QB Maze Vol. 2

As promised yesterday we have more QB stuff. Today we are going to look at a few more things which I think are interesting. Now I should warn you guys, I have been told I am weird so things that I find to be interesting are different from most and they do not make sense. I enjoy football and futbol, I enjoy cricket and baseball, I enjoy football and rugby, I enjoy Formula 1 but not NASCAR. You will find me rooting for teams considered the big bad soul crushing teams. I am a Pats fan and I like Tommy terrific and Billy the GOAT. I support the Yankees, Real Madrid, Scuderia Ferrari. I like these teams because they win but there are other teams I am partial too even though I know they will disappoint me, I am looking at you Arsenal. You see, I told you I was weird.

All that I said above had nothing to do with what we are going to look at today, more weirdness. Today we are going to be looking at some QB ratios which might be more useful when ranking QBs or complete and utter nonsense. We are first going to look at a graph for the number of TDs a QB gets per pass attempt.

Now this really is not that useful but hey I wanted to throw it in there. This just tells me who is chucking the ball down the field with the purpose of getting TDs. Do not waste your attempts, throw the ball with the purpose of scoring. That is how we got to this little graph. You want to have a high number of TDs for pass attempts, as that says this guy is not just throwing the ball up, he is trying to give you points every time he throws the ball down the field. This also kind of tells you who is efficient with their throws. You do not want to take 50 passing attempts before you get the ball into the end zone. Some of you will say maybe the teams runs the ball into the end zone and I get that but still I want my QB to be able to not waste the pass attempts. I need to know that my QB will get the ball into the end zone with the least number of throws in case we need an efficient drive and we are under the pump. Remember in the national title game, when Houston was driving in the 4th quarter, I bet they would have wanted a QB leading the charge who only needed a few passes to get the ball into the end zone as the clock was winding down. This is probably not an official stats for a reason but this is fake football so whatever. This stat might be affected by the guys the QB is throwing to but still I thought why don't we look at it, so here we are.

Are you guys ready for another ancillary stat? Ready or not here it comes. It is one of a few we are going to look at today. Do not worry there is a real one in here somewhere. But for now let us look at the ratio of interceptions per pass attempt.

Now this graph can tell you a few things. You can infer what class the QB is, based on the numbers and you can also infer who the studs are. The guys at the bottom of the list are the guys you want on your roster. They have not thrown any picks this season, yep you read that right, they did not throw any picks this season. The guys at the top threw the most picks per pass attempt. The guy that tops the list, Thomas Knox was a redshirt freshman this season and he did not do so well. One of his attributes scared me a bit and surprised me. I will let you guys figure that part out on your own. Tommy has his numbers way out there, which is not good news for his team, who had a losing record this past season with him at the helm.

Now for me I do not want my QB to be chucking the ball for 225 yards before we score a TD. This would tell me that we are not finishing drives and we would need to change that situation. I would want us to get points, in this case 7 of them on every drive. I know this is impossible but hey I can aim for perfection, right. If we do not finish our drives we will most likely lose the game. This is when we end up with games were teams put up yards but still lose the game, they are not finishing their drives. They just collect yards but do not put up points. So let us look at who is doing that.

I want the ratio to be as small as it can be as it will tell me that we are winning in all three phases of the game. We are pinning them deep with our punting game and we are keeping them there with the defense such that the offense has a short field to work with. I do not want my team to go for 200 yards before we score a TD. Now I know we might be moving the ball on the ground as well so things might not be as bad as I describe them here, true but still. I want us to go through the air as few times as possible before getting them 7 points. I will take having to pass the ball for 50 yards before we get a TD all day. It tells me that our ground game is on point or that we are efficient in the other phases as mentioned before. I think whichever way you slice this you want the number to be as small as possible.

Now this tells everyone what a team is doing with a certain QB. I know we can not game plan for a specific QB but if you know what percentage of the plays he gets then I think you can kind of game plan for him. From the graph it seems on average the top 25 QBs get between 6 and 9 yards per pass attempt, which is not too bad. Seems like most coaches are going medium with their passes. You know who else does that? My boy Tommy terrific. They say this works as good as a run game. Pick up a few yards at a time and work your way down the field. With this stat I want to be towards the top of the chart. I want my QB to pick up the most yards every time he chucks it down the field. Now I am not saying that this is the only way to move the ball down the field. With all the coaches in the game, there are so many ideas on how to move the ball down the field, this is just what the top 25 QBs did.

Now we are going to look at something that is used in real life and we are going to apply it to our game. We are going to look at the passing efficiency of our QBs. We are going to use the NCAA formula for this calculation as we are playing at the college level. I am sure everyone has an opinion on this stat but this is what we have and I figured why not just do it, you know like Nike says.

Now looking at what we get when we use the passer rating formula for the NCAA, we have a change in the order of our top 25 list. Now my question to you guys is should we use the passer rating to determine who is a good QB or just go with the WIS rankings? I think as a passer rating measure this is pretty good but there are some teams that also run with the QB so maybe stick with the WIS rankings? Maybe we should have asked for this on top of the attributes we get for the QB when we are recruiting. Maybe someone can add this to the attributes for everyone to see and use as an extra recruiting variable. Is there anything similar to a passer rating for the other positions? If not YOU should be working on it.

I think we are going to call it a day on this stats stuff, I have heard people say numbers give them headaches and well I do not want to do that to you guys. I hope you guys enjoyed the graphs and numbers. I know the graphs might have been a bit hard to read but I could not figure out how to make them more readable. Until the next run, keep an eye out on those job changes and do not forget to fill your recruiting boards.