Friday, September 24, 2010

Charting on Texas...

I know this won’t be earth shattering news to anybody reading this blog but there is simply no good way to spin Texas Tech’s offensive performance vs Texas.

Consider these stats:

- 5 of 14 (35.7%) on passes thrown beyond 5 yards downfield.

- 2.8 yards/play gained.

- Only 2 of 16 run plays ever got outside the tackle box..

- Only 4 balls were thrown beyond 15 yards. The only one caught was for a 15 yard touchdown by Lyle Leong Jr .

Conclusions I reached about the Tech offense from charting the game:

- Potts strongly favors the right side of the field. 20 of 38 passes were thrown to his right and 30 of 38 were thrown over the middle or to his right.

- He was 6 of 8 for 30 yards on throws to his left. However 4 of those completions were on WR screen passes thrown under 5 yards downfield.

After looking at the breakdown of play calls, I must say that Greg Davis did an excellent job managing Garrett Gilbert in this game.

I say that because:

- Gilbert was very balanced between throws to his left (14) and his right (18).

- Gilbert threw 17 of 38 balls (44.7%) more than 5 yards downfield.

- Running plays were also very well balanced with 16 going to the left and 18 to the right. I wonder if this was done in part to keep Bront Bird even more confused at his MLB position.

Despite this great balance, there was a glaring weakness in Gilbert’s performance on Saturday.

He was an atrocious 4 of 18 (22%) on passes thrown to his right. At 41 yards of passing, that works out to an abysmal 2.27 yards/attempt. Gilbert was at 7.64 yards/attempt to the right and 13 yards/attempt over the middle. However, Davis kept letting him throw to his right side as 18 of his 38 passes went that direction.

To contrast, Taylor Potts was between 3.5 and 4.1 yards/attempt to the various parts of the field.

Texas Game Charting Spreadsheet

***note*** The game charting is on 2 separate pages of the same spreadsheet.


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