Analytics: Wisconsin Football DEEP DIVE WEEK 2
Let's DEEP DIVE into some major drivers of Wisconsin Football's Performance through this 2023 Season
There’s not much to say about Wisconsin football and their week 2 performance vs. Washington State. They didn’t do enough to get the job done, with strikingly poor performances in two key areas in the first half.
First, the O-Line protection and, more specifically, the protection from the LT spot led to 2 strip-sacks. One didn’t hurt us, but the other led to a TD. Ultimately, the killer obviously is it took away OUR ability to score the football on two possessions.
The second area was the defense, which seemed completely out of sorts dealing with Washington State’s up-tempo offense. That discombobulation manifested in two areas. One was a complete lack of pressure early on. The second was through blown coverages on the back end due to seemingly miscommunication?!? It had to be because in the second half, we cleaned that up for all but one drive. It happened that drive was the final nail in the coffin for UW.
Offensively, we struggled to run the ball. With 3.1 YPA and -0.02 EPA/Play, to put that in reference, against Buffalo that was 8.0 YPA and 0.35 EPA/Play. I’m interested to see how Washington State defended UW from a Men-In-Box perspective, but it seemed to me they were loading it pretty heavily based on our personnel. I’ll dive deeper into that when that data is live until now, we can only assume. But given how successful the PA/RPO Passing game was, I think it shows WSU’s game plan was to get beat through the air!
But let’s get DEEP into the Analytics that can help us make sense of this Wisconsin Football Team through Week 2!
First, we’ll start with Tanner Mordecai…
Tanner Mordecai:
Air Yards/ATT x INT Rate:
Quadrant Ranking:
Bottom Right – Ballers (High Air Yards/ATT + Low INT Rate)
Bottom Left – Dink & Dunkers (Low Air Yards/ATT + Low INT Rate)
Top Right – “Gunslingers” (High Air Yards/ATT + High INT Rate)
Top Left – POOR BALL SECURITY (Low Air Yards/ATT + High INT Rate)
Mordecai = Red Dot is RIGHT on the border of the Ballers Quadrant. He had a big night last night, over 40 ATTs with no INTs!! He put the ball in jeopardy only once or twice on Saturday night, which was probably necessary given the situation. The good news, though is it never went the wrong way!!
Air Yards/ATT x On-TGT %:
Quadrant Ranking:
Top Right – “Ballers” (High Air Yards/ATT + High On-TGT %)
Top Left – “Dink & Dunkers” (Low Air Yards/ATT + High On-TGT %)
Bottom Right – “Gunslingers” (High Air Yards/ATT + Low On-TGT %)
Bottom Left – “POOR BALL SECURITY” (Low Air Yards/ATT + Low On-TGT %)
Mordecai = Red Dot in “Gunslingers” Quadrant. Overall, his On-TGT % is nothing to be concerned with; he threw a lot of Passes right on the money!! But he definitely had some opportunities especially deep down field to Dike and Green, that he’d love to have back and would have pushed him into the “Ballers” category that you see all of the TOP QBs!!
ATTs x Net Big Play %:
Quadrant Ranking:
Top Right – “Ballers” (High ATTs + High Net Big Play Rate)
Top Left – “Assassins” (Low ATTS + High Net Big Play Rate)
Bottom Right – “Gunslingers” (High ATTs + Low Net Big Play Rate)
Bottom Left – POOR BALL SECURITY (Low ATTS + Net Big Play Rate)
Mordecai = Red Dot in “Gunslingers” Quadrant. That miss to Bryson Green and Rucci not having the balance to break that tackle on the first TD Drive of the 3Q impacted how Mordecai and his performance on Saturday are viewed. Connecting/Finishing on those two plays would have flipped him into the “Ballers” Quadrant! I’d expect him to really improve his BIG PLAY Rate in Week 3 vs. Georgia Southern!!
We’ll continue to track these three Metrics as the season moves on and stack him up against other QBs to judge where he’s at!! But his Week 2 Performance was right in line with my expectations of where he’ll be trending, which is towards the “Ballers”/ELITE Quadrant in every category we care about!!!
Tanner Mordecai Vs. Coverages:
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