re: Team Talent by Class (for Analytical Nerds)

Wow our junior talent is below USCe, Kentucky, and Vanderbilt. I knew it was bad but not that bad. Woof

The part i read.... say 65%. Impressive!

GREAT WORK!!! I absolutely love stats. The most important thing that isn’t measurable is the development of the QB position. Jimbo is a fine coach and the difference between the roster and where we finished is concerning.

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Just mind boggling that LSU lost to Missouri.

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And Miss St

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So that was actually one of the things I wanted to look at when I started pulling the data together - how the talent among juniors and seniors might have contributed to LSU’s losses. I wound up going down a few rabbit holes (as you can probably tell) and somehow forgot to address that piece.

Here’s my take: Mississippi State’s experienced talent is surprisingly close to LSU’s.

Mizzou, on the other hand, is... not.

Mizzou definitely stings worse IMO, and I can’t help but wonder what the narrative of this season would be if we were 6-4 with one “bad” loss to MSU, rather than 5-5 with two bad losses.

There are a few other factors that are worth mentioning:

1. In terms of “experience,” all juniors and seniors are not created equally. A returning 3-year starter obviously adds a lot more than a 3-year bench player. A returning sophomore that started as a freshman probably adds more value than a returning senior that’s been a depth player his entire career.

Returning production matters. A lot. I know that LSU’s returning production was near the bottom of FBS due to the departures and opt-outs, based on Bill Connelly’s metrics. But returning production is really a completely separate analysis and I can’t think of an elegant way to blend the two.

2. Experience matters more at some positions than others. For example, a group of freshman/sophomore RBs is much less damaging than a group of freshman/sophomore OL. Again I didn’t go to that level of depth because you get to a point where it’s impossible to really interpret the data. My guess would be that the positional weaknesses for LSU wouldn’t look much worse, if at all, than the total.

It is interesting that Georgia and LSU underperformed their talent with inexperienced QBs and Florida and Texas A&M outperformed their talent with experienced QB play.

Tiger Rant post of the year nominee.

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It is interesting that Georgia and LSU underperformed their talent with inexperienced QBs and Florida and Texas A&M outperformed their talent with experienced QB play.

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It is indeed. Although Kirby Smart and the UGA program wrote the book on underperforming your talent.. but that’s a different conversation.

I have a lot of respect for Bill Connelly - when it comes to predictive metrics, he is one of the best (if not the best) in the business. His returning production metric for offense is broken down as follows:



Here’s how much each position group actually contributes to the composition of the starting lineup - e.g. 5 OL divided by 11 offensive starters:
- QB: 9%
- WR/TE: 36%
- OL: 45%
- RB: 9%
(The remaining 1% is a rounding error.)

So if you do the math, Bill Connelly is saying a returning QB is worth ~3.5x his “headcount” value. WRs/TEs are worth slightly less (~0.89x) their headcount value. OL are even less (~0.66x) and RBs are valued at basically 1-to-1.

It’s not exactly earth shattering to imagine that an experienced QB is a huge part of offensive success, but I was struck by the magnitude of his weighting.

For reference, Connelly says that teams returning >60% of their offensive production see an increase of ~2 points per game in the S&P+ ratings, on average

I have to admit, the reaction to this post has been more positive than I expected.

Random tidbit for anyone wondering why the “freshman talent” score for LSU is >300 when LSU’s 247 class score for 2020 was only 298.62 - it’s because of redshirts. Players like Kardell Thomas, Anthony Bradford, and Dwight McGlothern are contributing to the freshman total.

How long did it take you to put that together?

Jesus man great work. Cant wait until the baws have some time go through this with a fine tooth comb and add their unique analysis.