Nice job picking a QB, Ace. Here's your reward.
While re-watching the M-PSU punt-fest my brother made an interesting comment: "It's amazing what's happened to two of the best quarterbacks in the conference." If you ever again need to point to something to show that the offense means more than the quarterback, this Big Ten season has that in spades. What it doesn't have is an answer to the question: who IS the best QB in the conference?
I have no idea. Of guys I expected big things from, Braxton Miller (injury) and Tre Roberson (transfer) didn't make it out of the preseason, Gardner played his way behind a true sophomore who obviously couldn't play, Hackenberg's been a tackling dummy, and when I got down to Cook my Sparty slappy brother shook his head and declined the nomination.
Lower down, Sudfeld is now out for the season but he wasn't world-beating before. C.J. Brown, true to form, has been keeping pace just behind Gardner; a wrist injury against Indiana has ceded snaps to Caleb Rowe. Nebraska and Iowa aren't getting anything more than mediocre from their 2nd year guys. Trevor Siemian is not a throw deity of any sort. Etling hasn't been good enough for Boiler fans to stop mentioning that Michigan stole Bellomy(!). Wisconsin's QB situation has been awful. Illinois thought they had something when transfer Wes Lunt was picking apart bad defenses, but he broke his leg, which is apparently 4-6 weeks these days.
Everybody's played only a few real opponents, and everybody's been a product of his offense so stats are only a little useful. Last year ESPN's Dean Oliver rolled out his "QBR" metric which is based on Mathlete-like expected points on a 100-level scale; 50 is average. Mouseover the headers for clarification (explanation here):
| PLAYER | Pass EPA | RUN EPA | SACK EPA | PEN EPA | TOTAL EPA | ACT PLAYS | RAW QBR | TOTAL QBR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Connor Cook-MSU | 23.2 | 3.2 | -1.6 | 0.6 | 25.3 | 175 | 81.5 | 81.3 |
| Gary Nova-RU | 25.3 | 6.3 | -4.7 | 0.4 | 27.3 | 187 | 77.1 | 78.2 |
| J.T. Barrett-OSU | 22.3 | 8.0 | -7.1 | 0.5 | 23.7 | 220 | 72.3 | 74.4 |
| Tom Armstrong-NEB | 13.2 | 7.9 | -3.8 | 1.0 | 18.2 | 246 | 63.2 | 63.9 |
| Jake Rudock-IOWA | 25.7 | 2.6 | -3.7 | 2.2 | 26.8 | 193 | 73.5 | 60.8 |
| Wes Lunt-ILL | 31.6 | -2.0 | -6.1 | 1.1 | 24.3 | 222 | 67.8 | 58.1 |
| Devin Gardner-UM | 14.7 | 5.0 | -9.3 | -0.1 | 10.3 | 210 | 52.9 | 56.4 |
| Mitch Leidner-MN | 6.8 | 4.4 | -5.9 | -0.1 | 5.2 | 134 | 50.7 | 56.3 |
| Nate Sudfeld-IND | 10.9 | 3.6 | -4.4 | 2.0 | 12.1 | 221 | 54.4 | 56.2 |
| C.J. Brown-MD | 11.7 | 7.0 | -8.0 | 0.7 | 11.4 | 224 | 52.5 | 50.0 |
| Tanner McEvoy-WIS | 2.1 | 5.6 | -2.2 | 1.1 | 6.6 | 144 | 51.8 | 47.4 |
| Trevor Siemian-NW | 20.1 | -0.3 | -11.3 | -0.1 | 8.4 | 276 | 46.1 | 46.2 |
| C. Hackenberg-PSU | 16.2 | -1.0 | -14.2 | -0.6 | 0.3 | 299 | 38.1 | 37.9 |
| Danny Etling-PUR | 3.0 | 1.7 | -5.5 | -1.1 | -1.8 | 201 | 35.2 | 30.7 |
I pulled the raw QBR in each game to plot it against Football Outsiders' S&P+ so you can see the individual performances in context. Gardner's games are labeled and Michigan's remaining opponents are shown.
click embigs
[after the jump: trends, discussion]
Here's that again as trend lines, with FCS removed, as well as Lunt and Rudock for too small samples:
A higher line is better. A lower slope is more consistency, a longer line is a greater spread in opponent difficulty, further right means generally tougher competition. Before declaring Gary Nova the king (BIG TENNNN!) let's look over these candidates and their situations in a little more detail.
Devin Gardner's play in the non-conference was so bad his coaches left him on the sideline for a concussed true sophomore with a sprained ankle who was 7/18 for 33 yards on the day. The last may have been the single worst moment of coaching malpractice you have ever witnessed (nominations accepted), and some of the bad play before that has to be on his coaches' insane decision to not make Gardner's legs a part of the offensive game plan, but ultimately Utah and ND were awful performances, and only the too-late return against Minnesota is at all comparable to the other top QBs in the conference.
He has a week to stay off the ankle damaged on the stupid QB sneak before returning to the scene of the greatest crimes ever perpetrated upon his of victimized ribs. Expectations of a record-setting senior year are dead; surviving to the end would count as heroic.
Christian Hackenberg you saw last Saturday. I was gchatting afterwards with PSU blogfather Mike Pettigano and we noted Michigan was by far the toughest defensive line he's faced so far. The Big Ten's deep-as-hell defensive lines all await further down the schedule. Even if there's an NFL quarterback in there as we all expect, it'll remain buried under the mess of that OL.
J.T. Barrett is hard to compare with these rest because he's surrounded by far too much competence. Meyer's simple offense makes it possible to plug in a true freshman and have success, even with offensive line problems (he's taken 13 sacks this year already). Virginia Tech is the only decent pass defense he's faced, and that didn't go well (9/23, 1 TD, 3 INTs), but OSU's averaging 55 points in the three games hence. Barrett's the only quarterback in the conference this year besides the running dudes (Armstrong and C.J. Brown) with a significant amount of rushing to accompany the passing stats.
Connor Cook has been pretty good, but far from perfect. Cook has lost the conservatism; his YPA is up over 9.0, and while on the surface he's maintaining that gaudy TD/INT ratio, when you drop Jacksonville State, EMU, and Wyoming, Cook has 6 touchdowns to 4 interceptions. Another bit of scouting we got wrong on him is the quality of his receivers. We're still biased against them because of 2012, but Tony Lippett has been a Braylon-level outlet; when Cook gets in trouble he tends to throw it down the sideline to his big target. Lippett had 138 yards on 7 catches against Purdue, 104 yards against Nebraska, and 133 on 11 catches versus Oregon; he'd have had more against EMU and Wyoming if the score hadn't gotten to the point where the starters had to sit (he had 3 TDs in those games; and 8 overall).
Gary Nova then? Without the explosion against Michigan he'd have a bunch of great performances against really bad pass defenses and mediocre ones that were expected to be worse, and a total implosion against a really good defense (Penn State's). Take out Penn State and Nova outshines the galaxy. So I guess he had the best first half; if I had to pick a guy right now it'd be Cook.