McKewon: QB Play Won (and Lost) the West

Mavric

Mavric

Yoda
Staff member
In Big Ten games, Armstrong threw 10 touchdowns and 11 interceptions. Leidner threw nine touchdowns and eight interceptions. Armstrong threw an interception on 4.7 percent of his Big Ten pass attempts. Leidner 3.3 percent. Those rates are the highest and third-highest conference rates among regular Big Ten West quarterbacks.


Beathard? He had the lowest interception rate in league games, just 1 percent. He averaged 7.2 yards per pass attempt. Beathard had a middling completion rate, 56.5 percent, but he avoided mistakes. He threw two picks in league games and just three all season. Over a full season, Beathard had the Big Ten West’s highest average on yards per total attempts (6.85) and highest yards per pass attempt (7.8).

Armstrong was second in both categories over a full season, averaging 6.75 yards per play and 7.5 yards per pass attempt. Nobody questions Armstrong’s ability to create chunk plays for his offense.

He also threw pick-sixes in losses to Northwestern and Iowa. He threw a pick at Miami on the first down of overtime when he could have just thrown the ball away. And then there was third-and-7 at Illinois, where Armstrong chose to throw the ball in a situation where a quarterback shouldn’t even think to throw it.
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OWH

 
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Just goes to show how critical protecting the ball is. It astounds me they were able to win as many games as they did over the last 6-7 years while not taking care of the ball very well.

 
Red Five said:
ColoradoHusk said:
Mavric said:
Red Five said:
Give us CJ Beathard this year and we lose 2 games max.
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Not sure we lose any.
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So, this is the new narrative? Wow.
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How many games do you think we would have lost if we had Beathard or any other "game manager" who would have thrown 3 ints all season? It's less than 7 for sure.
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I agree that it's less than 7. However, how do we know that Riley/Langsdorf doesn't try to force Beathard do what he isn't comfortable doing.

I just don't get how people can assume that NU is going 10-2 (or even undefeated) with a different QB. The defense still pretty much sucked this year, and I think the offense is predicated on being high risk/high reward.

 
ColoradoHusk said:
Red Five said:
ColoradoHusk said:
Mavric said:
Red Five said:
Give us CJ Beathard this year and we lose 2 games max.
Click to expand...
Not sure we lose any.
Click to expand...
So, this is the new narrative? Wow.
Click to expand...
How many games do you think we would have lost if we had Beathard or any other "game manager" who would have thrown 3 ints all season? It's less than 7 for sure.
Click to expand...
I agree that it's less than 7. However, how do we know that Riley/Langsdorf doesn't try to force Beathard do what he isn't comfortable doing.

I just don't get how people can assume that NU is going 10-2 (or even undefeated) with a different QB. The defense still pretty much sucked this year, and I think the offense is predicated on being high risk/high reward.
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We most likely still lose to BYU and Miami INT's didn't play a huge part in those games and I doubt that Bethard is bringing NU back when it is down like it was against Miami. We probably win Wisconsin, NW, Purdue Illinois and Iowa games. with Bethard at QB. Bethard benefited from a really good run game and a very solid defense. But if everything is the same I think we benefit from his steady play. TA just need to learn to control his impulse to go for the big play and trying to make something out of nothing all the time.

 
Everything else remaining the same, I think if you give us either Bethard at QB OR Ferentz as HC, we have a good chance of being undefeated this year.

 
ColoradoHusk said:
Red Five said:
ColoradoHusk said:
Mavric said:
Red Five said:
Give us CJ Beathard this year and we lose 2 games max.
Click to expand...
Not sure we lose any.
Click to expand...
So, this is the new narrative? Wow.
Click to expand...
How many games do you think we would have lost if we had Beathard or any other "game manager" who would have thrown 3 ints all season? It's less than 7 for sure.
Click to expand...
I agree that it's less than 7. However, how do we know that Riley/Langsdorf doesn't try to force Beathard do what he isn't comfortable doing.

I just don't get how people can assume that NU is going 10-2 (or even undefeated) with a different QB. The defense still pretty much sucked this year, and I think the offense is predicated on being high risk/high reward.
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Remember all those close games we lost, even with that terrible defense? I don't think it's that far-fetched to think even the slightly better QB play would have won any of those games.

Against BYU, Illinois and Wisconsin, simply getting one more first down would have won the game. Our QBs threw as many or more INTs in each GAME against Miami, Purdue and Iowa as Beathard threw ALL YEAR. And we still only lost two of those games by one score and Purdue couldn't beat any other FBS team on the year. That leaves Northwestern where simply not throwing a terrible pick six may have won us the game.

No, I don't think it's at all hard to believe that we could have won every game with better QB play. And yes, a lot of that falls on Langsdorf as well - I've brought that up over and over. But either you have to say we can still get better QB play or Langsdorf should be fired right now.

 
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Not sure our D was good enough for that.
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I agree.

However, the best way to minimize having a weak defense is to keep them off of the field. Turnovers do the opposite and often in poor field position to boot.

 
I just don't think it's easy to say "If the QB plays better in games X, Y, and Z, then Nebraska wins those games." I don't think Armstrong lost the BYU game. He played well enough for NU to win that game. In the Miami game, the defense was such a mess, I don't know if it would have been different with another QB. Also, Armstrong's great play in the 4th, allowed NU to make it to OT. In all the close Big Ten games, there were just as many plays that Tommy made to keep NU in those games. Yes, he made mistakes, but let's not act like he was the sole reason NU lost those games. I don't think NU wins the Michigan State game with a "game manager" at QB. NU needed to score 39 points in that game to win, and Tommy was a big reason that NU scored that many points. I still say that Iowa was in complete control of that game, regardless of what the yardage stats say.

 
There is A LOT of difference between say "player x lost this game for us" and "if player x played better, we could have won". You seem to think I'm saying the former. I'm not.

And the only reason Iowa may have seemed to be in control is because of the four INTs. We COMPLETELY dominated them in every other area.

 
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