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Thank you for your time and effort putting this article together. The amount of research in this piece is really incredible and I absolutely love your concept of quantifying how receivers perform outside of their quarterback.

But even you admit that your equation is rudimentary so I'm going to throw out my ideas for improving it because 1) I love college football stats, 2) I really don't feel like doing my engineering homework, 3) Go Hokies and 4) fuck it.

So the biggest issue I see with the formula is that a receiver cannot negatively affect his score, he can only not positively affect his score. Take David Wilson is supremely talented but he can be prone to fumbles and tries to make too many things happen which more often than not dont work. And even when they do work, that means hes more tired for the next play so he either gets substituted out, he cant give maximum effort or the OC is forced to change his play/the opposing DC is more likely to play the pass. These negative stats would need to be kept on a per game basis and become exponentially more important with each successive negative play.

I firmly believe this principle was on full display against Alabama. If the receivers had been catching the easy passes, Loeffler would have called the game much differently and Kirby Smart may have had to taken another defender out of the box which opens up the run.

I looked at the stats you wrote down and unfortunately you dont have the other things Id like to include which are what Im going to call key play opportunities (pun fully intended) such as receptions or drops in the end zone/that would obviously lead to a touchdown, catches while losing, two-minute-drill offense and third down conversions. If youre going to give additional points to tougher catches and drops then you should apply the same principle for clutch players. In my opinion, a receiver should be given a fuck ton of negative points for dropping the game winning touchdown while hes wide open in the end zone as time expires. You could even throw in the relative importance of a game (championship game easily catchable drop as a massive underdog vs. easily catchable drop against a FCS team). Im definitely aware of how long finding all of these stats would take so Im by no means saying that you should go back and look at every pass play from Logan again but I do think that these should factor into the overall catch efficiency.

Originally I was going to say that you should factor in yards after catch/the receivers separation from the defensive player but that would be more of a wide receiver efficiency as opposed to catch efficiency. Id envision a wide receiver efficiency to be weighted similarly to your original formula with simple weights attached to catch efficiency, yac/separation efficiency, caliber of the defense played and, ideally, some way of compensating for the offensive system the receiver is in so you can account for the ratio of blown coverage to the amount of stress a defensive back has on a given play. In an extreme example, a guy who is targeted on every pass play but is Danny Coale open on every one of those plays should receive a lot more credit than a Gah Tech receiver getting open on blown assignments. The same principle can be used for trick plays like the halfback pass. This would also be where you could account for run blocking and route running.

I also cant decide whether this falls under catch efficiency or wide receiver efficiency but I also think that interceptions thrown while targeting a specific receiver should factor in.

Like I said in the beginning, I absolutely love college football stats. True story, I couldnt fall back to sleep this morning so I went stat hunting and found some really incredible stuff (check out Tulanes defense and Floridas offense this year if youre interested). Im an engineering student so Ive worked with statistics, certainly not at the level of a stat or math major, though Ive always loved and fantasized about the prospect of creating a computer code that would call offensive plays in a hurry-up setting. I read through the comments and I know youre an absurdly busy man so Im not sure if these types of statistical analyses are something you can realistically pursue going forward. However, if its something you or anyone else would like to continue doing, Id be more than happy to partner with you to split the work. Unfortunately I don't think I'll be able to churn out hardcore analysis by myself during the school year because of my 18 senior credits but I think this kind of quantification will be the next big push in football much like Sabermetrics was to baseball.

Math is power!...and all that other corny janx my elementary school teachers kept talking about. Thanks again for putting in all of that leg work, we all really appreciate it.

Must. not. downvote. for. opinions. Even if they're WRONG!

I bet Bruce would have left a Savage-shaped crater if he'd gotten to play.

I refuse to believe that we are going to go as far as I think we can, but I also refuse to accept that everything is as certain as some people believe. Upsets are fantastic (except when they happen to your team) and that's the great thing about college football. I love talking about these scenarios because there are many that are likely to happen. The best part about this year is that there is not one team that is hands down better than any team in the country on any given day. You may argue Alabama, but I don't think so. We still have 8 weeks of craziness ahead of us that can change the entire situation.

I know two things:
1. As OP points out, the scenario in which we end up in the NCG is dependent on a long line of events happening in a very particular way. Some individual events are unlikely, so it is EXTREMELY unlikely that it all falls into place for us.
2. After last year, I am SO glad to have a thread on our Bye week more than half way into the season that outlines how it is possible for us to make the NCG (no matter how unlikely). We were all but mathematically eliminated from the Coastal crown at this point last year. So I will take it!!

Great Bye Week post, Skipper.

This whole conversation:

You are correct, sir.

I see it's a New England thing. But they don't know how to drink tea either, so I don't know how much they should be trusted with the culinary arts.

Those are found images. I would never treat my apple pie in such a way.

That's somewhat the point of why wrote this. I've seen a lot of people saying "If we win out do we play in the NCG?" and I think it's silly. So I wrote it out, this is what has to happen for us to get there. If you read this and think that the chances are on our side, I want to drink whatever you're drinking.

It's fun to talk about though, and while I whole heartedly agree with you that we should just worry about Duke; this site wouldn't be what it is without conversations like this.

While I might not go so far as to put Coach K under the bus (he just manages to find magic in a bottle) I do think that JJ deserves a chance to get established. Several things have happened, some already mentioned:

The program has had transfer or lost 7 players in the last two years. That's about half the roster.
Ben Boggs transferred
Garland Transferred and led Lasalle to the NCAA
Robert Brown transferred
Dorian Finney Smith transferred to Florida (another shady AAU deal in the background)
Montrezl Harrell opted out of his NLI and helped Louisville win a national title (Shady dealings involved with his former AAU coach)
Allan Chaney had to leave the program after two years with the medical ruling (had a scholarship held up) than helped High Point reach the NCAA tournament
Manny Atkins transferred

If you don't want to be a Hokie, I don't want you to stay but the talent drain this has put on the program will be felt for at least the next two to three years. James Johnson wasn't the root of that exodus. At least four of those players were Top 50 for their respective classes and at least two were Top 20 recruits. I am fine with whatever our record ends up being this year and next as long as I am seeing them play hard, and improve on mistakes.

Coaching changes and game play philosophy also has an impact so as JJ gets more players that fit his system, the better I expect us to perform. I think that basketball more so than football deserves the time to develop mainly because each year can have such a profound impact on a team with a 15 person roster. Hopefully we win, but we better have effort. If effort is the question at the end of the season than by all means find a new coach.

I'm sorry,

I'm just tired of all of this hypothetical stuff. I realistically don't see us going to the championship game. I just want to see us beat duke. go from there.

i dont know if he was a desperate hire, but he has certainly been put in a tough situation. not just the bad timing of seth getting canned and dealing with a depleted roster, but also jj's relative inexperience. techhoops wrote and interesting article during the season last year about this. he is the only head coach in the league who was hired with zero experience as a head coach. the coach with next fewest games under his belt before coming to the acc was uva's own tony bennet at 102 games coached, but he was the pac-12's coach of the year. i'm pulling for jj and i'm gonna preach patience this year, but i fear the chips are stacked against him. the acc just isnt a league for someone to cut their teeth in.

here's the article if anyone's interested:
http://techhoops.com/2013/01/25/is-coach-johnson-the-new-bryan-stinespring/