Tommy Rees kicked off the 2013 season by completing his first 3 passes for 115 yards and 2 touchdowns, leading all Notre Dame fans to a very rational thought: Tommy Rees is the Heisman frontrunner. Okay, okay – that is a bit of a stretch. But for a kid who has had a college career full of peaks and valleys it was a phenomenal way to begin his senior campaign. While the Irish didn’t continue to score at the same pace through the rest of the game, Tommy Football continued with what was the best performance of his ND career.
Rees finished 16/23 for 346 yards, 3 TDs and 0 interceptions and a quarterback rating of 239.0. That 239 rating was 3rd best of all quarterbacks during week 1 (Note: I am writing this before the end of the FSU/Pitt game and it appears Jameis Winston may be on his way to the top spot in his college debut), right behind consensus NFL first-rounder Teddy Bridgewater of Louisville.
The charts below show all BCS conference quarterbacks (with a few notable exceptions like Johnny Manziel who didn’t play enough to qualify) ranked by quarterback rating from week 1 with Notre Dame opponents highlighted in gray.
While it would be very, very premature to think any quarterback could keep up a similar pace once the competition toughens, the decision making and precision on deep balls Rees showed, along with what appeared to be some more zip on short passes than we had seen from Rees before, could be a good sign of Tommy’s ability to lead the Irish through the next 11 games.
What also sticks out from the week 1 numbers is how generally weak Notre Dame’s opponents’ QBs performed. Devin Gardner looked strong on the ground but threw two picks against Central Michigan, while QBs like Cody Kessler of USC and Trevor Knight of Oklahoma struggled against very inferior competition in their college debuts. Kessler may be replaced by Max Wittek against Washington State, but Kiffykins will not announce who the starting QB is in advance. MSU’s Andrew Maxwell was unimpressive and remains in an uncertain situation with Mark Dantonio planning on continuing to play two QBs going forward, and BYU’s Taysom Hill had a very rough go of it against middling Virginia as he only completed a third of his passes.
A few other performances of note: AJ McCarron, the nation’s 2012 leader in passing efficiency, fell near the bottom of BCS QBs as his line struggled to give him any protection against Virginia Tech while Tajh Boyd’s ranking of only 19th doesn’t come close to doing him justice for how dominant he was in a huge winner over Georgia.
Proof that, sooner or later, everyone comes around to love the Irish.
After growing up as a Notre Dame hating, misguided youth, it only took one visit to campus during high school for Twibby to realize the error of his ways. From that point on Twibby and the Irish have had what can only be described as a true Hollywood love story. When he's not reminiscing about his time in South Bend and pondering ways to get a 5th year of eligibility as a student, Twibby writes about Notre Dame and the rest of the college football world for HLS. Along with the Irish, he is a diehard fan of the Chicago Bears, Bulls, Blackhawks and Cubs with a strange affection for Northwestern Wildcats football.
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Good lord. I didn’t realize the rest of our opposing quarterbacks looked varying shades of middling-to-awful. I know Michigan beat up on CMU, but didn’t know Gardner had such a ‘meh’ stat line, particularly two picks to one TD. Did they just run the ball all game, or did their offense constantly face short fields?
Everyone else pretty much looks like hell. I’m particularly shocked to see OU’s quarterback put up such awful numbers. Our ILB’s coverage issues might not be such a huge problem is indicative of if our opponents QB play for the season.
That’s why I struggled so much in my “Know Thyself, Know Thy Enemy” QB post (http://www.herloyalsons.com/blog/2013/08/26/know-thyself-know-thy-enemy-quarterback/).
I know I caught a bit of flak for picking Hogan, but this was the reason why I did. There is just so many unproven QBs on our schedule and none of them really stood out as a clear front-runner.
I don’t understand this. How is 9/17 (52.9%) for 197yds, 2TD, and 1INT a 177.3 rating while 33/46 (71.7%) for 400yds, 3TD, and 0INT is only a 166.3 rating? And 43/60 (71.7%) for 413yds, 4TD, and 0INT is even lower at a 151.5 rating?
If that differential is all because of yards per attempt, college football passer rating may be the dumbest statistic in all of sports.
CFB QB Ratings are better thought of as efficiency ratings.
It takes yardage, TDs, completions and INTs, assigns them all weights and then you divide by attempts.
So yes, yards/pass does mean something in the formula but both TDs and completions are weighted higher.
Weights:
Yards * 8.4
TDs * 330
Completions * 100
INTs * -200
Take that sum and divide by attempts.