Eleven Warriors

Completely ripped off from MGoBrian.  He explains his terms here http://mgoblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/hennechart-legend.html

Terrelle Pryor

Five inaccurate passes.  First and 10 with 8:40 left in the first quarter Pryor bounces one 5 yards in front of an open Posey.  Second and nine with 3:46 left in the first half Pryor throws high to Posey short over the middle.  Posey does not knock himself out making an effort for this one.  To begin the third possession of the second half (you know the one where Wisconsin did absolutely nothing to stop Ohio State who went three and out with one horrible overthrow and two drops), Pryor overthrows Boren to begin the series.  With 1:36 remaining in the game Pryor throws it out the back of the endzone in the general direction of Posey.  Finally the last throw of the game Pryor under throws Sanzenbacher for the interception.

Five bad reads including quite possibly the worst throw in the recorded history of football ever.  The first bad read was on third and 21 on the first drive Pryor threw to a bracketed Sanzenbacher.  Second possession on second and six Pryor delivers the ball late to Posey allowing the defender time to break up the pass.  The third bad read is really on Posey as he runs through the hole in the deep middle of the defense with 8:36 remaining in the first half.  Pryor, on second and nine with 12:31 left in the first half, forces one down the sideline to Brown who is well covered.  On the final drive of the game Pryor scrambles to his right then lofts a pass back to his left towards Saine who has two defenders on him.  How this did not turn into six points for Wisconsin I will never know.

 Four catchable balls went uncaught.  The first was the third and ten throw to Stoneburner where the catch was overturned by review, they actually took the line of scrimmage back 5 yards during this review.  Two low throws to Posey dropped, as well as one low throw to Washington that was dropped.  All of these plays were for first down yardage and all were on drives that failed to produce points.

12 designed for 47 yards looks bad, but 3 of those were Pryor with the option to pitch that went for 13 yards worth of losses as well as killing the first red zone trip.  Three sacks, one was Pryor running out of bounds instead of throwing it away, one was Shugarts watching the defensive end instead of attempting to block him, and one was an actual sack.

Rough day for Posey, big day for Sanzenbacher, everybody else was almost invisible.  Shockingly few yards after catch.

Pryor put it in the air 29 times, with 19 being catchable, there was a real opportunity for a big game with some better throws.

Completely ripped off from MGoBrian.  He explains his terms here http://mgoblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/hennechart-legend.html

Throwing

Two dead on throws this week, Saine in stride on the deep ball as well as a back shoulder throw to Posey completed against tight coverage in the endzone.

Zero bad reads.

One ball batted at the line of scrimmage which Pryor caught for a loss of one yard.

Five inaccurate passes.  This might be slightly inflated by two deep balls that were just enough off to allow defenders to make plays.  On the second series of the game Pryor had Sanzenbacher for big yards but needed the ball deeper and away from the safety.  With 11:12 left in the third quarter Posey had a step (or two) on the corner, slight under throw allowed the corner to catch up and break up the pass.  On 3^rd down and eleven with 2:11 left in the first quarter Pryor threw high and behind Washington who had first down distance.  Add in the short throw to Saine to start the second possession of the game, and a severely under thrown ball to Posey just before the made field goal.

No scrambles or designed runs out of Pryor, who was sacked 3 times.  The first of these should have been a throw away as Pryor ran out of bounds for a six yard loss.  The second one may make J.B. Shugarts a little uncomfortable during film study as Indiana sent an extra pass rusher and Shugarts looked at the defensive end then the linebacker and made contact with neither.  

The wheel route we didn’t see against Illinois makes an appearance against Indiana to make Saine’s big day.  Posey rebounds from a rough week with an excellent one.  Sanzenbacher dropped a pass that was low over the middle.

Pryor put it in the air 30 times, with 24 being catchable or dead on.

Everything in this post should be taken in context of the schedule played so far.  Iowa and Purdue have played only one conference game, everybody else only two. 

With that in mind here are the offensive yards per carry (YPC) and yards per attempt (YPA) from week 1.

You can choose to believe that Indiana is really bad at defense or that Michigan is really good at offense, but the numbers from week one demand that you acknowledge one (or both) as reality. 

As for the rest, Wisconsin and Ohio State can run without passing (though Ohio State’s numbers rely on strained quad of TP).  Iowa and Michigan State can throw without running (though Wisconsin and Penn State both had good run defenses last season so take this with a grain of salt). 

Penn State is really bad at offense or Iowa is really good at defense. 

After two weeks

Michigan’s offense comes back to the pack a little, though they are excellent.  Purdue spent their only game running the ball 42 times on 60 plays against Northwestern, though at 5.5 yards per carry who can blame them.  Indiana, Penn State and Northwestern have real problems running the football.  Ohio State found their way to the middle by running well against Illinois and throwing well against Indiana.

Indiana is horrible on defense, or maybe we should remember that their two games are against Heisman trophy candidates.  Three defenses stick out, Purdue likely won’t look good for long as their sole game is against Northwestern.  Iowa has just one game against Penn State factored in and Ohio State has played Illinois and Indiana.  If you look at 5 yards per carry and just over 6 yards per attempt you see two defenses that may travel in different directions as the schedule begins to even out.  You likely could not face a stiffer test as a Big Ten rushing defense than facing Wisconsin and Michigan in back to back weeks.  Both teams are effective running the football (5.4 ypc and 7.4 ypc in big ten play respectively) and do it with very different methods.  Michigan State has faced them both, and walked away yielding 5 yards per carry.

Completely ripped off from MGoBrian.  He explains his terms here http://mgoblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/hennechart-legend.html

Terrelle Pryor

No dead on throws this week.

Two bad reads.  Around 4:47 left in the half Illinois sent a linebacker on a blitz, the defensive end covers Saine out of the backfield, Pryor throws to the area the blitz came from without hesitation.  Unfortunately Illinois has this area well defended for their first interception of the year.  With 14:16 left in the game, Pryor throws a shovel pass intended for Boren, the defensive end in the way almost comes away with the interception, but Pryor manages to knock the ball out of his hands.

Two inaccurate passes, both deep balls.  On 3^rd and 11 with 11:38 left in the first half Pryor throws downfield to a single covered Posey who cuts further towards the middle of the field than Pryor expects.  With 7:30 left in the first half Pryor makes a man miss in the backfield, then overthrows an open Sanzenbacher in the end zone.  A sack later in the series knocked Ohio State out of field goal range.

Pryor threw one ball away at the end of the first half, it was in the general direction of Sanzenbacher on an out cut, but thrown well out of bounds.

Posey had a rough day short arming two catchable balls downfield.

No scrambles out of Pryor, who did serious damage on the 4 non quarterback sneak called runs.

Not a big day for the passing game, so small numbers for the receivers.  Given the frequency that Illinois had their defensive end covering running backs in man coverage it was disappointing not to see Saine on a wheel route.

Pryor put it in the air just 16 times, with 11 being catchable.

How did the big ten offenses fair in big ten play last season?

That’s a lot of numbers.

It’s average per game results from big ten games only last season.

I see, that’s still a lot of numbers.

Yeah, so you should know that offenses are good when they score points, points are related to yards, the number of yards produced depends greatly on the number of plays the offense gets, the number of plays an offense gets depends on the pace they play with, how often they run the ball, how quickly their defense gets the ball back . . .

The point man, get to the point!

Yards per passing attempt (YPA) and yards per carry (YPC) will tell you which teams played offense well last season.

So who played well last season?

Penn State led the league in both yards per passing attempt and yards per carry.  They were the gold standard of Big Ten offensive production.  Michigan State threw it almost as well as Penn State and Ohio State was in their neighborhood running the football, but nobody did both as well as Penn State.

It all looks the same to me man.

Throwing the football, you see those two points clear out on the right side?  That means Penn State and Michigan State threw the football better than everybody else.

Running the football, Penn State is out in front again, then a steady fall until you reach the Michigan/Northwestern/Iowa/Minnesota group of limited rushing production.

Both at once!

You’re a mad man, here you go.

WHAT?

You have passing on the X axis and rushing on the Y.  The upper right hand corner is where you want to be, lower left is a problem.

That’s Penn State and Michigan State leading the way high and right.  That is Illinois, Ohio State and Wisconsin from left to right across the top of the graph.  Northwestern is hanging out low and left.

So Penn State, Michigan State, Wisconsin must have dominated the standings last season.

They did well, only 9 losses combined last season, but I sense you are mocking me.

Yeah, there was a big ten title game in Columbus last season, and Penn State, Michigan State and Wisconsin weren’t invited.

Defense

Graphs?

There were two very good passing defenses, Iowa and Ohio State, then Penn State with Purdue and Minnesota in the middle.  Then everybody else had trouble defending the pass.

There were two very good rushing defenses, Wisconsin and Ohio State, with Iowa, Michigan State and Penn State also above average in that department.

Much more clearly, Ohio State in the lower left hand corner with Iowa and Penn State also standing out.  And yes the upper right hand corner is Michigan, who couldn't stop the run but made up for it by giving up large gains in the passing game.

So Penn State was the best offense, one of the three standout defenses, why no title?

Here is Penn State against Iowa and Ohio State

Both Iowa and Ohio State ran the ball effectively against Penn State and both shut down Penn State’s running game.  In the end Penn State in 2009 was a very good football team with two poor performances in the running game when they could least afford them.

Conclusion?

The big ten 2009 came down to defense.  The offensive flaws in the Hawkeyes and Buckeyes were covered up by standout defenses.  Iowa would probably look much better as a passing offense if Stanzi is taking every snap in their last three games, particularly against Northwestern and Minnesota (hard for me to imagine him putting up better numbers against Ohio State than the big ten best that Vandenberg did).  But the injury did happen and I’m just giving you the numbers here.

Completely ripped off from MGoBrian.  He explains his terms here http://mgoblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/hennechart-legend.html

Terrelle Pryor

One dead on throw to Sanzenbacher on the post for a 31 yard touchdown.  Eastern Michigan had two guys underneath, an under thrown ball could have been ugly here.

Two bad reads.  The first around 8:15 in the first quarter on a downfield throw to Posey, this wasn’t as much a bad read as a late throw.  The Eastern Michigan defensive back breaks up the pass with considerable forward momentum, if this ball is a little later it would be an interception with a long return.  On the very next throw Pryor scrambles to left side, then floats a pass into an area with 2 Buckeyes and 3 Eagles.

The very first throw of the game could have been labeled catchable, inaccurate or a bad read.  The throw is downfield into double coverage, Posey goes down to make the catch (not sure if he slipped or did this intentionally) and the ball is off his fingertips.  In my table this fit into the inaccurate column.  The second inaccurate was with 4:26 left in the first, the out to Fields was way out.  It’s possible this was actually a throwaway by Pryor as Fields looked to be well covered on the play.  Inaccuracy number three was in the flat to Saine, but was nowhere near the intended target.

To any of you who had Washington in the next Ohio State receiver to drop a pass pool congratulations.  Pryor delivered the ball right when Washington came out of his cut (this is timing he needed on the first throw of the game) but a completion was not to be.

One designed run, 3^rd and 1 quick snap that Pryor took around the end for 15 yards.  Pryor is very dangerous in a MAC secondary.

Big day for Sanzenbacher, but you probably already knew that.

Pryor put it in the air 26 times, with 21 being in the first two columns, his best performance of the season in my opinion.

Completely ripped off from MGoBrian.  He explains his terms here http://mgoblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/hennechart-legend.html

Terrelle Pryor

No dead on throws this week.

Only 2 bad reads, they were of course the two interceptions.  Interception one on the season, Pryor spots Washington covered by a linebacker and throws to the post.  Unfortunately the safety somehow noticed Pryor starring at Washington and takes the free pick.  On interception number two Stoneburner stays in to block (Ohio showed 5 at the line, only rushed 4), Hall leaks out to the flat, everybody else runs to the same spot 40 yards down field.  The pass is intended for Sanzenbacher and my guess is that Saine's defender made the pick here.

Two inaccurate passes caught in the game.  The first is Sanzenbacher showing off by reaching high and behind himself for the grab, then turning that move into 7 yards after the catch.  Posey caught one on third and goal from the four yard line, he was looking for the ball outside towards the pylon and got it high on the inside.  Posey pulled it down, but a good throw would have been a touchdown instead of fourth and goal from the 1.  The most damaging inaccurate pass was the under thrown post to Sanzenbacher in the endzone, as it was followed by a sack then interception.

Pryor had his first throwaway of the season, Ohio rushed 6 with 2 linebackers reading Pryor at the line.  Pryor avoided the rush but was unable to find a receiver downfield.

No designed runs, an idea I think we can all get behind in this game.  Once again Pryor makes good plays while scrambling.  Troubling that for the second week in a row, one of the few sacks in the game comes during the two minute drill.

Stoneburner is a large factor in the passing game, he is averaging over 4 targets per game on the season.  Posey and Sanzenbacher continue their good play with zero drops for the second time on the season, and as mentioned before each had caught a ball against Ohio that you can’t expect them to.

Pryor put it in the air 29 times, with 20 being catchable balls, about on par with his performance against Marshall.

Completely ripped off from MGoBrian.  He explains his terms here http://mgoblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/hennechart-legend.html

Terrelle Pryor

Throwing

Dead on to Posey down the sideline for 62 yards.  I didn’t see the next pass to Saine in the end zone as being dead on, as Saine had to make a great play to score the touchdown.

First bad read was when Pryor didn’t see a defensive lineman drop into coverage and hit him with the pass, thank goodness he didn’t have Hayward’s hands. 

Pryor avoids a free rusher on a blitz to the short side of field, then forces the ball into tight group of Hurricanes on the sideline, Stoneburner almost makes the catch off the deflection.

Pyror stares down Sanzenbacher, throwing to him late over the middle nearly leading to an interception. 

The fourth bad read was when Pryor throws to the middle of 4 Hurricanes defenders with no Buckeye receiver present. 

Pryor forces the ball into tight coverage down the sideline, Posey breaks up the interception. 

Force to Posey down the sideline in the endzone, this is tough for me to categorize, the defender made a great play in coverage and on the ball, but had no chance to intercept it.  It is tough to determine if Posey would have had a chance at it. 

Just before the half Pyror had time, but held the ball too long and was sacked, forcing Ohio State to take their second time out.  A throw away on this play may have lead to a better series of plays before the half.

I didn’t include this in the table, but an argument can be made that the 3 yard slant to Posey on second down in the final series of the half was also a bad read.

Inaccurate passes abound, included is the third down throw behind Stoneburner in the endzone, it is possible that Stoneburner should have sat between the defenders.   Sanzenbacher and Posey both made outstanding catches of high throws on third and long that could have been called inaccurate, but instead were put in the catchable bin.

Running

Designed runs went well against the Miami defense, good for nearly 6 yards per carry, and once again Pryor shows that when he pulls it down to run good things happen.

I included yards after catch for any that were interested, Herron’s catch was the shovel pass.

In a simplistic form you have 22 good versus 16 bad on passing downs (last week that was 23/8).  Pryor was lucky in that 5 balls he put in the air were of the kind that could be intercepted, yet none were.  On the optimistic side of things, he made big plays throwing the ball, and absolutely killed Miami with his running ability.

Completely ripped off from MGoBrian.  He explains his terms here http://mgoblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/hennechart-legend.html

Terrelle Pryor

*I have Pryor for 3 more yards than the official stats and did not go back to find the inconsistency.  Clearly an error on my part.

Your three dead on throws were in stride to Sanzenbacher for a 65 yard touchdown, 28 yards down the middle to Sanzenbacher over the linebacker and under the safety, and 11 to Posey in the corner of the end zone.  On the last one if Pryor doesn’t throw it exactly on the money it becomes a bad read because of the tight coverage.

Bad reads include fumble the snap PANIC, and staring down his receiver drawing the safety and forcing Posey to make an excellent play to break it up.

The four inaccurate includes that slight overthrow of Posey down the sideline, I have trouble assigning blame to anybody on this one, yet here it sits.  The other three are short throws at the feet or over the head of an open receiver.

Posey dropped a good throw 15 yards downfield, and Washington dropped a short pass that hit him in the hands.

Not so good on the designed runs, sacks came quickly both on plays where Marshall showed more people than they actually brought.  On the scrambles Pryor seemed to have time, but saw open field.

Bonus points for Pryor when Marshall showed 5 at the line of scrimmage, brought only three with one coming free, Pryor made the free rusher miss and delivered a 17 yard gain through the air.

Terrelle Pryor gets a lot of hype, be it preseason favorite for offensive player of the year¹, or most overrated player in the Big Ten as picked by a group of guys who haven’t had much success in their college careers².  By the numbers, what did the Big Ten quarterbacks look like last season?

These numbers are for Big Ten play only.

How does Pryor measure up?  His completion percentage is about average, his yards per attempt is near the bottom, but his touchdown to interception ratio is near the top.  This all adds up to a quarterback rating that is a virtual dead heat for fourth overall, but clearly a step below Clark, Elliot and Tolzien.

The glaring difference in the chart above can be found in both total yards and attempts.  Stanzi and Williams missed 2-3 games, Chappell, Kafka and Elliot are head and shoulders above the rest in terms of attempts.  The question becomes, where are Pryor’s missing 40-50 attempts? 

Running with the football is where Pryor appears to be elite among Big Ten quarterbacks.  I don’t know how these numbers break down in terms of sacks, scrambles and assigned runs, but that’s something I want to keep track of this season.

Pryor’s play in Big Ten games last year wasn’t bad enough to destroy the high expectations that he came into the season with, and wasn’t good enough to validate them.  So he begins this season in the same position as the last, buckeye fans hoping the brilliance in his play becomes the rule rather than the exception.

1. http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/sports/stories/2010/08/02/0802-osu-is-pick-in-big-ten.html
2. http://www.annarbor.com/sports/um-football/michigan-football-team-player-poll-part-1-hardest-hitter-embarrassing-memories-and-more/