The pains of injury attrition (opponents)

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The pains of injury attrition (opponents) - washingtonismoney - 04-10-2012

Two starters from Pac-12 teams lost:

UW loses a presumptive starting OG (http://espn.go.com/blog/pac12/post/_/id/37104/huskies-lose-og-porter)

And Colorado just can't catch a break--young, exciting WR Paul Richardson lost for the season to ACL injury (http://twitter.com/#!/BFeldmanCBS/status/189796244305092608). Between graduation and Richardson, they'll be without 86% of their 2011 offense in 2012. (http://twitter.com/#!/BFeldmanCBS/status/189798967888973824).

Re: The pains of injury attrition (opponents) - unclechuck - 04-10-2012

I'm someone who doesn't like injury news for any team. Kinda the anti-Saints perspective.

That said I'm not too troubled with the UW loss. My impression is that they've stocked some big bodies over the last couple of years and will get serviceable replacements. QB Price and his WRs should be better this year so they may need to adjust with more quick reads & routes to keep Price healthy. In particular WR Williams and TE Seferian-Jenkins both started as true frosh last year so they should be much improved.

CO's loss of elite WR Richardson does bum me some. A) we don't play them, and B) Pac12 does not need a door mat for all those SEC types to mock. CO seems pretty light on playmakers and he was a good one. Dang.

Re: The pains of injury attrition (opponents) - Spiny_Norman - 04-10-2012

The Trojans also have been hit by the injury bug.Â To provide depth at tailback and provide a big back complement to Curtis McNeal and DJ Morgan, Kiffin moved one of their top frosh Tre Madden from LB to RB.Â Madden was the most pleasant surprise of spring practice until he tore his ACL and will miss the 2012 season.

http://www.ocregister.com/sports/madden-348303-allen-kiffin.html

Re: The pains of injury attrition (opponents) - 76lsjumb - 04-10-2012

(04-10-2012, 03:32 PM)unclechuck link Wrote:CO's loss of elite WR Richardson does bum me some. A) we don't play them, and ...

So...the $65 that the SU Ticket Office wants for a November 3, 2012 "Away Game" at Boulder is just to watch an unofficial scrimmage?Â ;)

Re: The pains of injury attrition (opponents) - jayasena - 04-11-2012

(04-10-2012, 03:32 PM)unclechuck link Wrote:That said I'm not too troubled with the UW loss. My impression is that they've stocked some big bodies over the last couple of years and will get serviceable replacements.

I don't know enough about UW to know if this is a big deal for the team or not but it's never good to hear of a college player's career ending due to injuries or medical conditions.

Re: The pains of injury attrition (opponents) - washingtonismoney - 04-11-2012

(04-10-2012, 03:32 PM)unclechuck link Wrote:That said I'm not too troubled with the UW loss. My impression is that they've stocked some big bodies over the last couple of years and will get serviceable replacements.

Re: The pains of injury attrition (opponents) - unclechuck - 04-11-2012

(04-10-2012, 04:31 PM)76lsjumb link Wrote:[quote author=unclechuck link=topic=5816.msg42809#msg42809 date=1334097158]

CO's loss of elite WR Richardson does bum me some. A) we don't play them, and ...

So...the $65 that the SU Ticket Office wants for a November 3, 2012 "Away Game" at Boulder is just to watch an unofficial scrimmage?Â ;)
[/quote]

My bad, conflated with Utah's schedule; lumped the league newbies...I don't know.

Re: The pains of injury attrition (opponents) - unclechuck - 04-11-2012

(04-11-2012, 10:57 AM)washingtonismoney link Wrote:[quote author=unclechuck link=topic=5816.msg42809#msg42809 date=1334097158]
That said I'm not too troubled with the UW loss. My impression is that they've stocked some big bodies over the last couple of years and will get serviceable replacements.

I don't think that's correct. UW surrendered 34 sacks last year, 11th in the conference, and 78 TFL, 9th in the conference. Overall I'm sure they'll have a good offense--too many weapons not to--but losing two starters total (this guy to injury; another to eligibility) from a poor offensive line isn't a recipe for success. Overall, their OL recruiting is only so-so--about three four-star recruits over their entire roster. Compares poorly to the rest of the conference, generally speaking.

[/quote]So WIM, you do NOT believe they will glean serviceable replacements for an O-line, that you point out, was pretty underwhelming at least in pass protection for 2011? Yet, you do agree that their offense should be pretty good.

My O-line thoughts based on 7 OL commits in class of 2010:

http://rivals.yahoo.com/stanford/football/recruiting/commitments/2010/washington-65

2012 will be their 3rd year in the system. UW also had a big class of 6 OL for 2008 who would be RS-Srs this year with all 4 years of Sark's system.

And, while it is sweet indeed to harvest multiple 4-5 star recruits for OL as we have this year, it seems that many programs do well with 2-3 star guys brought along slowly and fitting a system e.g. Stanford before this year, Oregon State 2006-2009, Oregon 2007-2011 etc.

Did you just need a Snickers?

Re: The pains of injury attrition (opponents) - washingtonismoney - 04-11-2012

(04-11-2012, 04:25 PM)unclechuck link Wrote:So WIM, you do NOT believe they will glean serviceable replacements for an O-line, that you point out, was pretty underwhelming at least in pass protection for 2011? Yet, you do agree that their offense should be pretty good.
...
And, while it is sweet indeed to harvest multiple 4-5 star recruits for OL as we have this year, it seems that many programs do well with 2-3 star guys brought along slowly and fitting a system e.g. Stanford before this year, Oregon State 2006-2009, Oregon 2007-2011 etc.

It's certainly possible that they could, but it can't be described as a certainty or even a probability. I'd consider it more likely than not the offensive line play won't be too good. You base your claim that they'll be able to have good offensive line play on the number of years in Sarkisian's system, but his system hasn't really cut it so far--it's produced mediocre results every year during his tenure:
(The numbers:
Sacks allowed:
2009: 2.25/game; 8th in the Pac-10
2010: 1.85/game; 4th in the Pac-10, but a big gap between 3rd and 4th
2011: 2.62/game; 11th in the Pac-12

TFL allowed:
2009: 5.67/game; 4th in Pac-10, but a nicely-sized gap between 3rd and 4th and a gigantic gap between 3rd and 2nd. Overall UW was closer to 9th in the conference than 2nd.
2010: 5.15/game; 3rd in Pac-10. Pretty good year from that perspective.
2011: 6/game; 9th in Pac-12.)

It looks like pass pro is a bigger problem for the UW OL than run blocking; I'd guess a lot of that is due to the efforts of Chris Polk, an underrated running back I'm glad to see the back of.

To a certain extent, so-so OL play can be schemed around and played around, but against elite teams that won't cut it--as UW found out when it played the proverbial big boys last year. Kevin Price missed games because of it last year and that might well turn into a trend if the offensive line play doesn't improve.

In terms of the examples you cite--I'm not sure they work. OSU, as I recall, had pretty good offensive lines. I wonder about the quality of UO's line, actually--it seems like they struggle disproportionately against really good defensive lines. As to the other facets of your claim, that fitting a system and being brought along slowly can compensate for so-so talent as judged by recruiting services, let's start with the latter claim--being brought along slowly. Comprehensive data can be tough to come by, but take for example data from 2009: http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/info-OFFENSIVELINE0905.html You'll note that all three of the teams you've cited favorably are at the bottom of the Pac-10 in total starts; in fact, that was the year true freshman Michael Philipp started for Oregon State at LT. (IIRC Philipp was a recruit everyone thought was going to Stanford. Too bad, that.) (Here's data from 2010: http://www.collegefootballgeek.com/index.php/articles/comments/offensive-line-experience-total-career-starts-returning/ You'd probably have to run a regression analysis to really nail it down, but you'll note of the OSU/Oregon/UW/Stanford comparison you've made, UW has the most career starts and Stanford the least.) So maybe it's the fitting-the-system part that matters. I wouldn't know enough to know.

Snickers are a darn good candy bar, but I prefer Butterfinger.

Re: The pains of injury attrition (opponents) - unclechuck - 04-13-2012

WIM - am in awe of your research and the breadth of your arguments. Not convinced all are germane or as useful as you feel they are, but a compelling case none the less.

One particular contention: I'm not that wild about the weight given returning starts on the Oline. As a metric it's better than nothing and possibly predictive in extremes, but the error bars are way too wide for me. The reality is that many programs (like Oregon, and to a lesser extent Stanford) routinely play 8-10 deep on O-line. Little to none of that is taken into account. I don't understand why number of snaps isn't kept and used like minutes played is for basketball. That would be something I would pay attention to.

Regardless, I feel strongly enough about this subject to wager a 10 pack of mini-Butterfingers vs their cousin Snickers that UWs oline performance for 2012 will be superior to their 2011 effort on the metrics you have cited: sacks & tackles for loss. I gauntlet thee sir!

Re: The pains of injury attrition (opponents) - fullmetal - 04-13-2012

Texas's craptacular OL performance in recent history had a lot of career starts and experience too...unfortunately, it was experience at sucking.Â A new S&C coach and a new OL coach should be in the process of fixing most of those problems.Â New recruits and fresh attitudes should do the rest.

Re: The pains of injury attrition (opponents) - washingtonismoney - 04-13-2012

(04-13-2012, 02:44 PM)unclechuck link Wrote:Regardless, I feel strongly enough about this subject to wager a 10 pack of mini-Butterfingers vs their cousin Snickers that UWs oline performance for 2012 will be superior to their 2011 effort on the metrics you have cited: sacks & tackles for loss. I gauntlet thee sir!

You're on!

To be fair, UW could have an improved O line and surrender much worse stats. They're going over to LSU and that d line is nasty.

Re: The pains of injury attrition (opponents) - unclechuck - 04-14-2012

Ouch, good point.

Would love to see UW acquit themselves nobly, but that would probably mean a low-ish scoring, sack heavy contest. LSU will have a new QB, but yes that same nasty D.

OTOH, sans Andrew we may have a tight contest with UW this year, unlike the cruel spankings that he orchestrated the last two years. That might help me.

Oh well, will begin to save my bottle deposit refunds for the BF war chest.