Welcome to “I Got 5 On It”, 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 mixed in now and then.
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 metric to gage college passers weekly. If you are unaware of this metric “An advanced statistic in football that quantifies the contributions of a quarterback’s passing game by including five key passing statistics; passing yards, passing touchdowns, interceptions thrown, times sacked and yards lost to being sacked. This measure rewards passers for scoring with a multiplier on touchdowns and punishes a passer on throwing interceptions. This is all combined into a value on a per pass attempt basis.”
It’s calculated as follows:
ANY/A = (pass yards + 20*(pass TD) – 45*(interceptions thrown) – sack yards) / (passing attempts + sacks)”
Here are the top 10 performers from week 10 of the CFB season out of 103 qualifying performances.
*Note – The total on the bottom is the tally of all QBs that attempted at least 10 passes this past weekend.
D’Eriq King’s big night led him to the top passer of the week. His performance fell just outside of the top 10 best games of the entire season. Kyle Trask and Justin Fields roll in just behind King for the week. Trask performed like this without the aid of Kyle Pitts for a big chunk of the game. Fields has had three dominating games to start the season. Zach Wilson made his way into the weekly top 5 once again. He had a really slow first half against Boise before rolling in the second half. DJ Uiagalelei cracked the top 10 in just his second start facing one of the best defenses in the nation.
Jalon Daniels of Kansas once again brings up the end of the list. His 9 sacks for a loss of 73 yards doomed him to the second-worst game of the entire 2020 season. Sean Clifford came in the bottom 10 of the week. He is truly holding back this PSU team from reaching higher levels. Chubba Purdy has seen extended action in two games and has played horribly. Last weekend he tallied 39 yards on 21 attempts! His previous extended showing was a 0-9 passing effort.
2. Most Disappointing
No way around it, Tamorrian Terry’s 2020 season was a disaster. Even if you look past the time missed due to an injury, Terry didn’t perform well at all. Outside of a long TD against Notre Dame, Terry was a massive disappointment. He’s always been a bit of a projection, as he was raw. This is a major hit to his draft stock. Chuba Hubbard is averaging nearly a full 2 yards less (4.6 YPC) than he did in 2019 (6.4 YPC) per carry. His backup LD Brown has had no trouble averaging over 6 yards a pop. While I was lower on Bo Nix than most, even I didn’t expect this poor of a season. His inability to throw the ball 20+ yard down the field has crippled the Auburn offense. After the departure of Tee Higgins and the injury to Justyn Ross, Frank Ladson and Joseph Ngata were next up. Well, that hasn’t been the case due to injuries and poor play. The veterans Amari Rogers and Cornell Powell have stepped up in the absence of Higgins and Ross. While I haven’t demoted Demond Demas much in my ranks, according to PFF, Demas has only run 2 routes this season. Demas was raw coming out of high school and missed his senior season due to transferring high schools. So missing almost an entire year of development didn’t bode well for early playing time. I didn’t expect Demas to just walk in and start like many others did, but it’s very disappointing he hasn’t earned any playing time whatsoever. George Pickens was posed for a giant 2020. When healthy, Pickens hasn’t even been the Bulldogs top option. Kearis Jackson has looked like the go-to option for Stetson Bennett.
3. Rankings Risers
We’ve knocked out about 2.5 months of the CFB season. Here are some of my biggest risers since the start of the season.
QB: Zach Wilson, Mac Jones, Carson Strong, and Dillon Gabriel
RB: Tank Bigsby, Kyren Williams, and Jahmyr Gibbs
WR: Terrace Marshall, Treylon Burks, Marvin Mims, Jahan Dotson, John Metchie, and Kadarius Toney
TE: Michael Mayer
4. Rankings Fallers
QB: Bo Nix, JT Daniels, Trey Lance, and Jamie Newman
RB: Kylin Hill, Zamir White, Zach Charbonnet, John Emery, Trey Sanders, and DJ Williams
WR: Tamorrian Terry, Joe Ngata, CJ Johnson, Dazz Newsome, Jordan Whittington, and Brennan Eagles
5. I Got 5 On It
Louisville (+3.5): I actually had this game originally written up for last week before its postponement. Out of teams that have played more than one game this fall, UVA is the worst in explosive passing play differential. UVA only produces an explosive passing play on 5.3% of passing attempts while giving up over 19% on defense. The Cards possess one of the most explosive offenses in the nation. According to Collegefootballdata.com, UofL is the most explosive team that’s played more than one game. I’ll take the points with the Cards and their big-play offense. Hitting the money line with Louisville wouldn’t be a bad idea.
Northwestern (-2.5): The Wildcats’ defense has been pretty great to date. Northwestern’s defensive is fourth in the country in Defensive Predicted Points Added. I don’t have much faith in the Boilermakers offense outside of David Bell (If Rondale Moore is mysteriously out again). I’ll eat the 2.5 points as the road favorite. The Wildcats are just the better team right now.
Nevada (-17.5): I really like what I’ve seen out of the Nevada offense so far. Carson Strong has looked really great and I plan to do a full deep dive into his play next week for the site. New Mexico has had a really difficult time stopping the pass after two games. The Lobos defense hasn’t been able to create havoc plays and they’ve had difficulty with passing downs. I expect another big day from Carson Strong and the Wolfpack offense.
Cincinnati (-27.5): The Bearcats are the top G5 school in the nation and trot out one of the best defenses regardless of the conference. ECU’s offense is bad and I expect Cincinnati to have their way with the Pirates. Everything that ECU is poor at on offense, the Cincinnati defense is great at – stuff rate, success rate, and havoc plays. Desmond Ridder’s emergence as a legit scary rushing threat gives Cincinnati a big-play threat on offense.
Utah State/Fresno State (u54.5): 100% fading this Utah State offense. They’ve been horrible! They are second to last in the nation at Offensive Predicted Points Added and Offensive Success Rate. The Aggies’ lack of ability to move the ball or score will make up for what Fresno State is able to score. I expect less than 14 points out of the Aggies so the Bulldogs would be forced to drop over 41 to get the over
