Who’s your Heisman frontrunner?
gtbadcarma: Saturday’s games marks the half way point of the season. At this point who do have in the acc championship game?
Ben: Probably Clemson and Miami, but I think it would be hilarious for SMU to get in over one of them. I think Miami is probably the stronger team right now. All this to say that we still have the bulk of conference play left, so there’s a whole lot that can happen.
Logan: Short answer: I think Clemson and SMU will be in the championship game. because I expect Miami to screw up somewhere down the line.
Long Answer: Clemson and Miami are the obvious answers. I think Clemson is in because they only really have Louisville and Pitt as challengers left on the schedule. It’s not impossible for Clemson to lose, but it seems unlikely. Miami might have a tougher schedule on average with opponents like Duke, Louisville, GT, and Syracuse on the schedule even if there aren’t any stand out opponents. I struggle to believe Miami won’t screw up somewhere down the line, especially with how the last 2 weeks have gone. Miami has a long history of tanking their own season, until they show me otherwise, I’m going to keep waiting for them to screw up this one. As for who can take over in place of Miami we have a few options. SMU just has to make it through Pitt and UVA. The mustangs have been on fire lately, so I think SMU is the most poised to take over if Miami trips. Pitt unfortunately has to go through Clemson and SMU, so while I think it is possible for Pitt to reach the Championship game, their road will be much more difficult. UVA is also a wildcard, but they would need to beat Clemson, SMU, and Pitt; what a legendary season it would be if UVA could pull that off! Not only would UVA be in the Championship game, but if UVA takes down Pitt, SMU, and Clemson that would likely cause Chaos throughout the ACC standings. At this exact moment there are a few fun contenders, but my money would be on Clemson and SMU.
Chris: Seems like Clemson and Miami, but also I agree with Logan that Miami will probably mess up at some point. SMU would be so funny.
Jack: Clemson/Miami as stated is chalk right now. But, let’s be clear. This is the ACC, nothing goes to plan. Something wild will happen and throw the whole thing into chaos while Clemson runs away with it.
GreenMoutainJacket: Mid season Heisman front runner…who you got?
Ben: Ashton Jeanty, and it’s not close. Alex Kirschner released this article a couple days ago that dug into some of Jeanty’s stats. From the article:
On carries against a “bad box,” with eight defenders or more, Jeanty averages 8.9 yards. The national average for tailbacks on those runs is 3.7 yards. Just five running backs have seen 30-plus carries against eight-man boxes or heavier, and four of them average between 3.4 and 5.6 yards on those carries. Jeanty’s average against a heavy box, however, is 8.9 yards.
On carries in which the offensive line allows a run disruption – a defender at the point of attack clogging a gap or beating his man, essentially – Jeanty averages 10.7 yards. The national average for running backs on such carries is 2.2 yards. Jeanty is quintupling the typical back in how he performs when a defender blows up a play.
After contact, Jeanty averages 6.5 yards. The national running back average: 2.1. Among running backs with 50 carries or more, the next best after-contact average is 3.9 yards.
Jeanty averages 0.43 missed or broken tackles per touch, leading all running backs. The average running back breaks 0.15, just more than a third of what Jeanty eludes.
Simply amazing, and no other player in college football has been putting up a comparable season.
Logan Sandor: The answer for everyone should be Ashton Jeanty or Travis Hunter. Jeanty is in the running for the insane numbers he is putting up. For reference Derrick Henry was the most recent RB to win a Heisman and Derrick had 1,986 rushing yards and 23 TDs the year he won. Jeanty has 1,031 yds and 16 TDs after 5 games this year. At this current pace Jeanty will end the year with 500 more yds and 15 more TDs than Derrick had in his Heisman year. That is ludicrous. Hunter is in the running for his ability to play both ways at a talent level we have never seen in the sport. We have had players play both sides of the ball, but we haven’t had a guy who plays the whole game while playing both sides of the ball at a level that would make him a 1st team All-American at both positions. Hunter is just an insane athlete, and despite all Colorado’s talent, The Buffaloe would have a few more losses already this season if Hunter weren’t playing for them. I’d be fine with either of those 2 options. Personally, I like Hunter because I feel we haven’t seen someone do what he’s doing before. It does seem that more people are trending in Jeanty’s favor due to the sheer ridiculousness of the numbers he is putting up. Unfortunately, I don’t really expect either to win. The Heisman voters have a bad trend of just giving the award to a standout QB as the year rolls on. If Jeanty can keep up his numbers I think he has the best shot, otherwise it’ll probably be someone like Jalen Milroe or Quinn Ewers if they can lead their team to an SEC Championship.
Chris: Yup, Jeanty – basically everyone is caught up in “how absurd will his final season stats be” and that’s a really good litmus test.
DressHerInWhiteAndGold: Does Vandy>Tahde reconfirm your belief that CFB (will all its faults) is still the best athletic event humanity possesses, or is this just a fluke and CFB is just a leisure distraction?
Ben: No, parity is still very poor across the sport as a whole. I guarantee that whoever wins the national championship this year will be one of Bama, UGA, Texas, or Ohio State. There is an elite group at the top, and that rarely changes. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s the final four.
Logan: I’m not really sure if this question is trying to hint at parity or conference strength issues. I do think when you ignore all the background noise about conference politics and people trying to make money CFB is one of if not the most beautiful sport in the world. I loved the big upset, I loved the way the fans reacted, I loved the fact that no one believed in Vandy. I think this was a great win that Vandy will be riding the high from for a long time. I think everyone (aside from Bama fans) seemed to enjoy the win as well.
Chris: Well, it’s a fluke in the sense that Bama probably wins that game 9/10 times, but it’s not a fluke in the sense that stuff like this happens in CFB all the time. I don’t really think it’s the fact that upsets happen though that’s interesting, it’s how impactful those upsets are. Upsets happen in the NFL, but they rarely have huge implications or have staying power culturally. Here though, people are gonna be talking about this game forever and it could cost Bama playoff seeding.
Jack: It’s the Olympics and will always be the Olympics. Not to take away from Vandy’s win or any of the lifechanging moments college football has brought me (Kick Six, Prayer at Jordan-Hare, others), but there isn’t a day that the Olympics will matter less than any other sport to me.
Frodo Swagginz: The playcalling has been fairly bland for the past few weeks and the offense looks like it’s firing on 6/8 cylinders. Do they start to open up the playbook now that it’s later in the season?
Ben: Frankly, I’m a little concerned that it hasn’t already been opened up more. I don’t feel they’re letting King work downfield enough to make this offense as dangerous as it was last year, and Tech is really missing that. Haynes King has been incredibly efficient all year. Let him take some chances and just send Eric Singleton deep.
Logan: The team seems to be really focused on limiting turnovers, especially since the defense has not been as good at getting turnovers this year. Key and Faulkner believe in the run game and the strength of the O-line, this also helps our defense as the clock control keeps our defense off the field and rested. This type of offense can be frustrating to watch sometimes; but overall, Faulkner/Key’s strategy seems to be successful. Fans want those big explosive plays and for our offense to hang 40 on opponents, but at the moment it doesn’t seem to be part of our gameplan. Frankly I think Key and Faulkner may look into going downfield more, but I don’t know if they see a real need to do so at the moment.
Chris: God I hope so. I can’t think of a good reason it hasn’t been yet, though we now know that Jamal Haynes wasn’t at full strength so maybe they simplified things until he could be at 100%?
Jack: When I was at the press conference last game, Key did hint that they wanted to be more dynamic that game about getting more east/west in the attack, which implies more creativity in the playcalling. Speaking on the Duke game specifically, the Blue Devils routinely played two high safety, which made the screen game a much safer option. Combine that with the fact Jamal Haynes was healthy and could make better runs, I think we saw a version of the offense making progress. Also keep in mind we did throw deep against Louisville and those throws kept us in that game, so it’s happening.
Yeller Bug: Is there a corresponding statistic used today that somewhat simulates “mode?” Example: When we run the ball what’s the most common outcome? We seem to have a lot of runs in the -2 to +2 yd range which is not good. One would need to then filter out goal line runs or QB sneaks for the first down, but this year we seem to get stuffed (< 2yds) more often than last year.
Ben: I don’t think a specific statistic for that exists to determine mode, but stuff rate is a thing. Game on Paper calculates stuff rate as the percentage of runs that get stopped for no gain or a loss, but your observation is correct. This year, Tech’s stuff rate is 20.4% (26th percentile in the country). That’s a big increase from last year when it was 13.3% (80th percentile). The offensive line has taken a step back in run coverage. Jamal Haynes also dealt with an injury for the first part of the season, and both of those contributed heavily to that increase. I think as the season continues, and Haynes gets healthier, you’ll see Tech’s percentage drop a bit, though almost certainly not to what it was last year.
Jack:
Bud Davis
Firstly, huge thanks to Bud Davis for sending us this chart and allowing us to use it here. We don’t have the updated version through the Duke game, but at least this should give an idea of what we’re running relative to the rest of the country and how successful those plays are.
Narembeil: What do you think is the reason we don’t seem to do much downfield passing? Some their I’ve heard are they think the offensive line can’t hold up or they are afraid of King picks.
Ben: I’ve been wondering the same thing myself! The offensive line has definitely taken a step back, and that’s why you’ve seen a shuffle on the depth chart. Hopefully, that will help mitigate some of that. What I also wonder is how Kings’ downfield accuracy is. I don’t know that I’m necessarily worried about interceptions as much as I’m worried about him just completely missing. Anecdotally, it feels like in the few times King has gone for the deep ball, he completely misses the target no matter how much times he’s had or how open his man is. What I would really like to see is the intermediate passing game opened up. Avery Boyd in the middle of the field is a dangerous mismatch for most defenses, so let’s exploit it more.
Logan: My guess would be that the coaches want to play safer with turnovers. Most of our games have been close this year, maybe we want to avoid losing momentum in the game by giving away a big turnover when the ground game seems to be working. I know it wasn’t a big pass downfield, but we did see what happened with the turnovers impacting our Louisville game. I don’t know for certain but avoiding the big passes to avoid turnovers seems like a reasonable guess.