1 thing that really limits my ability to get behind Wilson is his small frame. He's listed at 210lbs but there is reasonable doubt he may weigh even less. His pro day weigh in will be big to clear this up. Once he gets to the NFL a few good hits could mess him up, which is particularly troubling for a running QB. In this way I compare him to Mariota and worry it's the same trap. I think he needs to sit for a year or 2 and focus on building his body for the NFL. I don't think that will happen with the Jets.
What exactly does your confidently bolded statement mean? No DII school has a harder schedule than a DI team. He did play a cupcake schedule though. Not really. Mid major quarterbacks put together exorbitant numbers all the time. He was 8th in the Heisman voting for a reason. See McKenzie Milton, Kellen Moore, Dillon Gabriel, Riley Ferguson, Brady White, Paxton Lynch, D'Eriq King, Brett Rypien, Cole McDonald (and all Hawaii QB's usually), Jordan Love, etc. And that's just looking at two conferences really. The only separation is the completion percentage on some. Yards per attempt is a relatively meaningless stat as a function of dividing yards by attempts. It doesn't provide good enough context to be relevant. Have you ever heard of Ryan Higgins? Yeah me either. But he was apparently a monster for Louisiana Tech in 2016. https://www.sports-reference.com/cfb/players/ryan-higgins-1.html Logan Woodside from Toledo? Big boy arm at least by Wilson's downfield throwing standards here too. He went for 45/9 as a junior on 69%.
"“I watched __________, and he was actually pretty good. He was very careful with his passes, very accurate, no interceptions. I wondered if his arm would be strong enough. If you saw him — and he was listed that day at 6-foot-5, 195 pounds — he didn’t look good. He looked kind of emaciated, with no muscle definition.” Who was the QB that this was written about?
True JV, usually they don't. Due to COVID last year that changed. There are 130 schools in D1. But after COVID only 88 of them played so schedules were heavily modified. BYU was one of those schools with a very modified schedule, as nearly all their quality opponents opted out. Michigan State, Arizona State, Minnesota, Missouri, and Stanford were all dropped from their schedule. Added were teams like Western Kentucky, Troy, Texas State, and Navy. The final tally showed they had the 106th hardest schedule in the nation in 2020. If there are only 88 D1 teams playing then that means at least 17 D2 teams had a harder schedule. The schedule Wilson succeeded against was a cake walk. It would have been much more revealing to have seen Wilson play Michigan State, Arizona State, Minnesota, Missouri, and Stanford.
That makes no sense. 127 D1 football teams played games in 2020. D2 schools don't automatically jump D1 schools because they played more games. The talent gap is still huge and you're trying to isolate numbers without context and not factoring in that these players were playing D2 football for a reason. https://www.teamrankings.com/college-football/ranking/schedule-strength-by-other
Fair enough. I was using an independent statistician, who may have been dinging teams that only played 4-5 games and thus didn't rank them higher or something? I admit I didn't check that. In reality it would be very hard to rank this stuff because of all the player and team opt outs and irregular schedules and final records. However, that does not change the fact that nearly all quality opponents on BYUs schedule were replaced with very weak opponents.
Of course. They didn't even play mid-major conference champions. They were playing the middle tier teams of each conference for the most part and beat up a ton specifically on Conference USA and the AAC who were 1-11 in bowl games. Yikes.
I get the point about level of competition and I agree that's the big concern with Wilson. Regarding the bolded names none of them that I checked eclipsed Wilson's season in a single one of the metrics I listed, not to mention all of them at once. I still think it's one of the better college QB seasons recently. I also don't think Y/A is meaningless. If anything I would say a high Y/A is more impressive for Wilson than a lot of other QB's because he's not throwing to superior athletes a yard behind the LOS who take it for 8 yards after. He consistently completed a really high % of passes significantly down the field.
It's a function of the offense to a certain extent though and yards per catch is a much better metric to look at. His yards per completion was 14.9. Rypien - 12.30 McDonald - 12.68 Gabriel - 14.4 Milton - 15.2 (using his full sophomore year here + full season) Brady White - 14.9/13.30 (2019/2020) Lynch - 11.7/12.7 (2014/2015) Ferguson - 13.2/14.2 King - 13.6/12.7 Love - 13.4/11.6 BYU didn't need to throw any sort of dump off plays to help their running game because their two backs ran for 6.7 yards per carry. There's some deviation and Wilson's is mostly higher. But this was less about him as a prospect and more about dubbing it some sort of great season in the context of what a great CFB quarterback season really is.
Last years #1 pick had a 10.8 YPC, as well as 60 TDs to 6 ints, over 5000 yards, and a 76% completion rating. That is a great college season.
Mahomes - 12.8/13.0 Rodgers - 13.5/12.3 I only use those two guys because those are some of the wild comparisons he's drawn (not necessarily from people here) from certain "experts" like Jeremiah. Similar build and arm with less mobility and a history of injuries? Bradford - 13.2/14.4
Man can you imagine if we drafted Bradford 2.0? In fairness, Revision said recent memory so I tried to keep it over the last few seasons. Where fans get confused is the experts all work for a team. People in the media are analysts with a completely different job and agenda. Calling them experts is just marketing.
That's the best college QB season ever. A QB can have a great season and be well short of those numbers.
Appreciate you putting together those numbers. To be honest though I think they're mostly in support of my point about Wilson. To be among the top there while also having an extremely high completion % and really low INT rate is really impressive to me. Generally I think we'd expect to see a guy pushing it down the field so consistently to have either a lower completion % (higher difficulty of completion at longer ranges), higher INT numbers or both. Wilson had neither. The level of competition thing is 100% valid, if there's issue to be taken with the numbers I think that's it. But on its face it was an extremely impressive season. Certainly good enough to qualify as one of the best of the last few years I'd say.
Awesome post ouchy. I am not a college football guy and never heard his name until maybe December. Your post is full of data. I will let college folks engage with you on counter points but wanted to thank you for this great post.
After reading all the posts on this thread, I am pretty upset. I need to call in big guns here. @Br4d @legler82 Please chime in about Wilson. Do you guys approve him as #2 pick over Fields?
Good post. I'm sure the Jets are doing their due diligence. I was on the Wilson train but after Douglas free agency if you can call it that. I'm pretty sure they will not take a QB. They will probably ride with Darnold and draft offensive lineman at 2 and at 23. So theirs that.
I'm with you on Wilson's accuracy and also he has good mobility. I think he's tailor made for Mike LaFleur's offense. I wonder what LaFleur thinks about all this and more importantly how much input he has in personnel matters.
