538 Article on Impact of Transfer QBs
538 - a statistics based website covering politics, sports, and other topics - posted an interesting article on Transfer QBs (cover photo featuring Shea) and measured their impact by comparing QB ratings at the old school vs. new school (min. 50 pass attempts)
Takeaways:
- Significant rise in the number of QB transfers (no surprise); as many as 8 of the top 25 could be starting transfer QBs
- Alabama (Tua & Hurts) and Georgia (Fromm and Fields) successfully recruited QBs for 4 out of the top 5 college football teams to start the season
- Michigan wins / losses in QB transfer market -
- Positives: Rudock (+12); Shea (+9); Speight (-6 at UCLA)
- Negatives: Mallett (+52 at Arkansas) - 4th highest difference recorded; Threet (+28 at ASU); O'Korn (-18)
August 22nd, 2019 at 2:44 PM ^
Didn't think I'd see Steven Threet's name on this blog in consecutive days, but here we are.
Will be interesting to see how the trend progresses this year with the big names. I think Bryant at Mizzou will have the best season of the bunch.
August 22nd, 2019 at 2:47 PM ^
If he shows up tomorrow, it will officially be a "Triple-Threet"
August 22nd, 2019 at 3:03 PM ^
I just got off the phone with Steven Threet's mother and she is upset with Harbaugh that the NCAA didn't grant Threet's waiver for immediate eligibility at ASU in 2009.
Valenti is roaring about it on his radio show right now.
August 22nd, 2019 at 3:12 PM ^
The article seemed to paint Harbaugh as salty over the transfer system, despite benefiting from it. I was disappointed it didn't mention his support for the mulligan rule.
August 23rd, 2019 at 1:20 AM ^
That. Plus many other strange ideas in the article make it a 2/10.
What does NFL qb stability have to do with anything in college?
”The optimal approach is find an elite talent and develop him, as Clemson has done with Trevor Lawrence and Alabama with Tua Tagovailoa.” True freshman who won the title game.
They mention the *last two Heisman Trophy winners* as an aside as if it doesn’t disprove the entire premise.
August 22nd, 2019 at 3:21 PM ^
My problem with the article is that it supposedly seeks to measure the impact of the transfer QBs, but does so by stating how much better or worse they are in their new school vs. their old school. It shows Patterson pretty far down the list, but that was because he was already pretty dang good before he got to Michigan.
The impact to Michigan, though, was tremendous. Having Patterson start instead of Peters or freshman McCaffrey was huge for Michigan. I'd argue he was a big positive impact to Michigan, but the metrics the article uses to measure the impact simply doesn't reflect the impact that the transfer has on the new school.
August 22nd, 2019 at 4:48 PM ^
I was about to post the same thing. Seems like they're measuring the school's impact on the player, not the player's impact on the school.
If you wanted to measure impact of transfers wouldn't you want to compare how the transfer QB played relative to the person they were replacing? I'm not sure how you model that though, since it varies by situation. Patterson was a huge upgrade over the previous year if you compare him to O'Korn/Speight/Peters. Hurts probably won't be a huge upgrade over Murray, but might be a huge upgrade over whoever else they would have started instead.
August 22nd, 2019 at 5:27 PM ^
Agree that it is just one data point and a point which can be influenced by a lot of factors (mainly the quality of the offense you are transferring into). Also, agree that it leaves out other factors which are admittedly harder to quantify (i.e. how much of an improvement did Shea represent vs. 2nd year of Peters?)
You could make the analysis more thorough by turning it into a regression, where you look at factors such as previous passer's QB rating, W-L record of transfer year and year prior, QB rating for next passer, etc. - but overall a good starting point. I also can't argue with the results as Mayfield, Murray and Wilson were arguably the most impactful transfers of the last 20 years - and the methodology 538 uses also validates that.
August 22nd, 2019 at 5:57 PM ^
But they weren't starting from the same point. Patterson (141.22) had a higher rating in his pre-transfer year than than any of them (Mayfield - 127.66, Murray - 109.19; Wilson - 135.47). Yes, each of their improvements was higher than Patterson's, but I'm not trying to argue that Patterson is better than any of them. I'm saying that if the premise of the article is about the impact that a transfer has on the new program, then the improvement/regression of the transfer is not a very good measure.
From the article:
But what gets lost in the drama of the quarterback carousel is that these transfers are rarely a magic solution. Yes, Mayfield and Murray were the two most successful transfer quarterbacks this century, based on passer ratings.4 But schools turning to a transfer to transform their program often end up disappointed.
If you're measuring whether the transfers are a "magic solution", you should base that on team success, and where the team would have been without the transfer. A team could theoretically have a transfer with flat or even lower passer ratings that makes the difference between 9-3 and 12-0 if they were really good at their previous stop. Yes, I think you'll generally find a correlation between QB improvement and school success, but that's not causation.
August 22nd, 2019 at 3:48 PM ^
FIFY:
- SEC Bagmen successfully recruited QBs for 4 out of the top 5 college football teams to start the season.
August 22nd, 2019 at 4:44 PM ^
Learn to beat them... or join them... pouting is pointless!
August 22nd, 2019 at 6:47 PM ^
Oh, sorry. I forgot it was "no joke Thursday" on the blog. Thanks for reminding me.
August 22nd, 2019 at 7:41 PM ^
As mentioned above - coaches take the transfer QB because they expect the transfer to improve the team. QBs transfer to improve their situation. The stats mentioned in the article do a poor job of representing either.
August 22nd, 2019 at 7:41 PM ^
As mentioned above - coaches take the transfer QB because they expect the transfer to improve the team. QBs transfer to improve their situation. The stats mentioned in the article do a poor job of representing either.
August 22nd, 2019 at 8:59 PM ^
So Murray, Mayfield and Wilson transferred from teams with avg. OLines at best to ones that were vastly improved - plus additional weapons. QBR can't be the only metric used to tell whatever story they thought they were trying to.
Did find it interesting to show the ramp up numbers in transfers every half decade for 20 years.
And also..... wow Michigan is on that list 6 times. Twice that of a handful of the next closest schools. Shows how chaotic things got when The Horror started. Not to mention 2 of our top QB recruits in their classes were switched to different positions in that time span (with DG switching back).