Thinking Skins

Ok. Here's the thing. I finished my QB model that I've been working on for about a month. It compares QBs based on their college careers. Instead of looking at their overall careers I decided to look at years independently. So 2023 Caleb Williams and 2022 Caleb Williams would be seen by the model as different QBs even though you and I know that they are the same person. 

The goal of the model was to see if I could answer questions like does a certain QB play like another QB. "Does Drake Maye play like Justin Herbert or Josh Allen or Daniel Jones?" To do this I acquired a number of statistics from their college careers. Some of these are things that we all know like the passing yards, passing tds, and interceptions. Then I calculated things like sacks fumbles passes within a certain range (from 10 yards to 90 yards) and the same for runs. Games with multiple interceptions, and tds. 

So with that introduction, here are some results. 

Here is one interesting cluster of QBs 

2023 Caleb Williams, 2023 Drake Maye, 2023 Jayden Daniels, 2023 Bo Nix, 2022 Bryce Young, 2021 Will Levis, 2021 Desmond Ridder, 2021 Matt Corral, 2021 Sam Howell, 2021 Brock Purdy, 2018 Trevor Lawrence, 2018 Kellen Mond, 2018 Joe Burrow, 2018 Justin Herbert, 2016 Daniel Jones, 2016 Josh Allen, 2016 DeShone Kizer, 2015 DeShone Kizer, 2014 Paxton Lynch

I'm not saying that these are all similar QBs, just that its an interesting result. 

This is some preliminary stuff, but and in the next version I may add things like ypa, aypa, completion percentage, and possibly an intended target percentage as that was what soured me on Mac Jones. 

2 minutes ago, Warhead36 said:

Settling for Brian freaking Griese would be embarrassing 

First, why would it be settling? and why embarrassing? 

Peters knows him and has worked with him and likely knows him beyond a 6 hour interview. 

I was talking to Marshall on Twitter this morning and it was about how BS the interview process is. I don't care how detailed it is. Some people fumble in it. Some people look great in it. But it is not the real job. It is an interview for the job. These guys have been doing jobs for years and they deserve to be judges based on that, not based on a 6 hour interview. That interview should be only to seal the deal or really to confirm some things or understand some uncertainties. 

I like all the guys that they've interviewed but obviously they don't, so lets go and reset the board. Frank Smith is another name I like but he isn't as close to Peters or Shen. 

Just now, DazedSkinsfan said:

Wouldn't mind him as a OC possibly,  but not so much for HC

Why not? Do people see him as a Zorn hire? 

1 minute ago, NickyJ said:

I'd like to have a head coach whose resume is longer than 2 years of coaching quarterbacks.

I don't know. I think playing experience matters too. 

I wonder what the odds are on Brian Griese. 

7 minutes ago, Skinsinparadise said:

 

Feels weird to me.  Johnson taking interviews.  Campbell saying Johnson ready to be a HC.  Even Schefter now mentioning he wanted big money.  Yet, Keim, Schefter mentioning don't count that this team has him as the guy, other real contenders here.

 

My guess is he via back channels either got the idea he wasn't getting the job, or its 50-50, or no one was paying his price.

 

I suspect there was something he felt wasn't going his way.

I been saying that I wanted to see that he was a leader and I'm guessing that Peters and Harris said the same, before shelling out the big bucks. and Johnson I guess felt insulted by that. 

I used to love playing football. I don't know why I stopped playing. But somewhere along the lines I started going to class and playing basketball and running and just forgot about the fun of playing football. But it's just fun to play football with my boys

This is so weird because of how much I love and follow football. I'm watching it right now. But I guess I don't see football games in the streets or parks any more. So I can't just join in. But it's weird that it's been so long since I've even though of buying a ball

Just now, FootballZombie said:

 

95% readable to me.

 

It helps that all of these names are recent so its easier to pick them out of the jumbled areas just due to familiarity.

We have Stoud, Nix and Ridder on the brain so you can subconsciously weed them out.

If you went back further that would get harder and harder.

I tried to eliminate a lot of the lower round no names that didn't make the NFL. I kept the guys like Garner Minshew in some graphs though because he made it. But what about Brett Rypien? I think he was eliminated, but I don't know. 

Some draft classes still have like 5 or 6 QBs that are listed. And some just have like 2. 

I don't want to cloud the board with too many confusing images. So I spent a lot of time trying to work on this image this weekend. Let me know if you can understand it. This is QB sacks since 2019. I wont get into the details of the debugging of why the image was wrong but I was too excited about getting an image and got the wrong image to display. This one should be better and show more correlation. 

8 minutes ago, CapsSkins said:

 

I appreciate the effort but bro are you trolling right now? Lmao

thank you for pointing these things out. I'm really not focusing on this stuff. I'm really looking at the data and trying to answer questions like the one asked a few posts back about fumbles. I thought it might be difficult but I don't think it was, well fumbles lost wasn't. I need to go back into my code and change some stuff to fix my labels on that graph because thats not readable though. These are all first draft things that I'm producing on a Friday afternoon after work.

Its really cool because, especially with the sacks, I was frustrated all season looking at "rushing" stats wondering what it means In CFB but knowing that somewhere in there was sacks. And now I've parsed sacks from that. I think its beautiful. 

Maybe the final product isn't there yet though. 

45 minutes ago, ThatNFLChick said:

Does anyone have fumble numbers for the QB prospects? Or seen any metrics? 

 

 

Here's what I got

 on fumbles (lost)

2023 Caleb Williams 3
2023 Drake Maye 1
2023 Jayden Daniels 1
2023 J.J. McCarthy 0
2023 Michael Penix Jr. 0
2023 Bo Nix 0
2022 Caleb Williams 1
2022 Drake Maye 5
2022 Jayden Daniels 3
2022 J.J. McCarthy 0
2022 Michael Penix Jr. 0
2022 Bo Nix 0

26 minutes ago, ThatNFLChick said:

Does anyone have fumble numbers for the QB prospects? Or seen any metrics? 

 

 

I'm working on that. I can't promise a date but I'm working on it. 

22 minutes ago, Always A Commander Never A Captain said:

 

Are the axes labeled right? Or is the number of sacks normalized to something? The number of sacks should probably be between 0-50 or so, not 0-350 right? Is the Y axis actually sack yards lost?

Yeah, I probably need to switch them.

And I'm probably going to focus only on major QBs here. 

Is this more readable? 

8 minutes ago, KDawg said:

I’m not entirely sure what this is, but it’s intoxicating

So this is a scatterplot. the Y axis is the number of sacks and the X axis is the sack yards. I need to label this stuff. But you can see things like people near the top left are people who are more avoidant of sacks. People near the bottom left are the opposite. 

Its clustered right now because I put so many on there I can do another with fewer QBs to see how it comes out. But that was kinda to see where people came up. 

3 minutes ago, mistertim said:

 

i'm just trying to make data more readable. I'm probably going to have a talk with sportsreference later today about this. 

Be warned. 0 is at the top and -350 is at the bottom. 

That said, I'm still working on other parts of my analytic. Its amazing to be able to see this because I HATE that college ball puts rushing yards with sacks. But they are not the same. So I separated that. 

Anyway here's another look at the draft class and improvement 

2023 Caleb Williams has 31 sacks for  -252 yards
2022 Caleb Williams has 29 sacks for  -246 yards
2021 Caleb Williams has 20 sacks for  -121 yards

2023 Drake Maye has 24 sacks for  -106 yards
2022 Drake Maye has 40 sacks for  -204 yards
2021 Drake Maye has 1 sacks for  -4 yards

2022 Jayden Daniels has 43 sacks for  -200 yards
2023 Jayden Daniels has 20 sacks for  -88 yards
2021 Jayden Daniels has 25 sacks for  -166 yards
2019 Jayden Daniels has 29 sacks for  -162.0 yards

2023 J.J. McCarthy has 12 sacks for  -97 yards
2022 J.J. McCarthy has 12 sacks for  -107 yards
2021 J.J. McCarthy has 3 sacks for  -30 yards

2023 Michael Penix Jr. has 7 sacks for  -45 yards
2022 Michael Penix Jr. has 5 sacks for  -38 yards
2021 Michael Penix Jr. has 8 sacks for  -54 yards

2023 Bo Nix has 4 sacks for  -23 yards
2022 Bo Nix has 4 sacks for  -20 yards
2021 Bo Nix has 13 sacks for  -114 yards

2 minutes ago, gooseneck said:

Looks like we need to draft Nix and Oregon's offensive line.

I think that may have to do with the scheme more than anything. Its probably why Nix isn't as highly regarded. 

13 minutes ago, Warhead36 said:

That would be some pretty interesting stuff to look at. Can we get a gist of the current crop?

Yeah I edited the post to contain some stuff. I am more confident in previous years. I have to look into the weeds of the data to make sure that the data set has the later games. But here's some of the stuff about the 2024 crop. 

This is all for the year for 2023, 

Caleb Williams has 31 sacks for -252 yards
Drake Maye has 24 sacks for -106 yards
Jayden Daniels has 20 sacks for -88 yards
J.J. McCarthy has 12 sacks for -97 yards
Michael Penix Jr. has 7 sacks  for -45 yards
Bo Nix  has 4 sacks for -23 yards 

Those Penix and Nix stats are really interesting and while others have posted sack numbers like that for a season while starting a whole season, I do want to check those numbers. 
 

And then this is for last year

2022 Caleb Williams has 29 sacks for -246 yards
2022 Drake Maye has 40 sacks for -204 yards
2022 Jayden Daniels has 43 sacks for -200 yards
2022 J.J. McCarthy has 12 sacks for -107 yards
2022 Michael Penix Jr. has 5 sacks for -38 yards
2022 Bo Nix has 4 sacks for -20 yards

I just finished processing the sack numbers for college football and the results are beautiful. I want to put it into a graph format but its way different from what we see at PFR and most other sites. Finally I can see sacks different from rushing yards. And I can see who was getting sacked in college. I have it for every drafted QB (just about) going back to 2014. 

Some interesting things (and I can maybe see why Howell dropped)

The second most sacks in all of college football in a year was Howell in 2021 (47 for 275)

Now Jayden Daniels has 43 sacks in 2022 for 200 yards.

Lamar Jackson had 42 in 2016 for 289 yards. 

And Drake Maye had 40 sacks for 204 yards. 

I contrast that with a Justin Herbert who only had 20 sacks for 142 yards in 2018. 

There's a lot more. But this is a very interesting analytic I'm working on. 

I'm not going to post too much but I hope Ben Johnson has thick skin because as much as people like to say the DC media isn't harsh, it isn't a cake walk. And if this first season is not off and running, the media will not be nice. And the callers and fans will not be either. I'm not saying they'll be calling for his head or anything, but let's not act like Detroit fans weren't calling him names when he wasn't using their running back properly early in the season. But they were winning so it wasn't really a topic for discussion. 

My son loves a book called "I Will Take a Nap". It's an Elephant and Piggiey book for early readers. I can relate because without giving it away, Elephant wants to take a nap, his best friend joins him, starts to snore, ruins his nap, and makes him cranky. Great story. 

1 minute ago, ThatNFLChick said:

 

He'll probably change his opinion as he watches more. 

 

I'm curious about what philosophies Peters has when it comes to the draft and QB. I remember last year Louis Riddick mentioned that some GMs really only focused on a prospect's final season while others were more interested in the aggregate. 

I wonder how much tape Peters has watched and how different it is watching the tape vs watching All-22 vs watching it live and talking to the coaches and the players. In this game for example (south Carolina), he could literally ask Maye what he was thinking and why he decided to check down instead of being more aggressive like he has a history of being. 

27 minutes ago, KDawg said:

Daniels doesn’t make enough tight window throws for me to be comfortable with him at 2. He has great accuracy… when guys are wide open. I worry about contested passes in the NFL. A lot.

 

And the hits he takes. 

I agree with this to an extent, but it does show an ability that he was able to find the open guy and wasn't constantly forcing the ball say deep into a tight window when there was another guy he could have thrown to. I don't know if Terry will like this though cause Terry will like this because he doesn't get open.