2012 BYU Football Season

[Hsaru]

Comparing PER of players from different eras is pretty much useless, with all the high percentage passes and high completion rates in today's offenses PER's are up across the board.

So the Max Hall/John Beck comparisons are valid, not so much any other ones.

[Hsaru]

I like stats as well. Riley now moves up to 99th in the nation in the QB rating. As far as I can tell the lowest in the nation for a senior QB.

Although I can't find the stat that says what our record would be if he didnt score for the other team. Does he lead the nation in pick sixes?

I am glad that I read this thread to figure out that Riley is doing just fine. I would have gone my whole life thinking that in 2012 if we didnt have a QB that made terrible decisions in key moments that with this very good defense it could have been a special year.

Where is the riley nelson is a bad ass thread...

This post is all that needs to be said about how bad Riley has been this year, not a ridiculous comparison to players in the 80s and 90s and say hey look how good he is!

[Indy Coug]

Comparing PER of players from different eras is pretty much useless, with all the high percentage passes and high completion rates in today's offenses PER's are up across the board.

So the Max Hall/John Beck comparisons are valid, not so much any other ones.

You can still compare the PERs of the QBs of yesteryear in their games vs top 20 defenses as opposed to their remaining games to illustrate the same underlying point.

[Indy Coug]

This post is all that needs to be said about how bad Riley has been this year, not a ridiculous comparison to players in the 80s and 90s and say hey look how good he is!

Here cometh the strawman!

[Hsaru]

Here cometh the strawman!

Parsing individual games of the 99th rated QB and comparing them to individual games of players in the 80s and 90s to try and mitigate how bad he has been is a ridiculous exercise...

He is the 99th rated QB in the nation, he was gifted the best defense in BYU history, he was gifted the most athletic receiver core in BYU history, he was gifted quality running backs, and with all of this? He lost 4 games that were largely the result of his poor play.

[Goatnapper'96]

Parsing individual games of the 99th rated QB and comparing them to individual games of players in the 80s and 90s to try and mitigate how bad he has been is a ridiculous exercise...

He is the 99th rated QB in the nation, he was gifted the best defense in BYU history, he was gifted the most athletic receiver core in BYU history, he was gifted quality running backs, and with all of this? He lost 4 games that were largely the result of his poor play.

The Utah and BSU games were poor play, but I don't think the ND and OSU games were due to his poor play. In any case the two losses to Utah and BSU were unfortunate.

[creekster]

Parsing individual games of the 99th rated QB and comparing them to individual games of players in the 80s and 90s to try and mitigate how bad he has been is a ridiculous exercise...

He is the 99th rated QB in the nation, he was gifted the best defense in BYU history, he was gifted the most athletic receiver core in BYU history, he was gifted quality running backs, and with all of this? He lost 4 games that were largely the result of his poor play.

ON the plus side, at least he gives you something to post about.

[Hsaru]

The Utah and BSU games were poor play, but I don't think the ND and OSU games were due to his poor play. In any case the two losses to Utah and BSU were unfortunate.

If we have a decent QB against ND and OSU we win those games.

[Jarid in Cedar]

ON the plus side, at least he gives you something to post about.

Still trying to figure out how that is a "plus"...

[Goatnapper'96]

If we have a decent QB against ND and OSU we win those games.

You sound like Riley Nelson hurt your pussy.

[Goatnapper'96]

Still trying to figure out how that is a "plus"...

Gives me a chance to be crude!

[Commando]

If we have a decent QB against ND and OSU we win those games.

Please- let's draw as much attention as possible away from our place kicking. Because that hasn't affected our outcomes at all.

[Jarid in Cedar]

Gives me a chance to be crude!

Solid point.

[The_Douger]

The Utah and BSU games were poor play, but I don't think the ND and OSU games were due to his poor play. In any case the two losses to Utah and BSU were unfortunate.

That's how I feel.

However, what does this have to do with Jake Heaps? I saw Hsaru posting and was just wondering.

Additionally, from a numbers standpoint, you can compare this and that, but it's highly doubtful if Ty Detmer was playing today he'd toss up 28 picks. nobody does that anymore in college football.

[pelagius]

Additionally, from a numbers standpoint, you can compare this and that, but it's highly doubtful if Ty Detmer was playing today he'd toss up 28 picks. nobody does that anymore in college football.

Narrowly, if that is a point about Nelson having higher turnover rate after taking into account differences in era than I have no problem with that. There is a good chance that is true. I was just answering Art in a strict sense there.

But my general argument about Riley's performance in elite games never hinged on that. The benchmarking is reasonable, and even the results are unchanged if you look at relative differences in scoring and efficiency across defense quality for the benchmarks. Also it is worth noting that efficiency (in an absolute sense) and scoring once you control for opponent quality are pretty stable for BYU in the time series. Yards per attempt goes down over time but completion percentage goes up and interceptions go down a little and these effects become a wash.