Logan By The Numbers

From the moment Logan Thomas filled in for a single play as a back up and completed "the pass", he's become the most talked about figure on the team. Over the past two years, probably as a result of him not fulfilling what were irrationally high expectations, he has become very polarizing and I believe the hour following the loss to BC is the worst I've seen it. Numerous people I follow on Twitter immediately began tirades that followed either of two narratives:

  1. "Logan Thomas is the best thing this team has going for it and without him we would be winless"
  2. "Logan Thomas is single-handedly ruining Virginia Tech football and Mark Leal would certainly have us in the national championship"

Both are of course ridiculous, but it's difficult to find people taking a more rational middle ground. So I decided to look into LT's numbers as a starter to try to find where he's struggling and doing well - French and others do a great job breaking down specific plays, so I'm focused more on situations he faces and any patterns we might find. But first, some guidelines:

  • A quarterback's performance is affected by many factors including WR play, OL play, play-calling, weather conditions, opposing defense, etc. So saying Logan has good numbers (or bad) in any given situation is not a direct read on his performance as an individual but rather a read on all of those factors. He is the biggest contributor to those numbers of course, but far from everything.
  • Although other situational stats exist, I only went with stuff with reasonable sample size...I don't really care if he is 2 for 7 in a certain circumstance.

For every category, I'm going to look at two statistics - Rating, as a measure of overall QB play, and Interception Rate (# interceptions/attempt), since I'm pretty sure that's of interest to our fan base. Because of small sample sizes, interception rate is considerably more variable than rating.

Statistics by Quarter

First, Rating:

Rating by Quarter

The only differences here that seem to be anything other than noise would be Logan's performance in the 1st quarter of games last year - it would seem he definitely started slow and I think most of us identified that without the need for numbers - and the difference this season between 1st/3rd and 2nd/4th. This year he seems to start each half well and fade considerably later in the half. A drop of about 35 points in rating is considerable.

Next, Interception Rate:

Int by Quarter

Other than the second quarter, his interception rate is actually down this year compared to last year - but wow, the second quarter. If you only had the other three quarters and you said he threw too many interceptions I would call you crazy. Also, his rate in the 4th quarter in 2011 makes me wonder how we didn't give more games away.

Statistics by Down

First we look at rating by down:

Rating by down

Not much there other than it makes his drop-off after 2011 a little more obvious. As for interceptions:

Int by down

Keep in mind there's considerable variability around these numbers, but I think this highlights one source of frustration this year - on third down as a fan, you're desperate to get the yardage needed and throwing an interception is like a dagger. Before the play, the worst case in your mind was not getting the distance and punting...being third down, you frame it in those terms and quickly forget about even worse scenarios.

We can also look at just third downs by distance to go (with really short distances not included because we predictably run on almost every one of those plays):

Rating on third

In that 7-9 yard range, Logan was just lethal prior to this year but unfortunately that has come to an end and his numbers are now fairly pedestrian in all yardages. As for interception rate:

Int on third

Remember what I said about about the agony of interceptions on third down?

Statistics by Score

So before posting any graphs, I just want to point out that there should be an obvious relationship here - in games where you are winning you are likely the better team and would naturally have a higher QB rating...the converse is true when you're losing. I hate stats like "When player X doesn't throw an interception the team is 12-1!" because (a) it's obvious that the stat stated would help and more importantly (b) the team being better makes both of those more likely and is the real cause. Anyway, here are ratings by score:

Rating by score

This would sort of be the expected pattern...higher ratings with bigger leads up to a point where your lead is "safe" and you get more conservative. Notably though, QB play has been abysmal this year when down by 15+ because Alabama.

As for interceptions:

Int by score

The agony described above for interceptions on third downs pales to a different kind of agony - the agony of turning the ball over when you're not winning and the game is within reach. Look at where the 2013 interception rate exceeds the past - tied, losing by 1-7, and losing by 8-14. That will start Twitter rants.

Statistics by Field Position

Rating by field

Things are mostly even here, although man he was deadly in the red zone in 2011. Now the same for interceptions:

Int by field

When you think about it, an interception close to your own end zone should be an equal swing in expected points from you to your opponents (suppose a team on their own 5 is expected to score 1.5 points and one on the opponents five is expected to score 5.5 points...turn it over at your own five and you've just lost 4 points in expectation; turn it over at the opponents five and it's the same). But turning the ball over in the red zone is so frustrating. There is a well-documented psychological effect where we hate losing more than we like gaining the same amount, and we irrationally count a gain before it has been achieved. So when you're close to the opponent's end zone, you've already "gained" those points in your head and hate losing them even though they were never really yous int he first place.

Anyway, that's a long way of saying that it's really painful to have the highest interception rate occur in the red zone.

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