Two Kinds of Speight

Submitted by MCalibur on

[Ed-S: Bumped from diaries]

Well there's only two kinds of men: the one you love; the one you wish for. Try not to be deluded by that sweet and dreamy beginning. He will fool you. He will screw you.

-2 Kinds of Men, Marta Ren & The Groovelvets

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wilton-speight-re2pectPreach Marta, preach. It doesn’t take much bourbon—relatively speaking, of course—to understand this lyric.  See, Marta understands that ain’t no way that we can actually be happy. We must either lower our standards or move on to the next spin of a janky assed roulette wheel.

Yeah he’s got a good heart and he’s trying real hard to bring home those dubyas and rings we both so desperately want. But, even if it happens, who knows if he’ll even be there next week? Dude is just going to move on up and fail at baseball or marry some skinny chic strutting on a runway somewhere.  If you don’t love the one you have, then you’re wishing for the one you want. If you actually do love the one you have, then don’t get your hopes up that it will last. There’s only two kinds of men and both let you down. Thus sayeth the gospel of Marta Ren & The Groovelvets.

Don't take me and Marta’s word for it:

Speight was lethal, and terrible, and seemed to have little in between. He was very good for ten throws against Iowa and then fell off a cliff, and that was a microcosm of his play and the season. –mgoblog

In fairness to Wilton and QBs everywhere though, this lyric isn't fair. Football fans are impossible to appease. The best evaluation systems not only use absolute scales, but they also use relative scales and provide sufficient space to consider context. Most football fans inherently understand that putting up big numbers against a weak team must be taken with a grain of salt. The problem often is that a commensurate grain of salt isn't usually given to small numbers against strong teams. The comment often is: but what did you do against so and so?  This assessment is almost always absolute. And context? Please, if Herbstreit doesn’t talk about it on Gameday then it doesn’t matter.

Ok, Dear. Whatever you say.

[Hit THE JUMP right now or I swear I'll bump a Draftageddon over it]

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Absolute Gravity

wile-e-coyoteIn the comments section of last year’s QB round up I said the following in regards to the final 2017 passer rating for Michigan’s QB: “I'm going 140 based on the outside weapons, respectable running game, and play calling.” Also Harbaugh. In fact, Speight finished with an overall rating of 139.8. Yet, in retrospect, that feels like a let down. The reason is that Speight was bonkers (even when he was disappointing) before the wheels came off at Iowa (i.e: when he started playing good teams.). It felt like a let down because it was in fact a let down. We want consistency with neither ebbs nor flows. We want a fantasy.

Season Split Cmp Att Yds TD Int PRat
OOC 51 80 686 8 1 166.3
B1G Pre Iowa 98 151 1367 7 2 153.6
All Pre Iowa 149 231 2053 15 3 158.0
Iowa, OSU, FSU 55 100 485 3 4 97.6
ALL 204 331 2538 18 7 139.8

This whole section can be summed up thusly: we can’t be happy with Speight until beat beats OSU [/ducks]. Though I hate the concept, its hard to argue against it. There are no points for second best; every player worth their salt will trade stats for wins. Still, I say hogwash—context matters. Not enough to change the result but it matters.

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Grading on a Split Curve

Performing poorly when everyone else performs terribly bodes well for future performances. Of course, if everyone else isn't that good to begin with then maybe you do suck after all. The idea here is that you have to look at all the babies and their messy bibs before you start deciding what to keep and what to throw away. Let’s face it folks, some babies are in fact ugly.

The next table examines Speight’s individual performances against the teams he faced relative to how other passing attacks fared. Here’s the key for the column headings:

ponderPass Def S&P+: Opponent’s year end Defensive Passing S&P+ according to Football Outsiders.  The average S&P+ rating is 100. Here its only informative because in order to exclude bad pass defenses, we would have to exclude games played against Michigan State who was ranked near the bottom of all FBS teams. I don’t think any reasonable person would argue that games against MSU don’t count.

Typical PR: This is the average passer rating put up against the opponents by teams with Offensive Passing S&P+ scores of at least 90. The split here is a bit arbitrary but the idea is to discard very weak passing teams from altering our concept of normal. Poor performers lower the bar. We don’t care how good Speight is relative to all QBs, we care how he compares to solid or better QBs.

Speight PR: Straight forward; Wilton Speight's actual passer rating against the opponent.

Opp. Adj. PR:  The difference between Speight’s performance and the typical performance against the opponent. This give us the curve.

DSR and PFF: Values lifted directly from the Henne Chart in the Offensive UFRs.

Opponent Pass Def S&P+ Typical PR Speight PR Opp. Adj PR DSR PFF
Hawaii 93.0 168.2 231.4 63.2 73% -1.0
Central Florida 116.6 112.4 174.1 61.7 82% 1.0
Colorado 124.4 113.3 128.5 15.2 50% -3.5
Penn State 103.8 131.5 118.2 -13.3 68% 1.0
Wisconsin 120.1 105.5 124.1 18.5 57% -0.5
Rutgers 92.4 151.0 136.2 -14.9 67% 0.5
Illinois 94.0 133.7 190.7 57.0 79% 4.5
Michigan State 84.4 148.9 138.0 -11.0 70% 2.5
Maryland 95.5 118.1 233.4 115.3 88% 6.5
Iowa 117.3 121.8 67.9 -53.9 60% -1.5
Ohio State 125.4 125.7 122.2 -3.5 -- --
Florida State 118.8 129.7 94.7 -34.9 -- --

For me this passes the sniff test. There is broad agreement between OAPR and DSR with respect to what Speight's really good and not so good games were: Maryland on one hand, Iowa on the other. Of course there are games where the OAPR method gives Speight more credit than DSR does (Colorado, Wisconsin) and others where it’s less impressed (Michigan State). This is good, diversity is useful. Without two perspectives we can’t see in 3D; imagine what spiders can see.

walkermarquiseAnyway, DSR is the better method for myriad reasons. First, it considers play specific context that passer rating does not. Where passer rating only asks “was the pass completed?” (absolute scale) DSR asks “how much effort did the receiver need to exert to catch the pass?” (relative scale). The latter is a much better question but requires much more effort to answer. No, that’s not just another catch Marquis Walker made there, but passer rating has no idea.

Also, interceptions have huge leverage on single game passer rating. Altering an interception to an incompletion can swing single game passer rating 5-10 points. DSR distinguishes terrible decisions from bad bounces and therefore better mitigates this volatility.

I could keep going but I trust the point is made. Regardless, the OAPR method outlined above gets us closer to the truth even if it doesn’t get us all the way home. Besides, what if we don’t have an updated Henne Chart (cough)? What are we poor souls to do then, create our own? Don’t be ridiculous.

 

QB Performance Rosetta Stone

rosettaI probably missed the discussion somewhere along the way but I’ve never gotten a sense for what a good DSR number is. The good news is that there is the staggeringly strong correlation between DSR and PFF. The only real disagreements are Hawaii and Central Florida. When all available games are included the R-squared value is rather high at about 0.70. When Hawaii and UCF are excluded R-squared jumps to 0.96. Perfect correlation is R-squared equal to 1. The methodologies are very similar and now we know just how similar they are: damn near identical. And, since we know PFF is anchored to zero we can use the correlation to calibrate DSR!  A zero PFF grade corresponds to about 65 in DSR. More is better, less is worse.

DSR vs PFF

 

Applying the same tricks to DSR vs. OAPR gleans similar insights. Here again there is a useful raw correlation which substantially improves when obvious outliers are removed from consideration.

DSR vs OAPR

 

Spinning it all together, we finally arrive at the following scorecard:

Opponent Pass Def S&P+ Rating Verdict Consensus
OAPR DSR PFF OAPR DSR PFF
Hawaii 93.0 63.2 73% -1.0 great great bad great
Central Florida 116.6 61.7 82% 1.0 great great good great
Colorado 124.4 15.2 50% -3.5 ok terrible terrible terrible
Penn State 103.8 -13.3 68% 1.0 bad ok good ok
Wisconsin 120.1 18.5 57% -0.5 ok terrible ok ok
Rutgers 92.4 -14.9 67% 0.5 ok ok ok ok
Illinois 94.0 57.0 79% 4.5 great great great great
Michigan State 84.4 -11.0 70% 2.5 ok good great good
Maryland 95.5 115.3 88% 6.5 great great great great
Iowa 117.3 -53.9 60% -1.5 terrible bad bad bad
Ohio State 125.4 -3.5 -- -- ok -- -- *ok
Florida State 118.8 -34.9 -- -- terrible -- -- *terrible

 

petersspeightjpg-95eea12b07f34c09As best as I can tell, Speight had more good/great games than he had bad/terrible games by a tally of 5 to 3. Against good defenses he did have a harder time but you can say that about literally every QB that has ever existed. And then you recall that he was hurt/healing in for two of the less than OK performances to close out the season. And then you recall that he was a lettering for the first time. Context matters, man. Big time.

I will be very very surprised and equally impressed if Brandon Peters ever unseats Wilton Speight barring injury. That’s not meant as an indictment on Brandon, merely an acknowledgment petersspeightjpg-95eea12b07f34c09of Wilton’s formidability. Speight met my a priori expectations to a tee but only after wildly exceeding them for most of the season until he suffered an injury to his throwing shoulder. Good God man, that’s a great starting point. And now he’s being chased by someone who sure as hell didn’t come here to hold a clipboard. Yeah man, I like this spot.

We all know Harbaugh will make the right call and ultimately we will have both kinds of QB all in one: the one we love and the one we have wished for.

 

Comments

dipshit moron

August 9th, 2017 at 1:05 PM ^

seems strange how few people are believing speight can show improvement over last year. isn`t that supposed to happen with great coaching? he has shown the ability to make some great throws, and don`t discount experience and leadership so fast. plus if chesson holds on to that third down throw  at the end of the iowa game, they never get the ball back to kick the fg.

redjugador24

August 9th, 2017 at 2:31 PM ^

Nobody's arguing that Speight won't improve, the questions are 1) How Much and 2) How much have the other QBs improved?  Plus some people will ALWAYS clamor for the guy with the big arm, even if he's not a great all around QB.

I think the general feeling is that Speight is a solid, but not spectacular QB with somewhat limited physical tools.  His leadership and ability to read defenses has been great, as well as accuracy on short throws, but that just means his biggest areas to improve are his physical tools - arm strength, accuracy on deep balls, better touch when needed, more zip when needed etc.  Those physical traits of a QB are much more difficult to improve dramatically compared to a guy who has the physical tools, but is still learning the offense, reading defenses, and becoming a leader because as a result of that knowledge & the confidence that comes with it.

All that said I think Speight will be the guy, because from what we KNOW, he's been the better all-around QB and is the guy with experience on a team without much.

 

 

dipshit moron

August 9th, 2017 at 4:04 PM ^

not comparing anybody but i saw the whole drew hensen and tom brady competition. i will admit i hated everytime brady played because you could see he was good but he seemed to have so many limitations. while hensen looked to have just tremendous abilities. also griese never looked like anything except a average qb, until the 97 season. this team needs great experience and leadership from the qb position. speight  is the man.

CRISPed in the DIAG

August 9th, 2017 at 2:33 PM ^

SP8's performance in the Wisconsin game was spotty, but I was willing assume a avg/bad game against what I thought was a elitish defense. I am also assuming that a goodly share of his sucktitude late in the year can be attributed to poor health, good defenses and dropitis (I'm thinking especially of the OSU game). 

Long term health and more film for opposing defenses are my concerns re improvement this year.  I think we see production that is slighly better than last year on the whole.

jwfsouthpaw

August 9th, 2017 at 7:37 PM ^

Speight's throwing motion seemed visibly affected in the OSU game.  Throwing deep passes with a broken collarbone or whatever it was is not something most of us would be keen to attempt.  Couple that with the complete lack of production from the run game and OSU's defensive line, and it's actually quite easy to understand why Michigan didn't attempt it.

Barn Animal

August 9th, 2017 at 3:30 PM ^

As a bengals fan Speight reminds me of Andy Dalton. Albeit their play styles aren't the same.

He's an overall good qb who due to losses in big games is not appreciated by the fan base

If he has a good offensive line (?) and good weapons (yes) he can be a great qb, if not things can go poorly. So if our offensive line can become legitimately good with our receivers I am excited for Speights prospects and especially for next year.

Crootin

August 9th, 2017 at 3:32 PM ^

All this analysis followed by opinion and excuses in this paragraph:

 

"As best as I can tell, Speight had more good/great games than he had bad/terrible games by a tally of 5 to 3. Against good defenses he did have a harder time but you can say that about literally every QB that has ever existed. And then you recall that he was hurt/healing in for two of the less than OK performances to close out the season. And then you recall that he was a lettering for the first time. Context matters, man."

 

He didn't play well in clutch games and games we needed to win for the most part.  I hope he gets better.  Deep ball cost us quite a few times.  It also helped put a nail in the coffin of the sputtering run game, because deep throws were not overly scary for other teams to defend.

Bodogblog

August 9th, 2017 at 5:24 PM ^

This is 4th down, in Columbus, the #2 team in the country, against 1st round draft choices (bearing down to sack him, and covering in the secondary).  There's one guy open, everything else is dead.  

It's the best mix of composure, talent, and balls we've seen in Columbus in a long, long time.  It should have been the throw that won them the game, and would have been, but for an inch on a spot or five 50/50 calls all going the wrong way.  He wasn't great, but he was good enough to win. 

And what is the standard here?  Do you think he should be a top 10 QB?  He wasn't better than Deshaun Watson last year, and nobody thinks he was.  The argument centers around whether he was a good QB and can we expect him to improve and lead the team in 2017.  

Crootin

August 9th, 2017 at 6:19 PM ^

It's a great play, but one play does not a game make.  Does not a season make.  Speight gave up 14 points in the same game.  I'm not bashing, but he seems like an ok+ QB to me.  The standard should be, can he take control and win a game for you when other things aren't working?  I don't think he's shown that yet.  He had a good throw to put away Wiscy last year.  But he also missed quite a few opportunities to put that one away as well.

 

Bodogblog

August 9th, 2017 at 7:21 PM ^

He did not give up 14 points. He threw a pick 6 yes, terrible play. But his OL left a guy completely unblocked, that guy deflected the ball, and it died in the air. Block the motherfucker - or get an arm or toe on him for just a momental - and Speight completes that ball. And Harbaugh shouldn't be calling a slow developing play out his own end zone - in Columbus - if he's not certain it will get blocked. With that OL vs that DL, certainty is exclamation points less than 100.

Besides he drove the team right back down the field (with an assist from a great Peppers return), and scored just before half.

The defense and Meyer's fake punt bailed him out on the fumble - they immediately scored the next posession.

The other pick was terrible. Am I arguing Brady? No, just that he's good and we can expect to see him improve and down well this year. But yes I realize I'm rose-colored here, the data causes both sides to accept there's a lot of counters.

EDIT: didn't neg, you have a reasonable view

SMart WolveFan

August 9th, 2017 at 8:30 PM ^

....he did just show that, in the clip.

Even though he had made those mistakes, he didn't turtle, he didn't melt down and he didn't give up on his teammates or the game.

Wilt didn't wilt under the pressure! (Sry, haaad to)

And this was in Columbus! 

Add that to the almost comeback in the Orange Bowl and that's clutch on big stages, leading comebacks late in the game.

Speight's ceiling may be low, but his floor is impenetrable bedrock

MGoStrength

August 10th, 2017 at 8:02 AM ^

IMO he was good enough to win The Game in '16, but the o-line wasn't.  He's not good enough to carry a team on his back.  But, he's good enough to make a few plays, manage the game, show leadership, etc. when the rest of the team is good.  We're just missing the o-line right now and we don't have a QB that's good enough to beath OSU without it.

MGoStrength

August 9th, 2017 at 3:34 PM ^

So, it's seems that Speight is pretty good.  This I am happy about.  With a good defense, a few weapons on offense, and a good o-line, he is good enough to win it all probably.  So far, we've had all of those minus the o-line.  Peters will get his 2 years and will have more than enough time to do his thing assuming he's better than the younger guys behind him.

 

That does leave me somewhat frustrated as the question that remains...is good enough going to beat Ohio State?  I have a feeling our defense will be almost as good this season as it was last.  The question is has either our offensive line improved enough or will Speight improve enough to compensate for a less than stellar o-line this year?  My hunch is they still fall short in 2017 and 2018 sets up for another version of 2016 which could go either way.  Hopefully 2018 goes UM's way this time.

blue90

August 9th, 2017 at 3:40 PM ^

Comes down to Harbuagh, who I'd say most of us trust.  Peters seems on fire but I don't think he'll take Wilton's spot.  12 games of experience and a year is a huge barrier between no games and a year of a red-shirt.  I think we're looking too hard at this.  Wilton did pretty damn good for a majority of his games, he did poorly after injuring his shoulder (which seriously affects throwing).

Also, unless it is crystal clear, Harbaugh is going to say there is competition, it doesn't negatively effect anyone...it makes Wilton, Peters, and John try even hardrt which is exactly what we want.  If Harbaugh says Wilton is the starter, then everyone takes a deep breath and takes it easy which none of us would want to see.  Baring a gigantic melt-down (getting seriosuly injured and Peters comes in and fires TD after TD), Wilton is the QB for the next two years and will end up being pretty damn good.

JWG Wolverine

August 9th, 2017 at 3:44 PM ^

Impressive work and great insight. This is an interesting conversation but as others said, it won't really matter in the end as we will get a feel for our starting quarterback throughout the season and based on JH's decisions.

socalwolverine1

August 9th, 2017 at 4:31 PM ^

Let's face it, the whole team and coaching staff went AWOL in that game, and with it went the eastern conference title, the B1G championship, and a spot in the FBS playoff.  Effing Penn State, who we absolutely humiliated to the point that their fans wanted Franklin's head on a pike, jumped us in the standings and never looked back. Iowa literally resurrected Penn State's program when we crapped the bed at Kinnick.

UM Griff

August 9th, 2017 at 5:43 PM ^

To bury these horrible memories further down in our minds. We have been very good at reliving the agony - it is one of the reasons I joined this impressive group.

I am cautiously optimistic that this year's team can eclipse last years performances. Here's to making many great memories during the (almost here!!!!!) season.

YoOoBoMoLloRoHo

August 9th, 2017 at 9:16 PM ^

The O was anemic that evening, but Speight missed 4 deep balls that likely would have swung the outcome. Darboh had a frosh corner beat by 5 yards and Speight under threw a 30-yd pass to erase a 50-70 TD play. Horrible throw for a B1G QB.

Effing Kinnick every time and effing Speight that night.

mgowill

August 9th, 2017 at 10:25 PM ^

"The wave of momentum that Michigan QB Wilton Speight was riding into this primetime encounter with the Hawkeyes ended up in a wipeout. He had a disastrous passing performance, particularly when trying to push the ball down the field. There were opportunities for Speight to make plays down the field on both Iowa cornerbacks, but an array of overthrown, late and underthrown deep balls saw the Michigan quarterback complete just one of his 13 passes aimed 10 or more yards down the field — a 29-yard gain to Jehu Chesson. Two of those deep shots were so poor that they allowed beaten Hawkeye defenders to recover and make a play on the ball. If even one of Speight’s deep shots connects with a receiver, the Wolverines could still be among the ranks of the unbeaten teams in college football."

Source:

https://www.profootballfocus.com/news/college-football-michigan-iowa-gr…

991GT3

August 9th, 2017 at 5:31 PM ^

saying that all three QB's are equal and fall practice will determine who will start, it's an indication that the coaching staff is aware of Speight's problems. Normally, coaches will say that the prior year starting QB is his job to lose.

The reality is Speight despite being a competitor is not a winning QB. If the game is on the line, he is not the person you want handling QB duties. If we lose to Florida (more than likely ending playoff aspirations), it will be four loses in five games. A QB change is in order. Groom Peters for the future by letting him play with then young offensive group around him.