Throughout the year, Her Loyal Sons has documented DeShone Kizer‘s surprising and outstanding season. We’ve compared the redshirt freshman’s hot start to the beginnings of the Irish careers of Everett Golson, Tommy Rees, Dayne Crist, Jimmy Clausen and Brady Quinn.
Enjoy the following five charts. No matter how you slice it, Kizer has had a better beginning than anyone in the past 15 years.
(You may click on the first two graphs for a bigger size. If you’d like to see the numbers, game logs or several more categories, here is my worksheet.)
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Notre Dame graduate, class of '02 (the Davie years!). A former newspaper and TV reporter, andrewwinn is now professionally involved in something far less fun to discuss than college football. A dad, a husband and a wannabe data nerd.
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Notre Dame graduate, class of '02 (the Davie years!). A former newspaper and TV reporter, andrewwinn is now professionally involved in something far less fun to discuss than college football. A dad, a husband and a wannabe data nerd.
Read all posts by andrewwinn
Follow @HLS_NDtex
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It’s interesting that Golson had the least amount of fumbles as a freshman.
I agree. The 724-snap period includes all of Golson’s redshirt freshman year (2012) as well as the first 51 snaps of the 2014 Rice game. Smarter people than me can weigh in, but I think Golson was asked to do less in 2012 – asked to be a game manager more than a game changer. He’s the QB among the five with the most run plays in the time period studied, which of course limits his opportunity to throw a pick or cough up the ball while dropping back.