Did Marcus Mariota Just Rack Up Stats Against Bad Teams? http://rotoviz.com/2015/02/marcus-mariota-just-rack-stats-bad-teams/ Recently I dove into the numbers and came to the conclusion that Marcus Mariota is one of the greatest quarterback prospects of all time. Mariota demonstrated all the qualities I look for in a QB prospect. But it’s important that I do my due diligence. Whenever I love a prospect, after I build him up, I have to at least attempt to tear him down.One criticism of Mariota is that he posted such gaudy numbers because he beat up on bad teams or teams with bad pass defenses. This is really a fairly common criticism of any player at an offensive position that posts gaudy numbers. Still, it deserves examining. Rather than attempting to parse “good pass defenses” from “bad pass defenses”1 I’ve decided to examine his performances against teams that finished the season with a winning record, a method Jon Moore once used to perform a retrospective evaluation of Tom Brady.So just how well did Mariota do? Let’s break it down season by season.2012Team Att Yards TD INTArkansas State 22 200 3 0Fresno State 27 166 1 0Arizona 35 260 2 1Washington 24 198 4 1Arizona State 12 46 1 0USC 23 304 4 0Stanford 37 207 1 1Oregon State 24 140 1 0Kansas State 24 166 2 0Totals 228 1687 19 3In the table above (and the following tables) you’ll find the teams Mariota faced, along with his attempts, yards, touchdowns, and interceptions, in those games. That’s just how the sausage is made. What’s really of interest is the total numbers, which you can find in the bottom row.In 2012, Mariota faced 9 winning teams in 13 total games. In those games he threw 228 passes representing 68 percent of his total passes that season.My preferred statistic for evaluating QBs is adjusted yards per attempt, a measure that factors touchdowns and interceptions along with yardage.2 Mariota’s performance in this metric is a huge part of what makes him such a great prospect. If I’m going to consider a quarterback as a good NFL prospect, I want him to at least have a career or final season AYA of 8.5, and that’s looking at all of their games, not just their games against winning teams. So what was Mariota’s AYA as a freshman against winning teams? 8.47. Even looking only at a subset of games that should make Mariota look worse, he still manages to impress.2013Team Att Yards TD INTWashington 31 366 3 0UCLA 28 230 1 0Stanford 34 250 2 0Arizona 41 308 2 2Oregon State 34 285 3 2Texas 26 253 1 0Totals 194 1692 12 4In 2013, Mariota only faced 6 winning teams out of 13 total games. Despite being less than half of his games, Mariota’s 194 pass attempts represented 50 percent of his total passes that season.Mariota faced fewer winning teams than he did as a freshman. He also threw fewer TDs and more INTs. However, he also threw for more yards on fewer passes. As a consequence, his sophomore AYA against winning teams was 9.03. Mariota improved as a passer as a sophomore. And again, looking only at his games against winning teams he still looks like a strong NFL prospect.2014Team Att Yards TD INTMichigan State 28 318 3 0Arizona 32 276 2 0UCLA 27 210 2 0Washington 33 336 2 0Stanford 30 258 2 1Utah 29 239 3 0Arizona (2) 38 313 2 0Florida State 36 338 2 1Ohio State 37 333 2 1Totals 290 2621 20 3Here you’ll see that in 2014 Mariota posted by far his highest number of attempts and fittingly his highest number of yards and TDs as well. He also threw only three interceptions, tying his low in this method.3 As a 20 and 21 year old junior Mariota threw for 9.95 AYA in this subset. One of the things I like about Mariota is that he improved as a passer every year, and that’s still true using this methodology.In 2014 Mariota faced 9 winning teams in 15 total games, with two of those games coming in the inaugural college football playoffs. Certainly no shortage of tough opponents, and his total of 290 attempts represented 65 percent of his total passes that year.Career NumbersUsing some good old fashioned addition and subtraction, it doesn’t take much effort to use this information to figure out the numbers he posted in games against teams with losing records. Here are his career numbers against both losing and winning teams:Against Teams Att Yards TD INT AYAWith Winning Records 712 6000 51 10 9.23With Losing Records 455 4796 54 4 12.52We don’t have any sample size issues here, as Mariota threw 61 percent of his career passes against winning teams and faced winning teams in 24 of 41 career games. A career AYA of 9.23 would be more than enough for me to consider a QB a good NFL prospect, so that Mariota accomplished that feat in a more difficult subset is truly impressive. For more context on why I’m so impressed and why you should be to, I strongly recommend reading my earlier article if you haven’t already.Now it’s plain to see that Mariota did in fact perform much better against losing teams than he did winning teams, but that’s to be expected. The takeaway is that he did great against both subsets. The only red flag I see is that he threw the vast majority of his interceptions against winning teams, but I suspect that may also be fairly standard.So, did Mariota rack up stats against bad teams? Yes, but only because he racked up stats against all teams.
