I think it would be interesting to see the difference in audibles from JC as opposed to Brady Quinn, and the amount of success both had from the audibles on the plays. It's part of my own little conspiracy theory that BQ was given the reigns to audible at will, and JC hasn't been able to do so as consistently yet.

Should be easy enough to clip out Clausen's picks.

Clausen has thrown interceptions.

I suppose it could be hard to come up with criteria to determine which plays to record, but it would be interesting to see how well the team performs on the fly.

Suggestions would be:
What situations does the offense find the defense expecting a given play?
What is the success rate of the new play? How well do we audible into a run? Pass?

Have you compared the production of the various two-TE sets we used this year (Yeatman-Rudolph, Rudolph-Bemenderfer, Rudolph-Robinson)?

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Can't do anything re: Thomas right now. Currently we enter the H, F, X, Y, and Z for each play. But that wasn't done for 2005 or 2006. So there's no way of telling concretely whether Thomas was in on a play action pass unless the ball was thrown to him (because that is kept track of, obviously).

But we have stats on play action for 2005, 2006, and 2008.

The short of is that the overall play action numbers in 2008 were actually better than in 2006, but not quite as good in 2005. My guess is that the numbers look great because of all the deep passes off play action.

At the same time, the number of PA passes has gone down from 141 to 93 to 70.

The one area that has been most intriguing to examine is our use of play action from Regular personnel. As you can see with the Aldridge data, we pretty much sucked. For the season we actually were 10-28 passing with that personnel, but the other groupings did much better. 2005 was off the charts in Regular (32-49 for 450 yards) but then we dipped way down in 2006 (11-21 for 140 yards).

Hope this is enough until we do a larger piece on it later in the spring/summer.

I had counted that one under Hughes by mistake. It should now look like this:

Aldridge - 8 of 23, 118 yards, 2 interceptions, 3 sacks for -30 yards, 1 scramble for 0 yards. Also of note-- 6 of these were hurries. Also, at least 5 fades were run, which are lower percentage. at the same time, there were plays where there was miscommunication between receiver and QB. Also, only one checkdown for Aldridge. Makes you realize that when we ran play action, defense really wasn't worried about 2 of the receivers (Aldridge, Schwapp). They weren't known for pass catching.

Hughes - 16 of 23, 243 yards, 2 interceptions, 1 sack for -7 yards, 1 scramble for 0 yards (monster bowl game performance: 6 of 7 for 162 yards). Caught 3 checkdowns.

Allen - 12 of 18, 261 yards. 6 of these were check downs to Allen, so you can see his value when the first target is covered. 2 more were screen passes. Therefore, 8 of the 12 completions went to Allen. 2 sacks for -11 yards, 1 scramble for 0 yards.

I want to see how play action worked with Darius Walker and Brady Quinn, both of whom were bigger threats in the passing game than Clausen or any current running back. Also, I'd like to see how Travis Thomas did for what little time he was in.

if you consider that Tate's big reception for a touchdown in the Michigan game accounts for most of the yards on play action.

Play selection and success on offense.

Blitzes, turnovers, and success on defense.

3rd & 6+

9 times. Connected 4 times for 47 yards. One drop by Floyd. Two sacks.

If you're concerned about the "threat" of the fake on 3rd & long, I think the idea is that sometimes plays have built in play action in them. For the sake of timing the routes and the QB's footwork, the play fake is not abandoned. I recall JT (of all people) explaining this a few years ago. Maybe one of the coaches can chime in on this, too.

As far as 4th down usage, let me clarify. We used it 3 times on 4th & 1, and one time on 4th & 3. One 4th & 1 resulted in a scramble for 0 yards (Pitt, end of regulation). One time we completed a pass for 29 yards (bowl game, that ball Clausen hucked up for Rudolph). Then one interception.

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We ran play action on 4th & 1 twice. We ran it on 2nd & 2 once.

Every other play could be categorized as 1st & ten, 2nd & long, 2nd & medium, 3rd & long, 3rd & medium, etc.

We never used it in "classic" short yardage situations. Never in 2nd & short, never in 3rd & short, and we never used it in a goal line situation where we could punch it in (only "goal to go" from the 5 or deeper).

Thanks for the suggestion. The results are surprising, to say the least. I wonder if we didn't see it in classic short yardage because of the ineptitude. That would have been the package with Aldridge & Schwapp. For the season we were 7-20 with them back there. It sounds like -- as opposed to 2005 -- the staff felt like we had a better chance running the ball or not using that package to throw the ball - in short yardage spots.

Aldridge - 7 of 22, 70 yards, 2 interceptions, 3 sacks for -30 yards, 1 scramble for 0 yards. Also of note-- 6 of these were hurries. Also, at least 5 fades were run, which are lower percentage. at the same time, there were plays where there was miscommunication between receiver and QB. Also, only one checkdown for Aldridge. Makes you realize that when we ran play action, defense really wasn't worried about 2 of the receivers (Aldridge, Schwapp). They weren't known for pass catching.

Hughes - 17 of 24, 291 yards, 2 interceptions, 1 sack for -7 yards, 1 scramble for 0 yards (monster bowl game performance: 6 of 7 for 162 yards). Caught 3 checkdowns.

Allen - 12 of 18, 261 yards. 6 of these were check downs to Allen, so you can see his value when the first target is covered. 2 more were screen passes. Therefore, 8 of the 12 completions went to Allen. 2 sacks for -11 yards, 1 scramble for 0 yards.

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As you guys know the BGS crew has done some charting of ND games going back to 2005. We also have all the games saved on hard disk this year for the first time (woo hoo!) so we can cut clips to illustrate specific points.

We have some ideas on posts we're going to try to tackle in the offseason. The first one has to do with the use of the fullback. Another one (that I need start pulling clips for) is a discussion of the infamous 'stretch' play. A third might be about blitz analysis -- we've done some defensive charting as well, and might be able to put up a decently thorough examination of the Tenuta blitz mentality.

I just wanted to give this august group a heads up that if you have any ideas for other interesting analyses we could do, go ahead and post 'em, and as we go forward, let's discuss.