Full comparison of McCarron and Golson.
by baloo88 (2013-03-01 03:37:54)
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  In reply to: what percentage of our passes were less than zero yards?  posted by ACross

Yards from LOS
<00-45-910-1415-1920-2425-2930-3435-3940+
McCarron15.4%29.4%19.5%11.4%9.9%4.0%3.3%1.8%2.6%2.6%
Golson11.6%13.8%25.4%23.9%13.8%5.1%4.3%2.2%0.0%0.0%


The distance categories represent how far downfield from the line of scrimmage the ball traveled in the air. Consider these two examples. In both cases, the ball is snapped at the ND 20 yard line.

1) Golson drops straight back and immediately throws the ball to TJ Jones, who's standing near the sideline at the 28 yard line and runs for an extra ten yards. In the table above, this pass would fall in the 5-9 category because the ball traveled from the 20 to the 28.

2) Golson drops back and sees Eifert come open down the middle. Eifert catches the ball at the 46 and immediately is tackled. This pass would fall into the 25-29 category.

It's worth noting that this chart includes only five of our games and 12 of Alabama's. Still, I think we can draw some tentative conclusions from the data. I think you're right that our passing game lacked many big plays downfield, but you misdiagnose the cause. We took plenty of shots downfield - more than Alabama - but our completion rates at those distances were woeful. Moreover, though I don't have the data to back this up, I feel like we get far fewer yards after catch than pretty much all top teams. I suspect Alabama converted a lot of those short passes into 15+ yard gains. We didn't do that very often.

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