The Heaps Reclamation Project

[lambdacoug]

http://blog.cougarfan.com/2011/12/stats-show-nelson-was-clearly-better.html

Just more fuel to the fire. Heaps mechanics look great, but the kid lacks just about everything else. Nelson is far more exciting to watch and the team responds to him. CYA Jake, don't let the door hit you on the way out.

[Color Me Badd Fan]

Interesting article from the Spokesman-Review (Spokane paper) yesterday:

http://m.spokesman.com/stories/2011/dec/06/qb-heaps-leaving-byu/

Did he have an actual landing site in mind when he leaped from the cliff? I do not believe this will end well for young Mr. Heaps.

No it won't. I'll be surprised given his performance on the field if someone is going to take a chance on him as their planned starter without having at least a competent back up option.

[MarkGrace]

http://blog.cougarfan.com/2011/12/st...ly-better.html

Just more fuel to the fire. Heaps mechanics look great, but the kid lacks just about everything else. Nelson is far more exciting to watch and the team responds to him. CYA Jake, don't let the door hit you on the way out.

How is this more fuel to the fire? This is rehash beyond rehash at this point.

[woot]

Matt Barkley through 15 games: 3,386 yards 24 Td's 16 Ints
Jake Heaps through 15 games: Heaps: 3,768 yards 24 Td's 17 Ints

Good thing USC didn't quit on Barkley, clearly he was a scrub though.

Those stats for Jake are his career totals. He played in 22 games, not 15. We all know you're desperate to defend your friend/family member right now, but you're not doing him any favors.

[Color Me Badd Fan]

How is this more fuel to the fire? This is rehash beyond rehash at this point.

He summarizes it pretty well. I didn't know about the 3rd down efficiency.

[MarkGrace]

Interesting article from the Spokesman-Review (Spokane paper) yesterday:

http://m.spokesman.com/stories/2011/dec/06/qb-heaps-leaving-byu/

Did he have an actual landing site in mind when he leaped from the cliff? I do not believe this will end well for young Mr. Heaps.

All that stuff from the article was already known. As to your question, my guess is "yes."

[MarkGrace]

I propose we use PER, you propose a better stat to use for discussing QB efficiency, or we don't bother with comparing QB's ever.

Or we can have a real discussion of the performance and consider possible variables. I have no problem with people looking at per, I just don't find it to be conclusive or an end of discussion.

Maybe football stats will advance to the point where we have things that are better to look at (woot mentioned espn working on a stat they they think is an improvement on PER?), but my guess is they probably won't be significantly better because of the nature of the game (ie, you'll never really be able to isolate much).

[Indy Coug]

ESPN's total QB rating is a 10,000 lines of code algorithm that is completely inaccessible to everyone and it's additive value (compared to a "simple" 4 factor formula) is questionable.

[Coach McGuirk]

Those stats for Jake are his career totals. He played in 22 games, not 15. We all know you're desperate to defend your friend/family member right now, but you're not doing him any favors.

Please don't jump on the Viking bus with the family member BS.

[Indy Coug]

Please don't jump on the Viking bus with the family member BS.

http://www.cougaruteforum.com/showthread.php?p=723243

[woot]

Or we can have a real discussion of the performance and consider possible variables. I have no problem with people looking at per, I just don't find it to be conclusive or an end of discussion.

Maybe football stats will advance to the point where we have things that are better to look at (woot mentioned espn working on a stat they they think is an improvement on PER?), but my guess is they probably won't be significantly better because of the nature of the game (ie, you'll never really be able to isolate much).

Yeah, if I had to guess, I'd say ESPN's new metric has already failed. They don't even use it on their own website, and near as I can tell, never did. There are some really cool advanced metrics like PAN and WPA, but because BYU's internet presence is limited to fan forums and ignorant journos, I've never seen it applied to BYU players. Perhaps there's a national source that calculates those things for everybody?

[woot]

After getting somewhat caught up on all this, I'll just say that I wish Heaps the best. If it's true that his OC/QB coach wasn't even talking to him, then no shit it's time to transfer.

I've always put most of the blame on the coaches, and still do, whether the severity of the Heaps-Doman tiff is accurate or not.

That said, Riley is a better QB than Heaps (in this program, anyway), and while 2013 could be rough without Heaps, it was already looking to be rough with Heaps. As is, there are a ton of QBs in the program (Munns, Hill, Olsen, Kuresa, perhaps others?), any one of which could turn out to be at least serviceable in 2013, which is better than Heaps was this year.

I won't be surprised if Heaps does really well elsewhere, and I hope he does. He was mishandled by this staff. I wish he could have stayed, but it seems apparent that even with his obvious path to become the starter in 13 and 14 and his uphill battle anywhere else, he felt that it was not tenable to stay at BYU. Given our lack of information, it seems quite silly to call him an idiot or a pussy or a quitter for making this decision. If any of the rumors are correct, I would have done the same, even it ends up with him playing at a smaller school or losing out at a better one.

[woot]

I'll also say that when it comes to those who cover sports, the goal is to provide information that isn't readily available anywhere else. It's a market, and your value is in providing unique information. The first problem is that it doesn't seem like any of the BYU writers do this very often. There's rarely anything in their articles that one couldn't have gotten from the press conferences they use as their sources.

That having been said, when they actually try to provide something deeper, they almost always go the direction of personnel issues, not the direction of what's actually happening on the field. Why is there not a single journalist or blogger who seems at all concerned with writing about blocking schemes, the on-field chess match, which players are performing well and why (i.e. not what's in the box score), how coaches are using their players to maximize their effectiveness, what the coordinators are trying to do, etc.?

Perhaps BYU fans don't miss all that because they don't realize how little they understand about what's going on? Granted, a lot of this is my own frustration with how much more fun it is to watch Michigan play lately, since I know exactly what's going on, because there's probably 20 hours worth of in-depth football nuts and bolts written every week during the season about exactly what's happening on the field, whereas I've seen only a tiny bit of that about BYU over in the years, and in each case it was because a coach actually talked about schematics in an interview, not because a journalist understood a single thing about what was going on. Shouldn't sports journalists be expected to know at least a little bit more than the average fan about the sports they cover?

Okay, end of rant.

[myboynoah]

Trevor Matich on BYUtv during halftime of tonight's game: Heaps should have toughed it out at BYU.

I didn't sense a whole lot of sympathy.

[Art Vandelay]

Trevor Matich on BYUtv during halftime of tonight's game: Heaps should have toughed it out at BYU.

I didn't sense a whole lot of sympathy.

That's my cousin. We're a tough bunch....well at least the family members who played in the nfl are.