ISU PFF Offensive Line Grade Analysis
- Thread starter cymonw1980
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Yeah, the special teams and offense in September games have been hot garbage in the Campbell era. There's no way to sugar coat it. He's 1-5 in Big 12 openers. 0-6 against Iowa. Hammered by Louisiana. Two of the wins ISU was lucky to escape against UNI.
Campbell has been masterful at pretty much everything, but developing the OL and being ready to play in September games have been problems that I'm betting he'll figure out.
Of all the things to worry about as an ISU FB fan, the 3-3-5 is about last on the list.
Do we not include kicker as a part of special teams? Mevis was great last year. Like, good enough to have our overall special teams be close to average.
Point being it's not the alignment that's the problem.
The secondary was still leaky and the other two areas of the game have been bad.
I think that may be changing... we will see.
In 2016, we got Brian Bobek (transfer from Minn, OSU for one year) and Sean Foster, who at least saw the field...
In 2017, again, over half the class had little or no action. But Newell was not bad and Knipfel was good. Schweiger who was a walk on got a lot of snaps too...
From 2016 - 2019 over half of the snaps played were by Paul Roads recruits... makes sense in 2016 & 2017; but by 2018, 2019 it would have been good to see some of the new guys win those jobs.
In 2018, we got our best OL recruit under Campbell in Downing. He and Ross are still on the roster, Ramos transferred out this off season.
All of the 2019 class is still on the Roster. Hopeful Remsburg can bounce back and have his best season yet. Simmons/Hufford I hope either take some big steps forward or are beaten out by new guys. Not sure if Treiber will emerge or not... seems like with all the issues at tackle he should have gotten on the field last year but couldn't.
For the last 3 classes almost no playing time. Obviously, Miller got on the field late last season and got to play against Clemson. Ideally, Miller improves one tackle spot, Remsburg improves the other, Downing improves Center and we find two capable Guards from the rest... My hope is that Neal is a stud and wins one spot and Simmons improves and takes the other.
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I loved Purdy, but I'm really looking forward to a QB who isn't throwing from 12 yards or scrambling from 17 yards behind the LOS for a 2 yard gain on a crossing pattern.
It might be hard to analyze this without sufficient data from other schools. There might be a change in how or who PFF evaluates line play. I'd be interested in seeing the difference between ISU line play and the average CFB line play each year to weed out any effects that might be due to changes in evaluation standards/quality year over year.
There are clear trends within the data in terms of performance evaluation year-to-year (did all line play get worse in certain years or did evaluators changes). I would be interested in seeing data normalized.
It's also hard to really compare years when things change in terms of offensive philosophy. Are we expecting the O-line to do more or different things? Changes in philosophy or style likely would both cause and be caused by poor play in some way. It would be good to compare to more meaningful metrics like offensive output and team success.
It's interesting because our "best" o-line year was 2015 yet that team was 3-9. Our "worst" o-line year was 2018 when we were 8-5. Defense was a big cause of that. That said, we were a completely different team philosophically by the time 2018 rolled around. 2018 still had a higher yards per play offensively than 2015. A large part of that was Brock Purdy's 10ypa throwing the ball. 2018 had like 12 less offensive plays per game than 2015 but scored more. (This isn't due to defensive turnovers, because they were about equal.)
There are clear trends within the data in terms of performance evaluation year-to-year (did all line play get worse in certain years or did evaluators changes). I would be interested in seeing data normalized.
It's also hard to really compare years when things change in terms of offensive philosophy. Are we expecting the O-line to do more or different things? Changes in philosophy or style likely would both cause and be caused by poor play in some way. It would be good to compare to more meaningful metrics like offensive output and team success.
It's interesting because our "best" o-line year was 2015 yet that team was 3-9. Our "worst" o-line year was 2018 when we were 8-5. Defense was a big cause of that. That said, we were a completely different team philosophically by the time 2018 rolled around. 2018 still had a higher yards per play offensively than 2015. A large part of that was Brock Purdy's 10ypa throwing the ball. 2018 had like 12 less offensive plays per game than 2015 but scored more. (This isn't due to defensive turnovers, because they were about equal.)
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Yes... I tried to show this in the chart.
You can see that all of the offensive line play has a similar trend... So it does explain part of the dip from 2016 forward. But 2014/2015 we were above the Power 5 Average rating, since then we have been below the average. So, even accounting for the overall lower grading 2016-2021, you can see we performed below average.
You are right though, key is our performance vs. the average rather than just the raw grades.
Looking at the overall offensive performance, it is important to note that every other position saw significant improvements in their grading from 2016-2021. So, that explains overall performance improving while OL has been lagging.
At the 9:25 mark you see a great example. TE chips and the LT stonewalls the DE. The three interior guys destroy a twist or a stunt inside. The guy that gets the sack takes a terrible, path of least resistance route about 3-4 yards outside the tackle box and 11 yards downfield. The LT lets rides him downfield and wide. This should never, ever be a sack.
But there was also the play in the 4th where Purdy had a great scramble to convert on 3rd and long.
You just had to accept some mistakes from Purdy in exchange for some great plays. After all, sports are entertainment, and there's no disputing Purdy was entertaining.
Also a good example of Purdy not knowing where his check down RB is. It's something that Park was really good at, and we saw it a lot from Dekkers in his TD drive against Iowa.
We should've been looking for Hall a lot more out of the backfield, but Purdy preferred to stare at Kolar and try to fit something into double coverage (which worked more than it should have. Thanks, Chuck).
I'm hoping that this will be the breakout year for the OL. Clearly last year there were a lot of injuries that caused ISU to play 5 guards for most of the season. We will see how things work out. I always thought it was a big mistake hiring a grad assistant as an OL coach. Especially for a team that struggled putting together a good OL. Hoping they will get better is all we can do at this point.
