This site is dedicated to the University of Florida Gator Fans. It is an open site to discuss and rehash the wins and losses and make plans toward the next National Championship! Here you will find truths, half truths, information and misinformation about the University of Florida Gators (P.S. This site endorses a 16-team playoff tournament in Division I college football.)
Contents:
He Was Never Asked?
From here, this is a pretty unbelievable quote, unless I'm reading it wrong:
"But there are things that I can get a lot better at -- my fundamentals. I've never been asked to shorten or quicken my release and not have a loop in it. The changes I'm making have gone very well and it's becoming more and more natural to me."
I'm concerned with the 'never been asked' part, which reflects poorly on Florida... why do we/they have the QB coach?
A different view on this topic, here, by Smart Football is more redeeming for the QB coach:
The word I had gotten was that Scott Loeffler, Florida’s quarterback coach, had made significant progress with Tim on this but that come gametime, well, a player’s gotta play how he knows how. And Tebow had earned the right to play his way. Yet it is troubling to the lack of progress, and it will hurt him in the draft.
Guess What Gator Nation, Cincinnati is Better than Texas!
So, we (the Mighty Gators) are playing Cincy in New Orleans, instead of Texas in Pasadena. Well, my claim is that Cincy is a little better than Texas this year. Let's look at the tape.
(All of the stats below except passer ratings do not include Cincy's game against SE Missouri St. since they are not an FBS team. If included, the stats would obviously favor Cincy even more since the Bearcats won 70-3.)
Schedule: It's controversial, but I believe the Bearcats played a tougher schedule (even when we include the Big 12 Championship Game). I'm going to use year-end rankings because I believe they better tell the story (instead of what a team is ranked when you play them), and its easier. Texas beat BCS #22 (AP 20) Nebraska and #19 (21 AP) OK State. Cincy beat #16 (18 AP) West Virginia, #17 (17 AP) Pitt, and #18 (16 AP) Oregon St. Cincy also beat one more winning team (7 total, all FBS), but Texas beat one more bowl team (8 total). Texas' opponents winning pct. is a little better than the Bearcats', at 0.529 compared to Cincy's 0.511, when counting the teams' opponents winning pct. against FBS teams (i.e. a team that plays one FBS team and loses is counted as 0-1). The first two bowls (Dec 19) may tell us more on this. They are Wyoming (Texas beat) vs Fresno (Cincy beat), and Rutgers (Cincy beat) vs UCF (Texas beat).
Offense: Cincy is a better offense. Both teams averaged close to 40 points, but yards-per-play has more predictive and explanatory power. Cincy averaged 7.3 yards per play, Texas averaged 5.7. That's a 1.6 yard difference per play (almost one more first down for every 6 plays).
Cincy averages approx. 8.71 per pass attempt (Pass yds divided by attempts and sacks). Texas averages approx. 6.87 yards per pass attempt. That's a 1.84 yards per pass att. difference. That means that every time Cincy and Texas call pass play, the Bearcats will average almost 2 yards more than the Longhorns. Bearcats have a 166.20 passer rating, whereas the Longhorns have a 143.68 rating.
Rushing? Even counting McCoy? Cincy is still better! The Bearcats average 5.1 per carry while Horns average 4.1 per carry, a yard difference. If Cincy calls two runs, they probably have a first down. If Texas calls two runs, they probably are still nearly 2 yards short.
Defense: Texas is better, but by a lower margin than Cincy's offensive superiority. The Horns give up 3.8 yards per play, and the Bearcats give up 5 yards per play. That 1.2 yard difference is not as large as the 1.6 yard margin between the two teams on offense. Texas gives up 2 yards per carry, while the Cats give up 3.6 per play on the ground, a 1.6 yard difference in favor of Texas, meaning the Bearcats give up 0.6 yards to the Longhorns if we subtract each team's defensive rushing from their offensive rushing. The passer rating of Longhorn opponents is 101.23. The opponent passer rating of Cincy is 119.23. This margin of difference is similar to the offensive margin, but still in favor of Cincy overall (by almost 5 points). Counting sacks, Texas surrenders 5.06 yards per pass attempt. Cincy is a little worse, at 5.71 yards per pass attempt, but the difference (0.65 yds-per-att) is not as large as the difference between the two passing offenses, which was a 1.84 yard difference per attempt (nearly triple the defensive margin difference). So Cincy is approx. 1.19 yard per pass better than Texas when we subtract each team's pass defense from their pass offense.
Third Downs: Texas has a 46% conversion rate on third downs, while Cincy has a 42% rate. Negligible difference, and, since Texas has a weaker offense, it's actually a bad sign that Texas would have slightly better success on third downs, indicating they are even more inferior on first and second downs (first and second down success is more indicative of future success than third down conversion %).
Red Zone Scoring: Texas has scored 93% of the time when reaching the opponent's 20. Cincy has scored 90% in this category. Cincy scores a TD in the red-zone 71% of the time, while Texas scores a TD 70% of the time. Pretty close.
Field Goals: Texas was 88% on FGs (22 for 25) overall and Cincy was 67% (12 for 18). Texas has been better on FGs, but Cincy isn't a bust in this area and needs fewer FGs for their overall offensive success.
Returns: Kickoffs are basically a wash. Cincy holds their opponents to 2 fewer yards per kickoff return but both teams average the same on returns. Texas is better on punt returns, averaging 3.2 yards more per return. Cincy is a hair better at defending returns.
Turnovers: Texas averages a fumble about every 89 plays. Cincy averages a fumble about every 344 plays. That's not a typo! Texas recovers a fumble on defense once every 78 plays on average, whereas the Bearcats recover a fumble once every 403 plays on average. The Horns throw an interception every 42 pass attempts on average. The Bearcats average an interception toss about every 50 pass plays. The Texas defense intercepts a pass about every 19 pass attempts while the Bearcat defense averages an interception every 30 attempts (I did not count sacks in these pass attempt inputs). These numbers mostly cancel out. Texas gives up and recovers and fumble nearly every game, on average. Cincy rarely fumbles and rarely recovers fumbles. Cincy throws fewer ints but catches few ints. All things about equal, I'd rather be the team that fumbles less and throws fewer ints (Cincy), its more in your control I would guess. However, on a per game basis, Texas looks better on turnover margin, with a +0.9/game margin compared to +0.5/game for Cincy.
Penalties: Cincy is better in this area. Texas is penalized about 0.40 yards per play. They are penalized, on average, once for every 21 total plays. Cincy is penalized once every 26 plays, with a 0.34 penalty-yards-per-play average.
Computers: The computer averages say Cincy is a touch better. They are ranked #2 by the computer average, while Texas is ranked 3. It's close, though. But Florida is as close to Texas in the computer rankings as Texas is to Cincy: 0.01 point difference between each.
I encourage anyone to improve on these statistics, even if they contradict my initial conclusions. For instance, I realize there are more ways to analyze schedule strength. A few strength of schedule rankings have Texas with a little tougher schedule than Cincy. Cincy played a non-FBS team (like a Charleston Southern), and they had one fewer game overall since they didn't have a championship game. This means they beat 11 FBS teams while Texas beat 13. This fact hurts the computer strength of schedule calculations for Cincy, but I tried to subtract the non-FBS stats from Cincy where I could (their stats against SE Missouri St.) I also don't know out-of-conference records for their respective conferences.
On a possibly irrelevant note, I would add that Cincy only has a home crowd capacity of 35,000. While potentially loud, this number might mean that Cincy has less of a disadvantage in a bowl game because they gain less home advantage overall during the year compared to a Fla and Alabama and Texas.
While it's not so obvious that Cincy is the better team, I hope this at least muddies the waters and throws some doubt onto Texas' superiority over Cincy.
I may do a similar comparison as this for Fla vs. Cincy, and maybe Alabama vs. Texas and Boise/TCU. My initial impression, especially considering these numbers, is that Cincy will be a tough opponent for the Gators and the Tide will beat Texas.
With Jamarcus Russel’s recent benching, there’s been a lot of talk about when it’s time for a team to cut its losses on a failed quarterback. I don’t have hard numbers at my fingertips, but I’d be fairly certain that if a QB isn’t playing above average football or there hasn’t been steady improvement, by the end of his second year, it’s time to move on. There’s no question teams tend to stick with struggling QBs well beyond their expiration date, even when better alternatives exist. The real question is, why?
Let’s say you’re an out-of-town Bills fan, and before the season began you were understandably optimistic about the team’s prospects. You bought prime tickets to the January 3rd game hosting the Colts, including parking and a hotel room. Altogether the bill comes to $400. In August, this feels like a great deal.
As the season wears on, it becomes clear the Bills aren’t contenders. The coach is fired, and the upcoming Colts game is not looking promising, as the Colts appear likely be playing for home field advantage in the playoffs. Everything points toward a humiliating blowout. What’s worse, as the game approaches the weather isn’t looking good. Bills fans are always the hardy type, but the foercast is beyond bad—snow, wind, freezing rain, and bitter cold. You’re not exactly excited about the prospect of going to the game.
A few days before the game, your friend invites you to watch the game at a party to inaugurate his new palacial home theater. You’d really rather do that than actually go to the game, but you’ve already sunk $400 and it’s too late to sell the tickets. Naturally, you can’t let those tickets go to waste, so you suck it up and go to the game.
But this is completely irrational. It’s called the sunk cost fallacy.
To understand your mistake, think of your options in terms of costs and benefits. We’ll call the $400 you spent a cost of -4. Actually going to the game would be a benefit of +0, since it doesn’t appeal to you. And going to the party is a benefit of +2.
• "If BCS not completely broken, don't fix it." We like our championship systems in that sweet spot between roughly 83 and 96.4 percent broken, anyway.
• "BCS is a friend to the Mountain West." And real friends always hang together to summarily dismiss one another's bids for equality and denounce each other to Congress. It's not like those wannabes would know what to do with all that money, anyway. It's for their own good.
• "Would a college football playoff be fair?" If you were intelligent enough to employ the "Fairness Index" instead of an irrelevant, abstract measure like "actual results of head-to-head competition," you would see clearly that no, no it would not be.
Dan the Man
In the most sophisticated measurement of regular season QB value that has been invented, Marino comes out tops when computing for era/peer comparison, and comes out a hair behind Peyton, at 2nd place, for overall "converted yards" stats.
(Also, if you read the explanation post, you'll notice that rushing is also a factor, as well as sacks, fumbles, scores, yards/attempts, etc. And this is trying to measure QB value, not team and offensive value.)
Culpepper does better in these metrics than one might imagine, falling into the top 50 all-time, possibly close to top 40. He also apparently had one of the toughest all-time schedules amongst these all-time QBs ranked.
Game theory tells us that when there are two strategy options, like run and pass, the expected payoffs for both options should be equal. You really don't need game theory to intuitively understand this. If one option yields a better payoff, then it should be chosen until the opponent responds with a strategy change of his own. Eventually, as the opponent responds, the payoffs for the two options equalize. The point at which the strategy mix equalizes payoffs is known as the minimax, or sometimes called the Nash equilibrium. The resulting strategy mix, or run-pass balance in this case, produces the best overall, long-run payoff.
When there are two strategy options and one of them yields a much higher payoff, it tells us two things. In this case, passing is more lucrative than running on 1st down, and this tells us: 1) offenses should be passing more often, and 2) for now, defenses should continue to be more biased toward stopping the run.
I was screaming about this during last year's SEC Championship game against Alabama. The Gators insisted on running on first down with Demps, mostly, for three quarters, until opening up the pass and getting most of their offensive success in the fourth quarter. Notice, this is NOT about running, even if it doesn't work, in order to pass later. It is saying that teams are running well over the amount needed to effectively "set-up" the defense.
You'll also notice, further into the piece, that more red-zone passing is needed.
Post-Tebow
Looking forward to a better offense, while still enjoying any championships this team brings.
Along with having a better overall quarterback (Yeah! I said it!), the Gators will also likely have:
• The single best player on Florida's current offense, Aaron Hernandez, will be back, if he scorns the NFL, presumably following up All-American status this year with a run at being a Top 10 draft pick in 2011.
• All three top running backs return: Jeff Demps, Chris Rainey and Emmanuel Moody. They are joined by top prep running Mack Brown, who might be better than all of them, and "the next Percy Harvin," Andre Debose, who lost his much-anticipated true freshman season this year to a hamstring injury.
