[washingtonismoney]

Have you really thought that part through, or is it just a sop to Teejers?

I have watched a bit of U.-N.-D. this year. While I don't have anything particularly negative to say about Golson, he sure hasn't wowed me.

A few things. Golson hasn't wowed me, but looks a bit more precise than Hogan at the moment. And his INT rate (1.48% vs 2%) and fumble rates (1.72% vs. 3.73%) give nicely-sized edges to Hogan. But the big difference is touchdowns. I'm not normally a big fan of using touchdowns to judge players -- every person who's played fantasy football knows the annoyance of the dude who drafts Jerome Bettis and his regular 20 carry 55 yard 4 TD games -- but I do think it's important here. Golson's generating more of them (8.62% vs 7.46%), which may help explain the differences in the offense. (Though it's hard to say whether that's an artifact of differences in skill between the QBs or something else.)

Football Outsider's S&P metric loves the N.D. passing offense, ranking it 13th...though it's down on its passing downs offense, ranking it 35th. (Perhaps Kelly is scheming up good plays for Golson on first and second down, but left to his own devices in pressure situations, he's not doing so hot?) Meanwhile Stanford is...18th and 38th, respectively, by the same metric. (Perhaps yadda yadda yadda?)

There are some unobservable differences, to sum it up. It's hard to say whether, for example, Hogan is performing in certain specialized situations that differentiate good QBs from great QBs. Since N.D.'s offense is playing better, I'm inclined to think Golson's probably playing a bit better too, though I wouldn't overstate that effect. (If he were playing much better it'd be much more obvious.)

Still, I wouldn't say it's a brobdingnagian edge at all and I've always been a bit surprised by Golson's outsized reputation. (It's not quite a Mannion-esque gap, to be fair.) Still, I think it's fair to say Golson's been better than Hogan. I don't know whether it'll last the whole season. And I'm inclined to dismiss basically the entire Syracuse game performance based on the mammoth incompetence of their defense. It looked like a time traveler from 2005 had tried to educate them on how to defend the spread.*

* (I saw Cuse making the same mistakes against N.D. that we were making in the infamously bad 2009 Zona game. And, because I love a tangent, it's hilarious to me that Harbaugh-hires-Andy-Buh has gone way down the memory hole whenever the periodic 'Why won't David Shaw emulate the wonderful Jim Harbaugh?' discussion crops up.)

[washingtonismoney]

Have you really thought that part through, or is it just a sop to Teejers?

I have watched a bit of U.-N.-D. this year. While I don't have anything particularly negative to say about Golson, he sure hasn't wowed me.

A few things. Golson hasn't wowed me, but looks a bit more precise than Hogan at the moment. And his INT rate (1.48% vs 2%) and fumble rates (1.72% vs. 3.73%) give nicely-sized edges to Hogan. But the big difference is touchdowns. I'm not normally a big fan of using touchdowns to judge players -- every person who's played fantasy football knows the annoyance of the dude who drafts Jerome Bettis and his regular 20 carry 55 yard 4 TD games -- but I do think it's important here. Golson's generating more of them (8.62% vs 7.46%), which may help explain the differences in the offense. (Though it's hard to say whether that's an artifact of differences in skill between the QBs or something else.)

Football Outsider's S&P metric loves the N.D. passing offense, ranking it 13th...though it's down on its passing downs offense, ranking it 35th. (Perhaps Kelly is scheming up good plays for Golson on first and second down, but left to his own devices in pressure situations, he's not doing so hot?) Meanwhile Stanford is...18th and 38th, respectively, by the same metric. (Perhaps yadda yadda yadda?)

There are some unobservable differences, to sum it up. It's hard to say whether, for example, Hogan is performing in certain specialized situations that differentiate good QBs from great QBs. Since N.D.'s offense is playing better, I'm inclined to think Golson's probably playing a bit better too, though I wouldn't overstate that effect. (If he were playing much better it'd be much more obvious.)

Still, I wouldn't say it's a brobdingnagian edge at all and I've always been a bit surprised by Golson's outsized reputation. (It's not quite a Mannion-esque gap, to be fair.) Still, I think it's fair to say Golson's been better than Hogan. I don't know whether it'll last the whole season. And I'm inclined to dismiss basically the entire Syracuse game performance based on the mammoth incompetence of their defense. It looked like a time traveler from 2005 had tried to educate them on how to defend the spread.*

* (I saw Cuse making the same mistakes against N.D. that we were making in the infamously bad 2009 Zona game. And, because I love a tangent, it's hilarious to me that Harbaugh-hires-Andy-Buh has gone way down the memory hole whenever the periodic 'Why won't David Shaw emulate the wonderful Jim Harbaugh?' discussion crops up.)