Data-Mining the HenneChart

Submitted by Seth on

or

How Tate Stacks Up Against M QBs of 2005-2008

Update 10/22: Lots of changes. Reorganized. New Sheridan charting added. New, better metric proposed. Now fat-free!

Note: links all open in a separate window/tab, in case you were afraid of having to find your place again.


[Editor's note: bumped to front page for holy crap reasons.]

This is a collection of data inspired by Coach Schiano's brilliant new visualization of the Henne/HenneMallett/ThreetSheridammit/UseTheForcier Chart.

19First, kudos, thanks, plusses, and a dozen sacrificed bulls go out to Coach Schiano. This is the most excited I've been about some new type of Michigan coverage since I read my first UFR.

I hope he doesn't mind if I go back and try to play around with the same stuff.

I went and made my own Excel spreadsheet (available here) to see if I could visualize some of the things we've been talking about here.

I replicated Coach Schiano's results (tossing out the screen metric).

One thing that stuck out right away, I think, is that the introduction of the "Marginal" metric (first discussed after FOOTBALL ARMAGEDDON in 2006 but not implemented until mid-2008) kind of hurts the QBs functioning under it. Erstwhile "catchables" for Henne/Mallett were discounted for late '08 through '09 QBs. In other words, performances before last year's Penn State game, especially in accuracy, might be kind of overrated.

Also, there were a number of games not charted during this period. These include Delaware State '09 (and high school stats, for much the same reason); Ball State '06 (Comcast was blamed); all bowl games;* and last year's Ohio State game, which was only UFR'ed under a shadow Bolshevik government, and thus cannot be trusted.

* (a UFR for the 2005 Alamo Bowl was provided, but since the entirety of that UFR was, literally, "Screw 2005!", I was unable to get any passing info from it)

Part I: Where We Do It By Downfield Success Rating

The metric we've been using, gleaned from UFRs, is Downfield Success Rating. This divides the Dead-on, Catchable, and Marginal balls against all downfield (read: "Pressure excluced") attempts.

BEST 5 GAMES BY A QB

SeasonQuarterbackGameOpponent W/LDOCAMAINBRTABAPRATTDSR
2007HENNE7Purdue W320N/A111122985.2%
2007HENNE6Eastern MichiganW416N/A101212583.3%
2005HENNE11Ohio StateL627N/A1141N/A4082.5%
2008SHERIDAN10Minnesota W2204321003278.6%
2005HENNE5Michigan StateW425N/A1331N/A3778.4%

Sheridan's Minnesota miracle looks even more miraculous now! Note, however, there were only 2 Dead-On throws, and 2 bad reads. Also, just one throwaway, no batted balls, and no pressure. That's the O-line and running game's fault.

In other coaching-related-results here, Henne's 2005 Ohio State game was scrumtrulescent by any metric, except apparently not good enough for DeBord to use the passing game to put the game out of reach. Not that I'm bitter...

WORST 5 GAMES

SeasonQuarterbackGameOpponent W/LDOCAMAINBRTABAPRATTDSR
2008SHERIDAN11Northwestern L092972002933.3%
2008THREET9Purdue L172722212438.1%
2008THREET4Wisconsin W115N/A937213843.2%
2007MALLETT11Wisconsin L313N/A1162123844.4%
2009FORCIER6Iowa L191523222545.5%

Sheridan's putrid, I-Survived-That-Game-Patch-Inducing game against Northwestern is, unsurprisingly, at the top. In fact, it may even trump several of my 7th grade sexual experiences in the category of worst-executed-thing-ever-done-by-man.

But I'm getting off topic. Note that Forcier's Iowa game actually made this hall of shame. So RR's pulling him for that game may be excusable. However, it is still my considered position that even with shoulder/weather/concussion/bad game, had Forcier been given that last drive, he would have pulled himself back to respectability.
Though 2008 dominated the Top 5, if you look at the Top 10 we get Threet v. Miami (NTM), three Malletts (Min, PSU, NW) and Henne's all-things-good-in-the-world-destroying 2007 game against Ohio State.

BEST CAREER PERFORMANCE

RankQuarterbackDOCAMAINBRTABAPRATTDSR
1HENNE163417N/A1395549354189967.6%
2FORCIER1797919151921619467.5%
3SHERIDAN22961293006156.4%
4THREET16977452124111123252.8%
5MALLETT1658N/A38171310715948.7%
6ROBINSON155433002137.5%

Umm...waitaminute, Sheridan better than Mallett?!? Okay, I can see that since Mallett played like an idiot and Sheridan's Minnesota outlier was the bulk of his stats. The ball actually left his hand about 5 seconds before this shot was taken.But Threet? No way, right?

Right.

I think we're finding that Downfield Success Rate isn't all it's cracked up to be.

We're also finding out, as suggested in earlier posts, that the ability to run downfield is actually a hindrance to these stats, since it charts "Throw-aways" essentially the same as it does "Innacurates." Except a Denard Robinson "throwaway" could be a 20-yard juketacular.

The other problem I'm seeing is that it doesn't make a difference between catchable and Dead-Ons. Threet had 16 Dead-On balls thrown; Sheridan had two.

Lesson: DSR is flawed.

Part II: Weighting DSR

So...new metric. I don't have data to fix the run-away/throw-away problem. But I can rate each figure, thus:

DO: x2
CA: x1
MA: /2
IN: x1
BR: x2
TA: /3
BA: x1
PR: 0

Marginals get counted for you, but only half. Throw-aways get counted against you, but only a third.* Bad Reads and Dead Ons double. This, by the way, sucks for RR-era QBs, who have a lot more reading to do. Then again, they're in a better offense, so I'm letting that offset.

* I thought of removing them altogether, but think about it: when we run a passing play, and Denard jets rather than sit in the pocket to let the play develop, is that a good thing? TA's are a mini-neg, but a neg nonetheless.


So, weighting things...

BEST SEASON BY A QB (by weighted DSR)

QuarterbackDOCAMAINBRTABAATTDSRDSR (w)
2006 Henne5016803621171232771.7%73.69%
2009 Forcier17979191519219467.5%70.27%
2005 Henne9111405623241732563.1%69.98%
2007 Henne22135047118624768.6%69.74%
2008 Sheridan557619119211060.2%60.34%
2008 Threet169764521241123152.8%55.46%
2007 Mallett165803817131015948.7%51.04%
2009 Robinson15543302137.5%46.34%

TOP TEN PERFORMANCES
SeasonQuarterbackGameOpponent ResultDOCAMAINBRTABAATTDSR (w)
2006HENNE5MinnesotaW513020302488.46%
2005HENNE11Ohio StateL627011414087.97%
2007HENNE6Eastern MichiganW416010122587.80%
2005HENNE3Eastern MichiganW122040001886.67%
2007HENNE7Purdue W320011112985.71%
2005HENNE10IndianaW711030212484.27%
2007HENNE8Illinois W515040112982.42%
2006HENNE4WisconsinW516021312981.25%
2009FORCIER1Western Michigan W214121202579.86%
2005HENNE1Northern IllinoisW194052213379.75%

Sheridan's dink-tacular Toledo game is omitted. Sheridan basically threw little outs and things got adventurous anytime the throw went more than 10 yards, so little dinky passes for negative yardage stacked up and gave him a ludicrously good-looking day (good for 9th best in UFR history) against Toledo, which we all know was not anything of the sort.

Lots of Henne. Never beat Ohio State, but not for lack of trying.It speaks well of Forcier that his debut performance was somewhere in between what Henne did to MAC teams as a sophomore, and what he did to Wisconsin in a Big Ten Opener. Of course, Henne got two of these by beating up on EMU, and another was a particularly bad Indiana team. But that sophomore year performance against Ohio State is now second.

Let's go back to that UFR. Reading the first few drives gives us a few exempli gratia as to why Henne fills the top of the charts:

1st drive, 3rd and 5:
"A wobbly, ill thrown route that does make it to Manningham. Danielson points out a solid blitz pickup from Hart. (CA)"
1st drive, 4th and 1:
"The slant is there. Henne throws a bullet that's too high to be caught…no reason to fire this so hard. Just get it complete. Later, on replay, Danielson highlights the coverage from Youboty, which is uncalled holding. Beaten by Avant's outside feint, Youboty is forced to grab him outside the shoulder and give a heavy yank that throws the route off just enough for the incompletion. The ref looking at it is shielded by Avant's body, though--really hard for him to make that call. As it was, this is a great play by Youboty to skirt the edge of a call when he knows he's beaten and force the turnover on downs, but it's still holding. (CA minus the penalty)"
6th drive, 2nd and 9:
"Avant runs a deep corner route; Henne's throw is a little bit too far to the inside, allowing Salley to come up and make a play on the ball. A nice play from Salley but Henne gave him the opportunity to make it (as is usually the case on routes like that... can't stop a perfectly thrown ball). (CA... marginal, close to IN.)"
8th drive, 1st and 10:
"A ton of time. This one is thrown behind Manningham but the corner is too busy attempting to recover and does not locate the ball to make a play on it; Manningham makes the catch. (CA)"
These four plays would today have likely been classified as "MA" for "marginal." Barring a total redux of back UFRs for such things, I think we're stuck overrating Henne in posterity. On the other hand, ranking this among the top-ever games by a Michigan quarterback may not be that far off, considering some of the comments in that UFR:
"Drive Notes: Touchdown, 7-9, 5 min 2nd Q. A ten play, 36 yard drive… impressive or totally unsustainable going the length of the field against the Buckeye D? Er, the latter, as the rest of this game demonstrate. Still much competence displayed in portions here, especially by Henne, who looks like the guy we were all drooling over preseason."
Though execution errors on receivers and penalties (called and uncalled) did their fair share, the UFR of that game is clear: a 'Really Fucking On' day by Henne, and Ohio State's clear preference for loading the box to stop Hart, were not enough to deter the DeBordean School of Throwing Rock. When in the next 10-15 years Buckfards are witnessed heckling at Miami Dolphins games, Henne can blame DeBord.

Back to math, the Henne performance on here which receives the sternest look is that of Northern Illinois in the first-ever UFR, which you might expect would be buggy. Brian gave Henne a record 19 "Dead-On"s for that game. This persisted through the early 2005 season (if you divide DOs by DO+CA+MA for each game, the first four games of 2005 are 1 through 4, meaning Brian was WAY too liberal with DO for that game).

If you take the position that UFR during the MAC nummy-nums of 2005 was just a statistical fetus, the next down the list was Henne's performance in FOOTBALL ARMAGEDDON, and the 2005 Michigan State game. Sheridan's Minnesota game is dropped to 13.

Still, there's a definite problem here with the 2005 statistics. Either Henne couldn't miss early his sophomore year, or Brian was too kind with the ratings early on in the UFR process. I am going to assume the latter.

WORST PERFORMANCES

SeasonQuarterbackGameOpponent ResultDOCAMAINBRTABAPRATTDSR (w)
12008SHERIDAN11Northwestern L092972002929.70%
22008THREET9Purdue L172722212442.25%
32008THREET2Miami (NTM) W060410201342.86%
42007MALLETT11Wisconsin L31301162123843.51%
52008THREET4Wisconsin W1150937213846.79%
62009FORCIER6Iowa L191523222548.94%
72007HENNE12Ohio StateL11301211043251.14%
82007MALLETT4Penn State W3120636123354.55%
92007HENNE2OregonL1130631032754.88%
102007MALLETT5Northwestern W250411111555.10%

On No. 7: Fie, FIE! upon the treacherous, lecherous Angry-Chad-Henne-Hating-God who hast tacken from our back of quarter his shoulder of Buckeye-smiting on this, his day of redeption. Of all the problems I might have with the universe and the way the space-time continuum has unfolded, this day still rankles me.

By weighted DSR, Sheridan's Northwestern game is even deeper into my middle school love life. 29.7 percent is off-the-charts hideous.

The rest of the Top 10 juggled but minorly. Almost every extended Mallett appearance for Michigan makes the list.

An important note here is that even among the worst performances of the last five season, 4 of 10 are still wins. Threet put in some awful games in 2008, but yet of those three appearances, we won two. And though in his limited sample for that game Threet was God-awful, our offense was more than good enough on the one loss (Purdue) to win it. The reason: the offense.

If we're talking about coaching wins despite bad QB play, forget the 2007 Northwestern performance by Mallett -- Henne had almost twice the attempts in that game, and the offensive strategy was so bad it made Brian erupt in disgust in its aftermath. As for Penn State '07, which was a defensive win and offensive nightmare. No points for DeBord.

But RR? The Miami (NTM) win last year is telling. In Brian's post-UFR discussion, he postulated that this performance was historically bad:
"Dude, Tacopants is going to catch 400 balls this year.

No, because even he’s watching these sail over his head, and he can be whatever height he wants to be because he is made of dreams and snails and puppy dog tails.

But seriously, folks, this may have been the worst quarterbacked game in the modern era(defined as Moeller forward) of Michigan football."
And he was probably right, since Northwestern hadn't happened yet. Yet we WON :) And this is because:
"Under Rodriguez, Michigan either has a quarterback just take off—easy to do if you’re a fast guy and even functional if you’re Threet, apparently—or throws a bubble screen to a guy like Odoms and hopes he gets a block."
And against Wisconsin we won. And against Purdue, the offense was still enough to win but the defense was D.C.-firingly awful. And against Northwestern, with the worst quarterbacking job by a guy not trying to lose in history, we had the ball down a touchdown on our own 42 with a minute to go.

Point: offensive idiocy by DeBord cost Michigan an OHIO STATE win on a day that we got Peyton Manning-on-his-best-day-level quarterbacking, while offensive genius by Magee/Rodriguez gave Michigan two wins and kept us in position for three more on days of historic QB incompetence.

Sorry, this is supposed to be about the quarterbacks.

When we calculate the careers of our QBs, it should again be no surprise that:

BEST CAREER

QuarterbackDOCAMAINBRTABAATTDSR (w)
1HENNE163417013955493589971.21%
2FORCIER17979191519219470.27%
3SHERIDAN557619119211060.34%
4THREET169764521241123155.46%
5MALLETT165803817131015951.04%
6ROBINSON15543302146.34%

In other words, just a few games into his freshman year, Forcier is already just under the sophomore-to-senior performance of Henne. And that's still including Henne's inflated Dead-On gimmes from the first half of 2005.

Obviously, Tate was better at running.It's also interesting to note the Forcier/Threet comparison. Tate is now 1 or 2 games away from Threet's number of attempts, but already thrown one more Dead-On and the same amount of catchables. In bad reads, Tate has 15, while Threet had 21 -- a slight but not huge improvement. Threet had way more batted balls (11) than Tate (2), which I think is a function of Forcier rolling out a lot more.

The real difference: Incompletes. Of those balls that weren't bad reads, throwaways or batted, just 12 percent of Forcier's throws ended up uncatchable, while for Threet that number was 25.6 percent.

Part III: Components?

So maybe what we really have here is an accuracy statistic, not a quarterback rating. So let's do straight-up accuracy.

Of balls thrown in the direction of open-receiver-type objects (those charted as DO, CA, MA or IN), here's your QBs in percent that made it there:

ACCURACY RATING:


QuarterbackThrowsAccuracy%DO
1FORCIER14286.62%13.82%
2HENNE71980.67%28.10%
3SHERIDAN8778.16%7.35%
4ROBINSON1573.33%9.09%
5THREET16472.56%13.45%
6MALLETT11266.07%21.62%

I guess it's true: Forcier = Accuracy. Sheridan is third and within striking range of Henne (though with far fewer dead-ons), perhaps justifying RR's strange confidence in him. But before you try to screw your memory toward making Sheridan as a less-on-target Henne, I warn you now this is just a sampling error; Sheridan still sucked.

The other side of the coin: decision-making. Your QBs in percent of Attempts that result in Bad Reads:


QuarterbackBR/Att
1HENNE6.12%
2FORCIER7.73%
3THREET9.09%
4SHERIDAN10.00%
5MALLETT10.69%
6ROBINSON14.29%

Couple things of note here. For one, we see that any ground Henne may have lost to Forcier on accuracy/finding Tacopants is made up for with decision-making. On the other hand, Forcier is a freshman, so that mark is almost certain to improve in years to come. Already it is firmly ahead of Threet, and way beyond Mallett at Tate's age.

So now we have two good statistics, one measuring accuracy and the other decision-making, which can be used to qualify a Quarterback. From here we can combine these to create a QB Rating (Accuracy divided by % of bad reads). I think a rating of 10 is an average QB.

QuarterbackAccuracyBR/AttRating
HENNE80.67%6.12%13.19
FORCIER86.62%7.73%11.20
THREET72.56%9.09%7.98
SHERIDAN78.16%10.00%7.82
MALLETT66.07%10.69%6.18
ROBINSON73.33%14.29%5.13

As expected: Denard can run, but can he throw? In so many ways, no.Henne is awesome, and Forcier is not quite sophomore-to-senior Henne but is a major upgrade over Threet.

So, does this metric work?

Adding in the charted appearances for Sheridan bumped him up several of these lists, and reveals a major problem with it: a 20-yard pass to a guy open for a half-second against Ohio State (CA) gets charted the same as a 4-yard screen pass that takes so long to get there the receiver gets blown up immediately after contact.

The other problem with including Sheridan is that two of his most telling performances (Penn State's 2nd half and the entire Ohio State game) were not charted because they were so bad. Sheridan thus gets an "INCOMPLETE" for all career metrics and should not be considered among them. If someone would like to go back and UFR the unwatchable chapters of last year, I would love to incorporate those stats.

Of course, Sheridan (as you would expect from a great future coach) also points out, using his Toledo performance, that per-game metrics also suffer from the This thing needs a yards-per-attempt metric.

So let's add one, and create a complete revised QB rating from the UFRs. Really simple: multiply the rating above with yards-per-attempt from the official stats.

We get:

QuarterbackATTDSRDSR (w)%DORatingYPAQB Rating
HENNE89967.6%71.21%28.10%13.196.9892
FORCIER19467.5%70.27%13.82%11.207.1680
THREET23152.8%55.46%13.45%7.985.5344
MALLETT15948.7%51.04%21.62%6.186.4140
SHERIDAN11060.2%60.34%7.35%7.825.0139
ROBINSON2137.5%46.34%9.09%5.135.8030

As I said before, Sheridan's inclusion is meaningless if you can't count OSU and PSU against him. Still, the Yards-per-Attempt metric busts him and Threet way down for all the screens and dinkies thrown last year, and gives us a final metric I think we can believe in.

Note Forcier's yards-per-attempt this year have been higher than Henne's career average. That will come down as more Big Ten teams and fewer MAC nummy-nums work their way into his statistics.

Our UFR-based QB rating isn't like the NFL's -- it doesn't count touchdowns, for one. But if we're looking for new ways to visualize the Hennechart, and use it to gauge how good our quarterbacks really are, I think this might be it.

Part IV: Oh, But What if We Multiply Weighted Downfield Success Rating With Yards-Per-Attempt?

We get this:


QuarterbackDSR*YPA
1FORCIER5.03
2HENNE4.97
3MALLETT3.27
4THREET3.06
5SHERIDAN3.02
6ROBINSON2.69

Which is eerily close to star ratings, isn't it?

So muh-guh-bluh-gers, which one do you prefer, DSR*YPA, or the Rating thing?

Comments

Wolverine In Exile

October 21st, 2009 at 1:41 PM ^

I like the additional weighting to really good and really bad things-- it's more like a golf score. I just worry about the "match play" type of effect where a guy can play absolutely shitty 8 holes and average to good the other 10 holes and still win the match. I wonder if a good futher adjustment would be to score each game individually based on an adjusted DSR (taking into your accounting modification), and then average them and plot with a standard deviation bar. Then the observer could look and see:

1) If the Qb was good consistantly with little variation (i.e. Henne 2006)

or

2) If the QB was good on average, but had a large swing of really good and really bad games (i.e. Henne 2007)

Ace Deuce

October 21st, 2009 at 1:45 PM ^

I'm a huge fan of this type of research. This is what truly makes this board so great in that it gives us ways to suggest new metrics/ideas. I think this rating tool could be added into UFR and would be meaningful. The best part is that it doesn't even introduce anything new, just views them differently. It's a simple plug and chug addition. Once again kudos.

Cameron

October 21st, 2009 at 2:37 PM ^

MGoBlog was always a great place to come for in-depth analysis. But this week has to epitomize what Brian had in mind when he added the Diaries and the MGoBoard. The resulting contributions are just as noteworthy as -- and slightly less tinfoil-hattish than -- the reader-generated content at places like Daily Kos.

Commenters (extra credit to Coach Schiano and Misopogon) have really stepped up their game this week. Well done.

JLC21

October 22nd, 2009 at 11:13 PM ^

It's only Thursday, we had half-assed UFRs (for obvious and understandable reasons), we won't see the PSU preview until tomorrow -- and yeah, this has still been an epic week in MGoBlog. This site makes me very very happy -- except for the 75% of the time I check the main pages, because there's no new awesome content.

Damn this site for setting the bar so high.

U of M in TX

October 21st, 2009 at 4:04 PM ^

In the adjusted DSR - Worst Performances, the attempts are not whole numbers. I'm sure it won't change much, but I wanted to make you aware.

Other than that, this is a fantastic analysis!

CriticalFan

October 21st, 2009 at 4:23 PM ^

Once you weighted it halfway down, it matched my memory of how each QB performance did. Great work.

Two points:
1. If Forcier should have been pulled from the 09 Iowa, then Sheridan was, sabermetrically, a better bet than D-Rob to win?

2. How did D-Rob's Zero-completion-2-INT-in-4-throws performance vs EMU this year not make it into the worst performances ever?

Seth

October 21st, 2009 at 4:48 PM ^

1. No. I would call bad sample on Sheridan. Keep in mind that other than the Northwestern game, Sheridan's worst moments were left out of the charts, due to the fact that he was so horrendous Brian found him un-chartable. The black hole of QB performance that was SheriDEATH was one of the primary reasons Brian refused to UFR the 2008 Ohio State game.

The bulk of Sheridan's good play was against Minnesota, which basically gave him open receivers for 3 quarters in order to stop the zone-read option. Leaving out the obvious (e.g. he can't throw the ball far enough or fast enough to beat prevent coverage, Denard necessitating a spy), the two games that got charted are not a large enough sample, and are a selective one at that.

2. I limited it to 10 attempts. This, by the way, was weighted attempts, so if a guy went out and threw, say, 3 interceptions (3 BRs) and one dead-on pass on 6 throws, it would be charted.

colin

October 21st, 2009 at 4:30 PM ^

I've been thinking about this for a while, but you *could* take the UFR's and take the results of a DO pass, CA pass, etc. and end up with an average yards per pass type. Assign -45 yards for an INT and you're there. Really, this could be done with the defense, too and that might yield more interesting results. But converting these somewhat abstract qualifications and seeing what exactly they tend to mean in concrete terms would be pretty useful.

It also might help in standardizing UFR for other teams.

WolverBean

October 21st, 2009 at 4:33 PM ^

The weighted metric is a great idea, and seems to help the numbers align with what our intuition might have suggested. Nice work.

Also, just for kicks, I took a stroll into the Haloscan rabbit-hole on the "Screw 2005" link. Pretty amazing stuff:

"This off-season will test the character of our personnel and coaches - I think they'll respond with a 10 win season." ~ Chris

11 wins, in fact, and a late hit call from playing in the NC game (sorry to bring it up again).

"I heard Lou Holtz say that Michigan should look into implementing the spread in some way." ~ Jim

In some way? How about we hire the Godfather as our coach? That sound good?

"IT'S PEANUT BUTTER JELLY TIME! ~ Colin

So weird to see this here. It wasn't PBJ time, not yet, but it sure would be.

"... although I think we may also need to make changes to our strength & conditioning program, too--we seem to get dominated at the line of scrimmage all too often these days. ~ hat

Again with the prophesy. Hat, are you still out there? Still loving you some Barwisporn(TM)?

"Everybody Loves Raymond Rocks! ~ Matt

Perhaps some things on Haloscan should remain buried in the past.

The Bugle

October 22nd, 2009 at 2:36 AM ^

First off, I just wanted to say awesome analysis and re-iterate that this type of mathematical analysis makes mgoblog fantastic.

There is one part of the DSR-metric which has always nagged me, the issue of the TA. The chart wasn't made for a QB who is prone to run. Although I understand the Hennechart is already complicated and was created for Chad, shouldn't a successful scramble count as a positive action? Through the same logic it seems like an actual TA should count as an effective "no throw" because it would have been a BR to miss an open receiver. A TA is just a product of no one being open because of a poor play call or good defense. In both cases it isn't the QBs fault.

I understand the full implementation of this is impossible without a complete re-UFR with all the games. However, what would you think about erasing the TA from the DSR calculation?

J. Lichty

October 22nd, 2009 at 6:53 PM ^

if the point is to isolate qb play, a good throw away i.e. a good decision where no receivers open or because of line breakdown causing pressure causes qb to throw away, is that really a measure of the qb's performance?

As a corollary to that adjustment, it also might be interesting to chart how a qb does under pressure into a metric. I think anecdotally we can agree that Clausen did very poorly under pressure against M, while Tate did pretty well.

Haven't thought through how handling pressure could be quantified other than positive yards - pass, scramble and maybe even TA's weighted into a metric, but it is another piece of the puzzle.

The Bugle

October 22nd, 2009 at 8:16 PM ^

I think the DSR needs to be a metric that measures how well the QB performs. As a result, a successful scramble shouldn't count as an incomplete pass. On the flip side, I think a TA that was a poor read should be listed as such. (I don't know how hard Brian looks to see if the TA was actually a bad read)

To fix this I propose either eliminating the TA from the DSR calculation or only counting actual TAs in the TA column and adding a QB scramble option. The scramble statistic could be further broken down into successful/unsuccessful.

Not all TAs are created equal and they should not be treated as inherently bad (or even 1/3 bad as Misopogon's weighted metric does).

Finally, I really have no idea what wishitwas97 is trying to say.

Seth

October 23rd, 2009 at 4:41 AM ^

I totally see what you mean. The thing about TA though is that it isn't good for the offense in general.

I asked for a scramble metric in the discussion of the Hennechart visual aids and proposed adding a "RA" for run-away. An SC for scramble would work too. I would suggest only using it for runs that result in a first down or enough yards to affect the strategy of future downs invthay series, or at least accomplish something important for that drive (e.g. turn 2nd and 10 into 3rd and 4, or create a more makeable field goal, etc.). It would have to be a situational judgement call, so like getting 8 yards on 3rd and 25 is still a TA but the same 8 yards on 4th and 7 are a SC.

My thinking on rating regular TAs as bad is because they are the only metric available that calculates pocket presence. Seeing as it's 4 am and I'm insomniatic in my iPhone right now, rather than search for real examples from past UFRs, I'm gonna make a few up that sound plausible:

Denard looks, sees nobody open, and takes off because he's Denard and made of dilithium. A spying linebacker tracks him down well short of the first. TA, Zoltan sends it into orbit.

Sheridan behind max protect. Badgers blitz a linebacker, who's taken out by Minor (+1) Surveys, then feels uncomfortable and runs around a bit before Minor's guy gets up and tackles at the LOS. TA protection 1/1

Defense rushing three, linebackers sitting back to take away crossing pattern. Mallett counts to three then chucks it out the back of the end zone. TA, field goal. Honestly, so sick of run-run-pass!

It is an acknowledged weakness of the UFR system that every receiver and his respective openness cannot be seen and judged from the telecasts used. You never know if a TA play missed an open man. Sometimes it's smart, sometimes it's a bad read, and sometimes it's just a pussy move. Since we can't truly judge whether there was room to scramble or an open guy or if a sack-saving measure was the only way to go, I think we are justified in making these a slight negative. A great QB will keep these down, finding any and all open targets, or scrambling around enough behind the LOS until something open up. We just need the successful scrambles noted so that our weighted DSR can calculate them as positive results likr completions without affecting the throwing accuracy metric.

Subrosa

October 22nd, 2009 at 6:56 PM ^

...hold the fuck on.

You had sex in SEVENTH GRADE!?!?

I mean the rest of this is impressive and all, but... Ye gods, man. What on Earth was I doing with my life?

Seth

October 23rd, 2009 at 2:54 AM ^

Not actually "sex" so much as "rubbed a girl's shoulders* while dancing to Brian Adam's 'Everything I Do' at a Bat Mitzvah."

* this was even less cool than it sounds if you remember those massive Tipper Gore shoulder pads women used to wear in the early 90s

RodRox

October 22nd, 2009 at 7:55 PM ^

Dude just wanted to say - I really enjoy your writings and humor. There are many great posters on this blog, but yours and ofcourse Brian's writing are just par excellence.

I believe there were job openings on mgoblog mods - you should be one. Awesome!

bacon

October 22nd, 2009 at 8:32 PM ^

This is really great. I like the weighted DSR because it accounts for accuracy in the throws. It's better than accuracy for obvious reasons. It also doesn't penalize the QB for drops or overly credit QBs for having amazing receivers, which is fair.

With more data, maybe it will be possible to neutralize season statistics for great and bad seasons (ala baseball-reference.com). I'd love to see how Tate would have played on the 2000 Rockies.

Seth9

October 22nd, 2009 at 11:56 PM ^

I do wonder, though, how much Tate's career numbers are currently inflated by having played against a lower level of competition thus far than the other QBs. Tate has yet to complete a Big Ten schedule, which I am willing to bet will lower his accuracy ratings, particularly as his absolute worst performance came against the best defense we've faced thus far.

Yostal

October 23rd, 2009 at 10:57 AM ^

Apologies for not getting to this sooner, but it felt like something I would need to take some time to actually read and digest. Dang, that is some serious awesomeness. I am highly impressed and I tip my cap to you good sir.