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BYU's offense and why I think Heaps might eventually be great

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  • BYU's offense and why I think Heaps might eventually be great

    As a few others have pointed out, QBs that will eventually be great usually don't start out nearly as bad as Heaps has. Improvement over the 4 years is usually incremental.

    So here's the reason why (besides the hype, the HS track record, and the lack of reps due to the Nelson fiasco) I think Heaps might eventually be great, despite his lackluster performance so far:

    Many schools do a better job of tailoring their offense for what a QB is actually capable of.

    For example, Denard Robinson is starting at Michigan because he's a big threat to make things happen, not because he understands the offense very well. Nevertheless, he's been extremely successful throwing the ball. Because he's such a great running threat, most teams are forced to play a cautious zone against Michigan's offense (You don't want your DBs' backs turned), so the pass plays called for Denard generally involve sending two guys into the zone of one defender, one deep and more short, making that defender choose between two receivers, and throwing it to the one the defender didn't choose. That is seriously the vast majority of Michigan's downfield passing strategy right now, with swings and screens (easy throws for a young QB to make) making up the remainder. Even so, Denard has struggled at times with his tendency to get rid of the ball too early, before the defender has made his choice. This still often results in a completion because of his rocket arm and good accuracy, but it has resulted in some extremely big hits on his WRs, and obviously it doesn't give his receivers much opportunity for YAC.

    Urban Meyer had a similar scheme with Alex Smith. The WRs would very often run option routes, where they break to the direction opposite of the DBs shade. It's a simple read and a simple throw.

    I don't see a lot of this in BYU's offense. What worked so well last year is that Pitta would find the gaps in the zone and sit down, which eventually caused the LBs to adjust, which allowed more room on the outside for the WRs. MJ's TD against OU last year is an extreme example of this. It's a simple read: throw it to Pitta if he's open, throw it MJ over the top if he's not. This year we don't have anybody the defense has to worry about, so that strategy doesn't work, but I don't see where we've adjusted to create a different kind of 1-2 read for our young QB.

    Granted, I haven't studied BYU's offense much this year, and I haven't found any source on the net where BYU's strategies are broken down well at all (the FSU guy did a better job than any BYU source I've seen, and that FSU guy really didn't do a very good job compared to lots of stuff I've seen for other teams). So, maybe BYU actually has made adjustments and our offense is just that bad.

    I suspect that these adjustments haven't been made, and that what is happening is that Heaps is being thrown a great deal of material all at once, and that eventually, probably the middle of next year or so, things will click for him, the game will slow down, his receivers will have matured to the point that they'll be able to get open and the timing will be worked out between them and Heaps, and Heaps will be good.

    This has generally been the trend with BYU QBs, who seems to improve over their careers much more than QBs at other schools, or perhaps we should say that they seem to be much worse relative to their potential in the early years than QBs from other schools. This seems to be what happened for Beck and Hall, with Hall picking things up a bit faster than Beck, perhaps because of his greater experience before becoming the starter.

    So, that's why I think Heaps still might eventually be great. I just don't think it'll happen this year.

    And if anybody knows a decent source for BYU Xs and Os, I'd love to see one.

  • #2
    Originally posted by woot View Post
    As a few others have pointed out, QBs that will eventually be great usually don't start out nearly as bad as Heaps has. Improvement over the 4 years is usually incremental.
    I think someone posted the passing efficiency ratings for various four year starters and the implication was that these guys don't improve that much year to year like we think.

    Here's the problem with attaching this to Jake Heaps -- Jake Heaps has had three quarters all to himself and he has split time in practice. There are nine games left in the season and we can draw this comparison at that time. But extrapolating numbers from three quarters of play along with about six other drives and comparing them to full years for these other QBs just isn't very useful.

    I'm looking at Colt McCoy's numbers (he was a redshirt freshman) from his first game, he went 19/32 with 1 TD and 1 INT and he had a 4.8 yard average. I highly doubt that rating was as high as his rating for that entire year.
    Part of it is based on academic grounds. Among major conferences, the Pac-10 is the best academically, largely because of Stanford, Cal and UCLA. “Colorado is on a par with Oregon,” he said. “Utah isn’t even in the picture.”

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    • #3
      Originally posted by Color Me Badd Fan View Post
      I think someone posted the passing efficiency ratings for various four year starters and the implication was that these guys don't improve that much year to year like we think.

      Here's the problem with attaching this to Jake Heaps -- Jake Heaps has had three quarters all to himself and he has split time in practice. There are nine games left in the season and we can draw this comparison at that time. But extrapolating numbers from three quarters of play along with about six other drives and comparing them to full years for these other QBs just isn't very useful.

      I'm looking at Colt McCoy's numbers (he was a redshirt freshman) from his first game, he went 19/32 with 1 TD and 1 INT and he had a 4.8 yard average. I highly doubt that rating was as high as his rating for that entire year.
      True, and those concerns are all noted in my post. I was attempting a grander explanation for why the last few BYU QBs have started slow, and why I expect that Heaps will continue to struggle this year. Your example of McCoy is a good one, as Heaps' numbers haven't been nearly as good as those McCoy put up in his very first game, and McCoy's performance during the rest of his freshman year were actually quite spectacular, which I don't expect to see from Heaps, for the stated reasons.

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      • #4
        If I were a byu fan, I'd be concerned with Heap's pocket presence. With all the 'training' he's received, you'd think he'd have a better feel for pressure and be able to get rid of the ball rather than take a sack.

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        • #5
          Through 60 completions, Heaps has a pass efficiency of 89. Anything under 110 is a complete failure. If he stays injury free and plays the rest of the year, I'll be focused on how he does the last half of the season. I'll give him a pass on the first half of the season due to the rotating and lack of practice reps, etc.

          If he's below 110 the last half of the season, it will be hard to ignore as a predictor of his future success.

          The other variable is that the surrounding offense might be horrible. Take a guy with 160 pass efficiency and put him on a team with crappy surrounding talent, and I'm sure his pass rating takes a hit.

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          • #6
            Teams are 25-167 if they have less than 50% completions and average less than 8 yards per completion (with a minimum of 20 pass attempts). In those 192 games, they averaged 9.1 points per game. This covers 2001 through 2008.

            Against Florida State, Heaps had a completion percentage of 48.4%, 7.6 yards per completion and BYU scored 10 points.
            Everything in life is an approximation.

            http://twitter.com/CougarStats

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            • #7
              Originally posted by Indy Coug View Post
              Teams are 25-167 if they have less than 50% completions and average less than 8 yards per completion (with a minimum of 20 pass attempts). In those 192 games, they averaged 9.1 points per game. This covers 2001 through 2008.

              Against Florida State, Heaps had a completion percentage of 48.4%, 7.6 yards per completion and BYU scored 10 points.
              That would be an 84 rating. I'm surprised anyone wins with that. Probably has some games like AFA or Navy playing D1AA teams. Nebraska's probably won a couple games over the past few years with pass rating that bad.

              Heaps was 89.9 against FSU but got a 10.6 hit for the TD pass.

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              • #8
                I don't know if Heaps can become the guy his press clippings believe he can be. Personally, I don't care that much. Heaps, Lark, Munns, each have great skill sets and abilities. Two are recently back from the worst two years of an athlete's life. The other is a true freshman. I think next spring we will begin to see a long term pecking order. I don't know who will come out on top but I'm confident that we have sufficient talent to run our offense.

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                • #9
                  The offense is going to have to grow together, much like the 2007-2009 cohort of offensive players did. I'm optimistic long-term.
                  Everything in life is an approximation.

                  http://twitter.com/CougarStats

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                  • #10
                    Originally posted by Indy Coug View Post
                    The offense is going to have to grow together, much like the 2007-2009 cohort of offensive players did. I'm optimistic long-term.
                    2007-2009 was great. What I'm not interested is a John Beck 2003-2006 progression. Sure his senior season was great, but I don't want to spend three crappy seasons getting there. I'm hoping it's not that bad right now.

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                    • #11
                      Originally posted by woot View Post
                      As a few others have pointed out, QBs that will eventually be great usually don't start out nearly as bad as Heaps has. Improvement over the 4 years is usually incremental.
                      Besides your not having presented any evidence in support of that proposition, I don't think Heaps has started out that badly. Yes, I'm aware that the stats look bad. But I'm really not at all concerned about it based on what I've seen so far.

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                      • #12
                        Originally posted by woot View Post
                        As a few others have pointed out, QBs that will eventually be great usually don't start out nearly as bad as Heaps has. Improvement over the 4 years is usually incremental.

                        So here's the reason why (besides the hype, the HS track record, and the lack of reps due to the Nelson fiasco) I think Heaps might eventually be great, despite his lackluster performance so far:

                        Many schools do a better job of tailoring their offense for what a QB is actually capable of.

                        For example, Denard Robinson is starting at Michigan because he's a big threat to make things happen, not because he understands the offense very well. Nevertheless, he's been extremely successful throwing the ball. Because he's such a great running threat, most teams are forced to play a cautious zone against Michigan's offense (You don't want your DBs' backs turned), so the pass plays called for Denard generally involve sending two guys into the zone of one defender, one deep and more short, making that defender choose between two receivers, and throwing it to the one the defender didn't choose. That is seriously the vast majority of Michigan's downfield passing strategy right now, with swings and screens (easy throws for a young QB to make) making up the remainder. Even so, Denard has struggled at times with his tendency to get rid of the ball too early, before the defender has made his choice. This still often results in a completion because of his rocket arm and good accuracy, but it has resulted in some extremely big hits on his WRs, and obviously it doesn't give his receivers much opportunity for YAC.
                        .
                        There are several extenuating factors in Heaps performance so far ranging from (a) getting half or less of reps to (b) a truly abnormal spree of pass-dropping to (c) the lack of a really established running game (that might be changing) and (d) an unsettled TE rotation - TE has traditionally been a "comfort throw" for young BYU QBs, not the case this year.

                        If you just take the two obvious dropped TDs from week 1 Jake's PER changes dramatically.

                        I think he'll get it going this week.
                        Ute-ī sunt fīmī differtī

                        It can't all be wedding cake.

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                        • #13
                          Most people seemed to think Jordan Wynn was pretty good last year, though I wasn't among them. But here are his average stats for his 1st 5 starts (which were the last 5 games of the season):

                          15.6/28.6 comp/att
                          56% comp %
                          5TD/3INT
                          QB rating 128

                          I'd be willing to bet that Heaps stats from his first 5 starts are significantly better than those. And I would feel let down if they aren't because I don't think Wynn was that good. They seem to have relied more on their running game, which BYU can't do.

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                          • #14
                            The biggest barrier to Heaps' production is making quick reads and delivering the ball on time. This is hardly unique to Heaps.
                            Everything in life is an approximation.

                            http://twitter.com/CougarStats

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Originally posted by Jacob View Post
                              Most people seemed to think Jordan Wynn was pretty good last year, though I wasn't among them. But here are his average stats for his 1st 5 starts (which were the last 5 games of the season):

                              15.6/28.6 comp/att
                              56% comp %
                              5TD/3INT
                              QB rating 128

                              I'd be willing to bet that Heaps stats from his first 5 starts are significantly better than those. And I would feel let down if they aren't because I don't think Wynn was that good. They seem to have relied more on their running game, which BYU can't do.
                              lol. I didn't know Heaps was going to play TCU in his first 5 games.

                              [edit] The only game Wynn hasn't had at least a 110 passer rating was against byu.
                              Last edited by SloanHater; 09-22-2010, 01:22 PM.

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