Hokieshibe's Recent Comments
I think the computer rankings throw out your highest and lowest, as a sort of sanity check. I'm also pretty sure that one of them looks at your last 12 games, stretching into last year, so they won't be perfect until the end of the season.
I think I like the AP poll better than the USA Today. Michigan is lower, UCF is higher. Couple of other changes that I think are improvements
There's a middle chunk of SEC teams right above us that are going to fall at some point. Auburn, A&M, LSU... No way those three teams keep winning.
No, I think he's pretty on point. "Willfully stupid" is a pretty accurate descriptor.
A word problem for poll voters:
"Team A starts the season ranked.
Unranked team B beats team A.
What happens?"
Correct answer:
"If they're both SEC teams, drop team A 3 spots, rank team B one spot above team A. Otherwise, team A falls out."
They'll hang on. Loss to a top-10 team doesn't hurt you too bad... Regardless of how it looks. Blowouts help the winner more than they hurt the loser in the top 10
Going to be honest - I am really appreciating being a VT fan right now. Could you imagine? Always failing to reach expectations? Wondering if you'll make a bowl game every year... Worrying about Duke... Losing to Duke... ugh. Thank God I'm a Hokie
UVA fans are all like:
And then I say "You know, London is probably coming back next year..."
And then Wahoos are all like
I didn't think anything else had to be said in this thread, but I was wrong. I think you just covered it.
Maybe it's time to stop ranking every other SEC team in the preseason top 10...
Doesn't matter. Point is they got the help they needed to get in. Every year, several teams are dominant. Only 2 get in. Those that do generally need some breaks to go their way. Had Tennessee not been wildly incompetent (remember the 13 man "Volunteer" defense jokes?), the streak would have ended years ago. Had WVU not lost to a frankly terrible Pitt team in '07, the streak never would've made it to 2. I'm not suggesting the SEC champs aren't good - I'm just suggesting that if say the Big 12 dominant programs in that period, or Pac 10 (at the time) gotten those breaks instead of the SEC teams, we'd be singing a very different tune. There's a lot of chance in college football.
I'm not sure I really trust college football content coming from "breitbart.com" to be anything more than opinionated blather, less informed on the issue it is discussing than, say, the key play.
2 teams does not a conference make. And lets be honest - you need a ton of breaks to get into the current national championship. Remember how Les Miles just seems to catch every break when he's in the hunt for the championship? Remember how that ball thrown over the holder's head bounced just so to the running punter? Remember how Bama needed all those breaks to beat a terrible Tennessee team for their first national championship? Or SEC teams needing multiple teams ahead of them to fall apart to get in (like in 2007?). Sometimes teams just get those breaks, and its seemed like recently, those teams have been SEC teams. I feel like that could happen just as easily to any other major power/conference. Maybe the move to a playoff will reduce the need to get those breaks, but with only 4 teams getting in, I sort of doubt it.
The SEC is not the monsterous juggernaut ESPN wants you to think it is. It's consistently produced 1-2 really good teams (generally Bama, LSU or UF), had a couple pretty good teams (South Carolina, UGA), and a fair amount of crap to keep the wins high in the other two groups (Mississippi schools, UT, Vandy, Kentucky, etc). That's the formula to win national titles (well that, and hype). Not top-to-bottom competitiveness.
False - The ACC is the most top-heavy, least competitive (all around), and most in contention for a national title since VT has joined. Big difference. The ACC has been all middle class - no great teams, but a bunch of pretty good ones. Now theres a couple really good ones, one or two pretty good ones, and a lot of garbage. That helps teams go undefeated and is great for the conference in the polls and the title hunt, but isn't really indicative of the conference's strength as a whole. This is what always drives me nuts about SEC teams. I don't really think there's any difference between the SEC and most other conferences, except maybe on or two teams at the top each year.
Yeah, I know. Was running out of time yesterday, and wanted to get it up before I had to leave. I came back and did some weighted averages, and I think they illustrate the point very well (note that these are weighted by total targets, not completions - I wanted to see who we were throwing at and how effective that was):
2011-
Average Completion Score - 91.65
Average %Out of Reach Targets - 21.3%
Yards/Reception - 13.87
2012-
Average Completion Score - 85.95
Average %Out of Reach Targets - 24.73%
Yards/Reception - 14.68
2013-
Average Completion Score - 87.76
Average %Out of Reach Targets - 22.1%
Yards/Reception - 12.50
So the general idea that we threw deeply and ineffectively in 2012, and are shorter and more effective this year holds up.
One thing that's pretty easy to see in the 2nd chart - the slope of the line tells you how quickly our effectiveness falls off with deeper shots down the field. A steeper line means you rapidly lose effectiveness as your QB tries to reach deeper receivers. It means more deep incompletions. So 2012 really sucked in that regard - as we go downfield, we miss more passes. 2011 was great in that regard - we stay effective as we lengthen the field and are able to go deep more reliably. 2013 is closer to 2012. So, hooray!
So, using Zach's raw data, and looking up a bit from ESPN, I made the following:
This first chart shows my tweaked version of his "Efficiency Scores" vs the Yds/Rec of each reciever. To tweak his formula, I changed it to E = (all receptions/expected receptions), where expected receptions = 100% of all easy catches, 80% of all moderately easy catches, and 50% of all tough catches.
Some interesting notes from this plot:
- Danny Coale was really really good at intermediate to deep balls (he's the diamond on the upper right)
- In fact, Danny was so damn good at those routes, our recievers as a whole were actually better as we went deeper. That's incredible!
- Willie Bryn, our best reciever this year by these ratings, is quite effective at medium ranges
- Our team's effectiveness drops off when throwing deep rapidly this year. Don't know if that's our offense or our recievers
- Last year, we were throwing deep a lot, and weren't particularly great at it.
This next chart compares the percentage of passes "Out of Reach" for a given reciever, against how many yds/rec that reciever got:
As I said earlier, I think this percentage is a pretty good reflection of how effective the WR/QB relationship is, and might be a decent reflection for the offense as a whole. A healthy offense, with a comfortable qb, who is not behind the chains, and has a good rapport with his WR should generally be hitting his WR. Obviously, the longer the routes the WR runs, the more often hes going to be overthrown, but generally speaking, this number should be indicative of a healthy offense (I would think). The thing I think that's really apparent from this chart is how much Logan struggeled getting the balls to his WRs in 2012, and how now we are back pretty close to the 2011 levels. I'm not pointing any fingers, because we've had this discussion a million times here, just trying to show with math and stuff that we are defintely seeing a return to 2011 form in effectiveness for the entire passing game. Maybe not quite as deep, but perhaps even more effectively in the medium yardage range.
Hadn't clicked on them - wow. Bravo.
by the way, I'm just going to upvote the be-jeesus out of your comments on the page because I approve of the topic. Any way I could get my hands on the raw data? It's painful to admit, but I live for this crap
Awesome analysis! I love numbers. A few questions:
What happens to these numbers when you stop giving credit for drops? Perhaps the following equation might make the differences between good and bad recievers a liitle more explicit:
(er+sr+tr)/(catchable targets - (sr+sd)(1/4) - (tr+td)(1/2))
so, basically, every catch counts the same, but you only expect a reciever to catch 3/4 of the "should have been caught" and half of the "tough catches". I just pulled those out of my ass, you can make expected completion percentage for each catagory whatever you want.
Also, something that might be interesting while you've got the excel sheet with the data - what percentage of passes at a WR are uncatchable? They might be indicative of poor route running, not being on the same page with the qb, or just not having a great catchable radius. Likewise, a guy who always has a chance at coming down with a ball thrown at him is either an amazing physical specimen, or has a great connection with the qb.
I would like to say, for the record, that 2005 was a pretty great year for the conference. #3 VT vs #4 Miami was gameday, with #whatever FSU hanging around in the top 10...
You monster!
You've nearly got 1,000 legs. Don't worry about the voting - it's pretty irrelevant, and you probably got down-voted from someone fat-fingering on a cellphone.
Boo - I want UVA to be a doorstop. I want Maimi to be good and lose to us, because we don't compete with them for recruits, and I don't have to be around their fans ever. I want the Wahoos to suffer endlessly, and I think never winning a game accomplishes that better. I want them beaten down, despondent, and with an empty stadium.
Perhaps he just assumes that if anyone is throwing anything at a game it'd have to be a bottle of zima, as that's all he's ever seen drunk at a game. I doubt he really checked on the bottle.