Welcome to “I Got 5 On It”, where each week I’ll be picking five news-worthy subjects based around college football to cover. Ranging from views on Devy prospects, general college football talk, interesting stats, and a little bit of hip-hop music (mostly 90s rap).
1. Top QB Performers
@FBGChase has done a lot of great work on twitter with ANY/A with NFL passers. That gave me the idea of using this stat to gage college passers each week. If you are unaware of this stat let Pro-Football-Reference.Com explain. ANY/A – adjusted net yards per passing attempt: (pass yards + 20*(pass TD) – 45*(interceptions thrown) – sack yards)/(passing attempts + sacks). See AY/A.. This stat doesn’t take into account any rushing plays, just purely dropbacks.
Here are the top 10 performers from week 5 of the CFB season out of 61 qualifying QBs.
*Note – The total on the bottom is the tally of all QBs that attempted at least 10 passes this past weekend.
Not a big surprise if you watched the Alabama and Texas A&M game, but Mac Jones was the most valuable passer this last weekend. He threw for 435 yards on just 27 attempts, for a whopping 16.1 yards per attempt. Jones is very good, Devy analysts tried all summer to say that Bryce Young would be the Crimson Tide’s QB1. They clearly didn’t watch Jones at the end of 2019. Jones’ game against A&M is actually the 2nd highest rated game out of 213 qualifying performances this year. Zach Wilson put on a show Friday night. Completing 92% of his passes for over 12 yards per attempt. Just wish BYU played some better competition this season to see how Wilson stacks up. Matt Corral ended up with a top 5 day. Is this the Corral that we all expected last season? Lets hope. After monster performance game 1, Kyle Trask slid in just outside the top 10. Still question how much he’s improved compared to his pass-catchers bailing him out. On the flipside, Holton Ahlers had the worst performance of the season of any QB! Ahlers has gotten NFL buzz from Devy analysts. Why, I have no clue. Three interceptions and a sub-5-yards per attempt should hush any buzz around Ahlers being a legit NFL prospect at QB. After being the week 4 darling, Mississippi State and KJ Costello both face planted in a major way. Costello came in with the second worst performance just ahead of Ahlers. The hype around the Bulldogs and Costello was a bit much after pounding a depleted LSU Tiger team. Bo Nix wasn’t good in Auburn’s loss. He came in with the 4th worst showing on the weekend. 177 yards on 43 attempts is horrible, 4.3 YPA! Another G5 QB that keeps getting NFL buzz that I quite don’t understand is Desmond Ridder. Ridder came in with a bottom 10 outing against a USF team that had no pulse on defense in their last game.
Now, it’s onto Trey Lance. Normally, I don’t include FCS players in my weekly ANY/A data. With all the hype surrounding this weekend, it just felt right to throw him on for the weekend. I’m certainly not a Lance truther but I like his game, I just believe the top 5 or 10 hype is just crazy talk. Even though I expected a much better performance against Central Arkansas, I thought he’d finish as one of the top 5 QBs on the day. Lance finished the day as the 47th rated passer out of 61 qualifiers. So I went back and looked at Central Arkansas’s three other games this fall. Using the same ANY/A metric Lance was only the third-best performance against this Central Arkansas defense. The only reason he didn’t come in last of the four, was because Missouri State’s QB took 9 sacks for a loss of 72 yards. If Trevor Lawrence or Justin Fields had Lance’s passing line against any team in the country they’d be getting slain right now. Yet alone facing Central Arkansas… The risk and price of Lance are far greater than what I’d be willing to pay in Devy, Rookie Drafts, or in real life. I’ll gladly let somebody else take on that risk. His rushing ability might be his saving grace for fantasy purposes though. I can’t deny that he’s a tank and threat with his legs.
2. Zach Wilson
Not many QBs through the first five weeks of the season have looked as impressive as Zach Wilson of BYU. While his numbers are sexy, I still don’t know how serious of an NFL prospect Wilson is. Wilson is listed at 210lbs but appears to be sub 200lbs to my naked eye. I could be wrong, but Wilson still appears pretty slender to me. Size aside, Wilson has balled out on the gridiron this fall. Wilson is completing nearly 85% of his passes through three games. He’s hovered around 65% in the two prior seasons. Wilson has seen a major leap in yards per attempt. Almost doubling his 7.5 YPA in 2019 to 13.4 this season. The JR QB comes in 2nd in the nation only behind Mac Jones for the best season-long ANY/A to date. Wilson even has two of the ten top performances in the nation for ANY/A. This has all come against Navy, Troy, and Louisiana Tech – not exactly defensive juggernauts. Troy and Louisiana Tech both appear to be bottom 15 passing defenses while Navy is just below-average at the moment. Due to his lack of competition, I’m still a bit skeptical of his NFL future right now. Wilson has caught my attention, and I will continue to closely monitor him. I just don’t know what else we can learn about him, the Cougars’ schedule doesn’t get much tougher this season.
3. Most Efficient Receivers
We are a full month into the season, so I began to pull some WR data. The below graphic is based on WRs that have had at least 15 targets thus far this season. I equally weighted Yards Per Target and Yards Per Team Passing Attempts to come up with the final number. Gunner Romney coming in at #1 overall is a bit surprising, but with how efficient the BYU passing game has been, I guess it shouldn’t come as a surprise. Following Romney is Jaylen Waddle, Elijah Moore, Tylan Wallace, and Reggie Roberson. None of these names should be a big surprise to see atop the charts. The rest of the top 10, I’m personally not too familiar with. But I have caught a glimpse of S. Alabama WR Jalen Tolbert, and he’s caught my eye. 112 FBS players have already logged at least 15 targets this season. Tamorrion Terry logs in as the 90th most efficient receiver to date. Not great for a consensus top 15 Devy asset prior to the year. This metric first clued me in on UAB WR Austin Watkins this past summer. He finished top 10 last year with a bunch of big-time names surrounding Watkins. Watkins currently comes in at 20th overall with room to grow. John Metchie will be very highly ranked in this metric once he hits the 15 target threshold. He has the most yards in the country for anybody sub 15 targets. Tutu Atwell killed it in this metric last year, coming in tops in the country. So far his Yards Per Target isn’t pretty and is dragging him down to 33rd overall in the country.
4. Matt Corral
Corral has been slinging it around like we all expected to see last fall. He’s completed over 70% in both games of 2020 both against SEC competition. In terms of season long ANY/A, Corral comes in fifth in the nation only behind Mac Jones, Zach Wilson, Grayson McCall, and Trevor Lawrence. Many Devy analysts, including the Devy Watch crew thought Corral was set for a breakout in 2019. But he was quickly benched for John Rhys Plumlee, who was a better fit for the Rich Rod offense. Even after getting benched as the starter, he still got playing time in the majority of the Rebels’ games. Corral has already thrown more TDs in 2020 than he did in 2019 on 118 fewer throws and has seen his completion percentage jump up 18%. Once you minus out sack yardage, Corral has been a threat running the ball as well. Corral has always had one of the most talented arms in the country. It’s finally showing up on the field. He gets to face off with Alabama this weekend. If he’s able to continue to play like he has against Florida and Kentucky, we might officially have the Corral that we’ve been waiting for to emerge. Hurricane weather may have a big effect on Corral and this entire game.
5. I Got 5 On It
Florida -6.5 : Aggies haven’t look good plus the Gators can exploit that secondary like Alabama did.
LSU -13.5: The line swung a full TD due to moving stadiums due to the Hurricane. I don’t get the swing with limited fans in attendance.
Oklahoma -2.5: I can’t see the Sooners losing three games in a row. Rattler and the offense will carry them over the poorly coached Longhorns.
Florida St/Notre Dame u51.5: The Irish have had a long layoff due to COVID issues, I expect the offense to be a bit off-sync to begin the game. I can’t see the Seminoles scoring more than 17 points at the most against a Clark Lea lead defense.
Alabama/Ole Miss O69.5: As long as the weather isn’t an issue, I expect a shootout. The Crimson Tide should be able to score at will against this defense. Ole Miss and Matt Corral should be able to put up three TDs and let Alabama do all the heavy lifting to get this over 69.5
