was actually a rivals.com 3-star JUCO recruit in 2009. He played in and started 10 games last year but his prism stats were terrible: 55.3% Completion percentage, 7.2 YPA (OK, I guess), 3.4% TD Rate, 5.7% INT Rate. That’s against FCS competition.

Random Bowling Green RS-FR

BGSU had a crazy prolific passing attack last year. They’re all gone, only 4 offensive starters are back this year. As far as QB there are four guys vying for the gig: Matt Schilz, RS-FR, 3 star; Aaron Pankratz, RS-FR, 2 star; Kellen Pagel, RS-FR, not ranked; Caleb Watkins, FR, 2 star.

Pankratz is the only guy to have thrown the ball in a college game (13 attempts), but Schilz was purported to have the inside edge in the spring. Watkins had a bunch of offers from MAC teams, but, his Rivals profile also lists Michigan, Ohio State, Tennessee, Illinois, Indiana, and Cincinnati, for whatever that’s worth.

Zach Frazer, RS-SR, Connecticut

Frazer is another senior QB with a lot of experience that I’m turning my nose up at. It’s not me, it’s him. I promise. This will be his 3rd year with meaningful playing time as a starter. His passer rating for the last two years has been dreadful: 103 in 2008, 116 in 2009. Running those numbers through the prism shows that he was indeed a bad passer. Last year was an improvement over 2008 as he improved his completion percentage, YPA and TD rate by normal amounts while improving his INT rate by a large amount. Unfortunately, all of those numbers were bad save for TD rate which was sligtly below average.

This year Frazer has a solid to good RB and an experienced offensive line returning but loses his top 2 WRs from last year. Frazer should be able to improve is Cmp % and INT rate of his own accord, but he has a significant way to go in order to reach high quality veteran numbers and this is his last year to do it. As for YPA and TD rate, my opinion is that you need help from the rest of the offense to get good numbers there, and while the O-line and running game should be solid, having 2 new starting WRs to break in will cut into the progression there.

Dayne Crist, RS-SO, Notre Dame

The Notre Dame offense has a lot going on this off season, new head coach, new offensive scheme,  and a new starting QB. Sounds like a tough transition, huh? I actually don’t think so. I don’t see the transition from a Pro Style offense to a Passing Spread to be all that different. Both systems need guys who can pass block, throw, and catch; Notre Dame has all of that, in spades. Crist is a new starter but he was a 5 star recruit who has been on campus working out and improving his technique for two years. Sure, he has to learn a new playbook but Brian Kelly’s system is notoriously simple making it easier for inexperienced players to step right in and be effective. Crist will have a whole off season to learn the system. Sure, he won’t be flawless out of the gate, but I can’t imagine that he’ll be a liability either.

As for the team around him, Crist and Kelly inherit Michael Floyd and Kyle Rudolph who have already established themselves as elite players at their positions. The O-line has three 4-star recruits returning as starters and the other two spots are likely to be filled with 4-star recruits as well. The retained talent fits the new system like a tailor made glove lined with memory foam. Are we really to believe that Brian Kelly wouldn’t have recruited these players himself?

Some people look at Notre Dame in 2010 and see a situation similar to what Rich Rodriguez walked into at Michigan in 2008. They are wrong. Oh, so wrong.

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And there it is. I’d love to hear other people’s thoughts on these players, how big a threat they pose to Michigan’s secondary, and anything I may have overlooked/understated in my assessments. Also any feedback on the Prism Score would be helpful as well.

*Can someone please explain to me how to format tables so they show up with Maize and Blue row and column headers? I’ve tried many things, I’ve failed many times.

/desperate plea for assistance.

In a previous diary I used passer rating as a well known and objective grade for the relative value of a quarterback’s stat line in order to determine if there were any trends in player development, and if so, how strong those trends were. However, in the diary I noted that passer rating is not without its issues and pointed those interested in finding out toward other people’s work and went on with it.

Most Declarations of Grievance attack the adequacy of the the formula used saying that the scale is unintuitive, some of the components are not orthogonal (total yards, completion %), some components are irrelevant (touchdowns), and other components are omitted (rushing stats, and sacks). These are valid arguments but the alternatives presented are unfamiliar, come with their own set of complexities, and are often difficult for fans to calculate on their own.

In this diary I don’t want to generate a new formula, that has been done. Rather, I want to accept the current formula for what it is and develop new benchmarks for what it shows us in modern context. The two problems I have with it are that it’s clearly outdated and that it obliterates information.

Problem 1: It’s Old and Busted

The current NCAA passing efficiency formula (shown below) was developed in 1979 and was generated using passing data since the beginning of the modern two platoon era which began in 1965. At the time, the rating was calibrated to yield a rating of 100 for the average passer. If a QB had average values for all 5 components (attempts, completions, total yards, touchdowns, interceptions) his passer rating would have been 100.

Here’s the rub, major rule changes have been implemented in favor of the passing game since two-platoon football started, and so the majority of the data set used to calibrate the formula was skewed toward weak passing numbers by today’s standards. The major rules changes are:

• 1976: Offensive blocking changed to permit half extension of arms to assist pass blocking.
• 1980: Retreat blocking added with full arm extension to assist pass blocking, and illegal use of hands reduced to 5 yd. penalty.
• 1985: Retreat block deleted and open hands and extended arms permitted anywhere on field.

And these aren’t even all of them. Behold, further evidence of Anthony Carter’s ridiculousness: he thrived in an era where the rules were stacked against the pass. Before these rules were implemented, offensive linemen could not really be aggressive in pass blocking.  They were forced to be either turnstiles (before 1976) or turnstiles with their elbows sticking out. Before ‘85, linemen could not have their palms facing the opponent. Back in the day illegal use of hands and holding penalties were 15 yards assessed from the spot of the foul. Cloud of dust football so popular back then for a reason. For a modern taste of what this might have looked like check out Michigan v. Notre Dame 2007. The mismatch between Michigan’s D-Line and Notre Dame’s O-Line in that game was obscene. Despite that Jimmy Clausen’s freshmen year performance at Notre Dame, on that terrible offense, was slightly above average by 1979 standards. 

Due to the rules changes, passing stats have inflated but the formula has not adapted along with them. That is not to say that it has no value, just that our understanding of that value is outdated.

Problem 2: It’s A White Rainbow

Imagine if a rainbow were a brilliant white arc in the sky; still interesting, but less so than what we usually see. If the water droplets in the air can not produce a prismatic effect, they just diffract the light and we can’t see the individual colors. BTW, white rainbows are real.

Getting back to football, the passer rating formula looks at, yards per attempt, completion %, touchdown rate, and interception rate, then assigns weights to those values and blends them together to provide football fans a single number to use to compare QBs against themselves and each other. All in all that is a useful tool, but the blending process obliterates some very interesting information. Passer rating is a great coarse filter but it’s inadequate for picking up subtle differences. Not all 130’s are created equal.

Re-Calibration

In order to address the first problem, it is necessary to decompose the formula into it’s base components to see what the new definition of average is for each category. For college players, I think it is also useful to split the data by recruiting ranking (Rivals.com Star Rating) and Experience (Years as Starter) to really understand how well a kid is performing relative to history.

For this project I’ve taken only players who played on teams in BCS conferences and who were rated as a Rivals.com 3-star recruits or higher. The data plotted is the average for all players within a given category (ex: all 3 start players in their 1st year as Starter is a group, and so on).

One thing I should note up front is that there are fewer and fewer players in each category as the number of years as starter increases; only about 10% of QB recruits in each group start for four years. For the 3-star and 4-star groups this isn’t a huge problem because they survive the attrition fairly well and still have 7 or 8 players to use for averaging purposes; not great by any means but workable. The 5 star group ends up with 2 players in my data set that have started 4 years (Chad Henne and Trent Edwards). A sample size of 2 is not workable and has therefore been omitted.

For completion percentage we see that the average QBs gradually improves his accuracy and approaches 61% in the long term. The higher a player is rated coming out of high school, the sooner he is likely achieve steady state.

With Yards per attempt we see a more subtle upward trend and also more separation between rating groups. I think this separation makes some sense. For one, Rivals explicitly accounts for the players physical assets; it stands to reason that 5-star players are more likely to develop NFL-level arm strength and will therefore be able to push the ball up field without sacrificing accuracy significantly. Another potential factor is that a high level QB recruit is likely to attract high level WR recruits that help improve YPA significantly. I think the long term standard that should be applied for this category is 7.6 yards per attempt.

Touchdown rate is a factor that many people argue against including in the passer rating formula. The argument goes that a TD is as much a result of the WR’s ability as it is the QB’s. The Roundtree hawk down at Illinois is an example: Edwards, Manningham, Breaston, Odoms, and a bunch of other guys would have taken that ball to the house. I think this chart shows this effect pretty dramatically. The 5-star recruits tend to go to high level programs and are surrounded by high level offensive lines, running games, and receiving corps, thus making it easier for them to throw touchdowns. Oh yeah, and they’re more likely to have the skill to exploit their advantages. Long term target: 6.0%.

Interception rate is the only negative factor in the formula, so a lower number is better (duh). Again we see 3-star recruits significantly lagging the other two groups. I suspect that not only is there the experience issue, but 3-star recruits are likely to need more time to develop proper mechanics. By year 3, all groups are about as good as they’re going to get. Long term target: 2.7%.

The New Hotness

Cherry picking the long term values for these parameters allows us to assemble a passer rating that is a true indication of good passing efficiency in college, not just objectively point but also subjectively; that value is 139.2. This is a stout target to hit and the player needs help from his team mates to get there, but it is achievable for all BCS level recruits by their 3rd year as starter. In 2009, 33 QBs put up this level of performance or better with another 10 or so within reasonable striking distance.