Searching for Manti Te’o

Over the course of Spring Ball, one sound bite that seemed to stick in the minds of a lot of Notre Dame fans was the commentary by coach Brian Kelly with regard to the play of Manti Te'o. Specifically, some fans were taken aback by commentary that, in terms of actual playing of the game (as opposed to potential or raw talent), Manti needed to get a lot better. It was a slightly jarring sound bite from Kelly, seemingly picking on one of the very few bright spots on the Irish defense of 2009. But on closer look, and with an appreciation of what we know Te'o can do, given the flashes he showed in '09, we find that the numbers agree with Kelly.

Below we've calculated the efficiency of returning ND defensive players who contributed any playing time in 2009. And just to get our heads around this, rather than give a clean definition of efficiency, we've taken a look at "efficiency" in 4 ways: 1) Tackles per minutes played 2) Minutes Played per Tackle 3) Tackles for Loss per Minutes Played 4) Minutes Played per TFL. Okay, so really we only looked at 2 different scenarios and then flipped the numbers around, but we enjoy such things, so...

Anyway, essentially we looked at each player's solo tackles and divided them up by minutes played, and then flipped that. And then we got to thinking about "big plays," so we did the same with tackles-for-loss, dividing them up by minutes played, and then flipping those numbers as well. You can see our worksheet by clicking here. Here's a bit of visualization of that data (you can click on each column/bar to get more data info):

Now, not to pick on Manti, but a few things about these stats jump out simply by virtue of Manti being so clearly blessed with talent that 99% of the rosters of major college football players do not possess:

• Harrison Smith, despite all his troubles, at least in graph form, looks nearly identical to Manti. And in fact, he sports a tackles-per-minute rate of .13 over Te'o's .12. And they're tied in tackles-for-loss-per minute. Granted, none of these numbers take into account where a tackle occurs (aside from in front of or behind the LOS), so no doubt Harrison Smith was credited with tackles while flailing about the mid-section of opposing tight ends who just caught a soul-crushingly loopy pass on 3rd-and-8, but still, for all the obviousness of Te'o's all-world talent, his production, according to these numbers, was no better than one of the most maligned players on the ND defensive roster.
• Perhaps we should nickname Te'o "Manti Smith" until he really does differentiate himself from the other Smiths on the team. (We kid.) It turns out that Brian Smith's defensive efficiency is right on par with Te'o as well. Brian Smith touts a tackle every 8.47 minutes while Te'o registered a rate of 8.21 minutes between each tackle. Remember now, Brian Smith has been playing essentially out of his "natural" position since his freshman year in 2007. And just to confuse you: Harrison Smith managed a rate of 1 tackle for every 7.69 minutes of PT. Go figure.
• I almost don't even want to discuss tackles for loss. Te'o registered 4, at a rate of 1 every 59 minutes of PT. Harrison Smith registered 6 at a rate of 1 every 50 minutes of PT. I'm guffawing now. Are you?
• Fleming's gotta be on the field a lot in 2010. Right?
• And Filer too, right?
• We give Brian Smith a hard time around here, largely because we also think he's capable of so much more than he's churned out, and we wonder what his TFL-per-trash-spoken ratio would look like. We just hope his TFL-per-minutes-played ratio improves this year so he doesn't have to play about 33% more just to keep his totals up with Te'o's.
• Can't help but find the relative uniformity of the columns "solo tackles" and "min/tackle" per each DL rather interesting. We wonder what it means, if anything. We wonder if it's a function of the frequency of rotation at the DL positions.
• The DB stats basically remind us that when we saw a DB coming on a blitz (and so did the rest of the stadium) in 2009, it was probably going to get brutal (for the Irish).

So the quips by Kelly about Manti needing to get better as a football player weren't just motivational bits of jargon being thrown around to see what might stick to a future leader. There are just some people with such obvious talents that the subjective "eye test" becomes damn near objective, and the obviousness of the potential risks becoming embarrassing if placed against production. Manti Te'o is such a talent. He could become a mythic figure in college football, but not until he starts to shine and stand out above and beyond his own teammates.*

*Yes, yes. We know. There's no "I" or "Manti" in "team," and all that. But we stand firm that the Irish defense will never be excellent if Manti Te'o never becomes a vastly superior player to most everyone else on the roster.