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ADDITIONAL CHARTING OF THE OHIO STATE QUARTERBACKS IN THE 2017 SPRING GAME

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OSU1978's picture
April 22, 2017 at 2:47pm
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A few days ago Eric Seger wrote a good article breaking the Spring Game passes into yardage categories.  The article drew many comments but there were virtually no comments on the breakdown: http://www.elevenwarriors.com/ohio-state-football/spring-practice-2017/2017/04/81654/charting-the-ohio-state-quarterbacks-in-the-2017-spring-game#comment-2842118  I will here, but in a different format.  

Some have implied that results from the spring games are virtually meaningless which further implies that Eric's article and the coaches tracking the data was virtually pointless.  I respectfully disagree.  While the Spring Game clearly doesn't provide as good of evidence as probably most of the regular season games, in my opinion it is more meaningful for QBs than regular season games vs substantially inferior competition like Bowling Green which virtually assures excellent protection and plenty of wide open receivers.  At least in the Spring Game, talent on the offense and defense is roughly equal, providing the QB no competitive talent advantage.

One primary purpose of spring practice and the Spring Game was to improve on the deep ball passes (which should really include intermediate passes as well).  So I allocated Eric's data into 3 categories: 20+ yds, 10-19 yds and 9 yards or less.  Below is a result summary by PE:

                          JT       JB      DH      

       20+ yds    -200     382     324     

    10-19 yds     111      170     166

9 or less yds    183      128     133

On the 20+ yard passes Burrow and Haskins were fantastic.  However, only 11% of Haskin's passes were 20+ yards compared to 27% of Burow's passes (about 2.5 times more percentage wise).  JT only threw one pass 20+ yards and it was picked off.  Like last year, JT started out with a lot of short passes (which he is good at), presumably to get him comfortable and/or confident, but then his first intermediate or longer pass was picked off.   In my opinion they should have played JT longer and had him pass longer.  Wilson and Meyer have said they are pleased with the "Buckeyes" passing deep this spring.  Well, presumably it is JT who will be starting and passing deep, so that is who in particular needs to be successful with the deep pass.

On the 10-19 yard passes, Burrow and Haskins again led the way.  JT is solid at the short passing game and won the 9 or less yd category.  Haskins actually threw more more passes percentage wise in the the 9 yards or less category than JT, 59% to 58% compared to 45% for Burrow.

While spring games are presumed by some to be virtually meaningless, and hence not particularly predictive of future results, QB results were very similar to last year, only better.   Six comments down in the article I provide Spring Game passing statistics since 2014 by the 3 QBs.  Better results in 2017 were probably due to a worse performance by the defensive backfield that played, the coaching addition of Wilson and Day, and, quite frankly per their PEs, Haskins doing more of the passing this year instead of JT last year.  JT and Burrow improved their Spring Game PEs by 47 and 42, respectively compared to last year, resulting in Burrow's PE being 82 better than JT this year compared to 87 last year.  And like last years Spring Game and regular season games, the shorter pass JT threw the better the result.  And I believe, though didn't verify last year, that JT had a negative PE for 20+ yard passes in each of the last 2 Spring Games.  And like last year, though not wearing a black jersey, Burrow had no problem connecting on the deep passes.  In last year's Spring Game Burrow passed for a 47 yd TD pass, 43 yd completion and a 45 yard pass in stride that was dropped, all to McLaurin.  Burrow highlights from last year are worth reviewing here as he threw some deep strikes and TD strikes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXIHhhZqGig 

The objective this spring was to be more successful with the deep ball and out of total passes thrown of Burrow 45, Haskins 37 and JT 34 over the last 2 Spring Games, Burrow now has the 5 longest completions , 4 going for TDs.  Yet my twitter feed keeps telling me that Haskins has that "rocket arm", and a stronger arm than Burrow, yet Burrow also narrowly beat Haskins in the passing contest Saturday, 64 to 63 yards.

One footnote, if you accumulate the data in Eric's article, it doesn't match game totals.  To match game totals I needed to reduce JTs yards by 10, increase Burrow's yards by 8 and Haskins's yards by 10.  I split those yards in the 10-19 and 9 or less categories.  I also added the 2 TDs in their correct categories (DH for 30 yards and JT for 1 yards).  

 

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