WK 2 WR stats and Random Comments

Submitted by SFBayAreaBlue on
Welcome to BlueSeoul's Week 2 Diary. aka "A view from afar" (sorry, too corny).

Before we get started, I just want to say "WOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!" I know it's thursday, but that's how good that game made me feel! Ok, now lets get to it.

STATS

As always, small sample sizes screw around with efficiency stats. But as the numbers accumulate, these will be more telling. So please have patience.

Category 1: Yards/TA is the total receiving yardage divided by the number of times a receiver is "thrown at".  The idea here is that if a receiver can't get open, or if he drops the ball, his stats should reflect that in some way. "Thrown at" can be subjective if more than one receiver is in the area. But usually the primary receiver can be deduced based on alignment, coverage, routes, and who the QB chews out after the play.  In extreme cases of throw aways or intentional groundings, no receiver is assigned.  But if the QB throws it at the feet of a RB who can't get open on a screen, that still counts.

Category 2: YAC/TA is the amount of yards after the catch divided by the number of times thrown at.  This measure is especially important for slot receivers and running backs who can make a lot of easy catches near or behind the line of scrimmage, but then have to make something happen with their feet.

Category 3: C Eff stands for Conversion Efficiency.  I've made a change to this metric to reduce the amount of negative numbers.  The formula is :



This isn't really an efficiency in the strictest sense of the word (more of an average score), but positive numbers here indicate that a receiver is doing enough to continue moving the chains and collecting first downs.  On first down, a receiver only needs to get 1/4 of the remaining yards to go to get a positive score.  But on 4th down, if the receiver doesn't convert, there's no more chances, and he gets a big old negative for coming up one yard short.  If it's 3rd and 8 and you only get 5 yards, that's negative.  But if you get 7, even though you didn't convert, you made it easier to convert on 4th down, so the score is positive.

Category 4: R Eff stands for Redzone Efficiency.  This is just the number of TD's scored in the redzone divided by the number of times thrown at in the redzone (I count the redzone as the 20 yardline and closer, some people like the 25).  This number is important for TE, FB, and bigger WR.  Every team needs at least one person who can score high on this metric.  Otherwise you're doomed to lots of bad angle field goal attempts. (unless your running game is awesome)

Chart? Chart.
PlayerYards/TAYAC/TAC EffR Eff
Koger7.80 3.60 3.15 1.00
Savoy8.00 0.33 7.33 0.00
Grady (19)1.50 3.50 -2.63 NA
Stonum10.20 1.80 5.00 NA
Mathews7.33 0.11 1.83 1.00
Carlos9.50 10.25 4.63 NA
Odoms5.67 1.33 0.50 NA
#9 rudolph9.50 8.25 6.75 NA
#3 Floyd10.92 2.00 6.83 0.50
#23 Tate7.19 2.06 3.69 0.50
#5 Allen8.00 7.67 2.58 NA

I included ND's top four for comparison's sake. The high numbers across the board for Yards/TA show what a wild game it was.  Another thing that stands out is Carlos Brown's ability to get yards coming out of the backfield.  Allen and Rudolph both got big chunks of yards on screens leading to their high YAC/TA .  Mathews kind of had another rough day, (better than last week) but BOY DID HE COME THROUGH WHEN IT MATTERED!



Now that's a guy who looks like he's having fun on the sidelines!

It's still just week 2, but here's the Year to date stats.

PlayerYards/TAYAC/TAC EffR Eff
Koger9.00 3.13 4.97 1.00
Savoy7.00 2.60 4.65 0.00
Grady (19)2.83 3.33 -0.63 NA
Stonum8.50 1.50 3.75 NA
Mathews5.67 1.00 0.02 1.00
Carlos10.20 9.80 5.20 NA
Odoms5.50 3.25 0.75 NA
Hemingway17.33 6.67 13.25 NA

Can't really draw conclusions from this yet, other than that Grady has not been much of a factor in the passing game (he got some good runs against western michigan).  This may be due to ND's scheme cutting off our bubble screens.

Our running game has been good enough where we haven't really needed to throw much in the Redzone.  But Koger is still 2 for 2 on the year. 

You can see the loss of Hemingway really hurt during the ND game.  Not just on catching the long ball, but also on bubble screens and just plain fighting for yards after a catch.  Just like rushing stats, you want a YAC/TA above 3, and closer to 4.  But it's not as important for outside receivers.

And now for the random comments:

  • I'm really beginning to hate the 3 addidas stripes on the back of the coaches shirts.  I keep seeing them during many different games and they remind me of nazi barcodes.
  • A Duke DB had back to back pick 6's.  16 seconds apart!  I've never seen that before.
  • The big ten had a bunch of squeakers.  Only PSU, ILL, and Iowa won by more than a TD.  The margins of victory in the other games were 3, 4, 2, 3, 4, 7, 3, 2.  Exciting football, but not real great for the conference's image.  However, the conference is still 18-4 and basically tied with the pac 10 for the best non-conf record.
  • USC won, but did not "kill" tosu as predicted here last week.  I chalk this up to homefield advantage.
  • But that also makes me worry about our trip to MSU as it's our first road game (some, CMU did just beat them there). 
  • And it makes me think ND will get some bogus calls and help from the crowd to beat MSU this week. 
  • THANK GOD, they didn't play that Chesney crap country music this week! At least I didn't hear it, if they played it.
  • The blue block "M" looks awesome from the aerial shots!  Way to go students.  Now if the alumni could just figure out that there's a huge block M painted on the eastern side of the stadium...
  • I thought GERG made excellent halftime adjustments!
  • Clausen STILL can't handle pressure.  Every ND opponent from here on out should just blitz the hell out of him. 
  • UCLA looks to be greatly improved too.  I hope they upset USC.  
  • I'm loving that a 4 gigabyte torrent only takes me 20 minutes to download! 
  • With no bye weeks, we really need to use the next two weeks as an opportunity to get healthy.  Conference play is going to be a grind.  Thank god for a well placed delaware state matchup.
  • It's really hard to keep my expectations down after that game.  I have to remind myself that 7-5 and a bowl game would still be awesome. (even if I am dreaming of 10-2)
That's all for this week.  GO BLUE, beat EMU!

Comments

willywill9

September 17th, 2009 at 6:47 PM ^

Excellent work. Not to take away from the more significant chunk of your analysis, I want to comment on the block M.

While it looks terrific, i think it would look better if it were more centered.

bouje

September 17th, 2009 at 8:42 PM ^

bad day... Looking at the metrics he looks like he didn't have a "rough day" as you suggest. A guy like Matthews is never going to have a lot of YAC/TA because he's not a shifty bubble screen guy, he's a possession receiver. He had a touchdown catch and was positive in all of your metrics. I don't really see how this is a "rough game"

steviebrownfor…

September 17th, 2009 at 10:23 PM ^

Just wondering if anyone has any insight as to whether or not we will see Terrence Robinson or Roy Roundtree or James Rogers or Je'Ron Stokes or any other receivers who have a few guys ahead of them.
Lots of practice hype surrounding Roundtree, so i'm most surprised i haven't seen him get meaningful pt.

The King of Belch

September 18th, 2009 at 12:26 AM ^

You have what appears to be a quadratic equation to determine [what you are determining]. I both love AND hate you for that.

chitownblue2

September 18th, 2009 at 12:30 AM ^

The problem with this is that it counts receiver A catching a gimme and falling over just the same as it counts Mathews making a one handed grab over a defender on a 40 yard pass. Needs tweaking.

SFBayAreaBlue

September 18th, 2009 at 4:30 AM ^

interesting. Maybe in a wholistic "receiver rating" type thing that could be added in. But it would be very subjective. Koger's catch last week also would fit. I tried to make these stats focused along particular dimensions. I think you could put a point system on brian's receiver chart to get a "hands" metric. I'll think about adding that.

chitownblue2

September 18th, 2009 at 11:00 AM ^

Well - this whole thing is dicey - how do you divide the WR performance from the QB performance? More accurate throws improve this number as it would increase the catch rate and, possibly, the YAC metric. The same guy playing WR for Threet/Sheridan and Forcier would grade entirely differently, despite their own quality being constant.

B Ready

September 18th, 2009 at 1:31 PM ^

This is true to an extent, and no one stat will tell the whole story. But, at least in the NFL, catch rate is pretty consistent for receivers regardless of the QB. I imagine that translates pretty well to college, as well.

Perhaps there should be a category that looks at Matthews difficult catches, but there should also be a category that looks at the amount of incomplete passes thrown his way.

Jivas

September 19th, 2009 at 10:39 AM ^

at Football Outsiders they don't count throwaways or clock-killing spikes (or hail mary attempts), so the catch percentage stat that they use is a little "cleaner".

It still doesn't entirely separate the quality of each pass thrown, but with a 16-game NFL season, the hope is that the sample size is big enough to smooth that out for each receiver on an individual team (given that they're catching passes from the same QBs). It's not perfect, but it's a good stat.

MichIOE01

September 18th, 2009 at 8:37 AM ^

While it looks good now, we learned from last year that the only thing the MSM cares about it their bowl record. Pac 10 sucked it up OOC regular season, but had a great bowl season, and look at which was focused on.

STAUDACHERBLUE

September 18th, 2009 at 9:24 AM ^

Did you watch the game live? If not I host every week on the south side of the river. I have great internet and stream it to my TV from 360 if I don't get it on my satellite. EMU is on this weekend if you need.

saveferris

September 18th, 2009 at 10:13 AM ^

It really highlights how much better Warren fared covered Tate versus the tough day Cissoko had trying to contain Floyd, although I don't know if there is a cornerback playing in college that can hope to shut that beast down.

Irish

September 18th, 2009 at 10:53 AM ^

Clausen STILL can't hand pressure. Every ND opponent from here on out should just blitz the hell out of him.

I have seen this posted a couple times and I really don't understand it. Can you elaborate?

The only time I saw him with pressure in his face was during the statue of liberty play and he took the hit to complete the play. He didn't play perfectly but he didn't look like he wasn't handling the pressure.

ChilhowieBlue

September 18th, 2009 at 2:59 PM ^

It appeared as though if Michigan got within five feet of clausen, he'd just chuck it out of bounds. That could be the "pressure" the OP is referring to. It seemed that he had a lot of time in the pocket, but when Michigan defenders did get semi-close, he would throw it way out of bounds as opposed to scrambling, etc.

Just an observation, I could be wrong.

Irish

September 18th, 2009 at 3:35 PM ^

I remember his first two incompletions were both long which came off as him being jittery early in the game. In the 2nd half he threw at the feet of the receiver in a screen they were attempting to set up, which seemed on purpose since the defense was ready to blow it up.

I guess it just depends on how someone interprets his actions.

SFBayAreaBlue

September 18th, 2009 at 5:32 PM ^

check 6:57 of the 3rd quarter, 2nd and 11.
2nd and 8 at 2:42 of the 3rd qt.
and then 3rd and 8 after the timeout.
1st and 10 at 13:11 of the 4th
then 2nd and 10 after that, (looked catchable, but the ball hung up on him, allowing the DB to get back in the play)
2nd and 2 at 6:55 of the 4th qt
1st and 10 at 6:23
2nd and 10 at 2:24, again the ball hangs up
and the killer on 3rd and ten which gave us the ball back FTW.

He did make about 3 or 4 good throws on the blitz, but against 9 bad ones. If I'm a DC, I take those odds.

Irish

September 18th, 2009 at 10:54 PM ^

I didn't even notice the typo,
thanks I will take a look at those plays....alright
-6:57 is the screen we were going to setup but the defense would have dropped for a loss
-2nd and 8 is a designed quick pass, the pressure isn't a problem, receiver dropping the pass is
-3rd and 8 yeah he throws the ball up, not sure if that was the hot route but UM sent 8 rushers against 5, he holds onto the ball any longer and its a sack. I have no problem with this
-13:11, despite the pressure he doesn't hurry his throw and hits the receiver over his shoulder, in stride and in his hands, but its dropped. The receiver doesn't slow, and it would have been 6 points had he held on.
-6:55, bad pass reminiscent of his incompletions in the the 1st quarter. The pressure comes late and I don't think he even saw it till after the pass. I doubt it was the reason for the incompletion, seems more like he threw the pass seeing the interference and hoped to draw the flag.
-6:23, Almost the samething, he stares down Floyd the entire route but leads him too far. The pressure is there late, I don't think he saw it till after throwing the pass.
-2:23, Very similar to the 3rd and 8 above, maybe that is his hot route? This time the pressure gets there much later and the RB is in position to chip the one undefended rusher. Pass was very well thrown, maybe it should have gone to the other shoulder? but otherwise it hits both the defender and the WR in the hands.
-2:20, He does have a defender coming in right in front of him so I am sure he sees him. That may have been enough to force the incompletion. But looking back through the previous drives ND hit that pass 3 times in a row with the same amount of pressure.

The common denominator seems to be receivers dropping passes more than defensive pressure up front, IMHO.