Draft Reaction: Minnesota selects S Harrison Smith

The Minnesota Vikings are having a great first day of the draft.  It was not anticipated that the Vikings would get back into the first round to address their defense, but I think they were able to adjust their expectations for the safety level of their defense when Mark Barron ended up going with the 7th overall pick.  Harrison Smith was the next guy up on most draft boards, and given the night to re-set their boards, the Vikings diagnosed their issue: they could not wait until the next day to land the player they needed the most.

So the trade up they pulled with the Ravens — who missed out on Kevin Zeitler and can wait on Peter Konz — was nifty for both sides.  And then they made the pick.

Notre Dame improbably puts two guys in the 2012 first round.  And the Vikings add two guys to their team that help them compete in the NFL’s toughest division, the NFC North.

Minnesota Vikings Process Points: 11

Draft Reaction: Arizona selects WR Michael Floyd

I have a rule that I dubbed the ‘eight year rule’, which states that when a team makes a wildly successful pick in the first round and drafts a cornerstone player, that once eight years pass, it is no longer too early to pick at that position.

The wildly successful pick made by the Cardinals in the 2004 draft was Pittsburgh’s Larry Fitzgerald.  In 2012, they add Michael Floyd to the mix.  And for the first time this offseason, it would seem like the San Francisco 49ers might have inadequate defensive personnel to handle the best receivers in the division.  It’s asking a lot for Carlos Rogers to clone himself.

This draft-strategy altering selection gives the Cards a full complement of process points.  They won’t be able to get their QB in the future in the second round however, because they traded that pick last July for their quarterback of the future, Kevin Kolb.

Arizona Cardinals Process Points: 5

Does the way which Notre Dame competes in Recruiting represent a problem for the Fighting Irish football program?

With Arizona four-star Wide Receiver Davonte Neal committing to play college football at Notre Dame next year, Notre Dame has dodged a bullet from signing day when Deontay Greenberry flipped his commitment away from Notre Dame to Houston, creating a major offensive void in the Irish’s previously impressive recruiting haul.  While Neal isn’t as highly regarded as Greenberry was by recruitniks, his signature makes him the highest rated wide receiver in the Irish’s 2012 recruiting class.

That’s good.  Though the way Neal went about his commitment today doesn’t make it entirely clear that he’s doing what he thought would be best for him:

Reportedly, there is an ongoing “power struggle” over the decision.  The player apparently wants to stay near home and play for the Wildcats, while the father wants his son to play for the Irish.

…

Simply put, the entire Neal family should be embarrassed over and ashamed of what took place late Tuesday morning at the receiver’s former elementary school.

And this incident reminds me a little bit of this from a month ago:

“From what I have been told, [QB Gunner Kiel] is no longer coming to LSU,” recruiting expert Michael Scarborough of Rivals.com told the Times. “He wants to come to LSU, but his mother (Aleta Kiel) got very emotional Monday and did not want her son to leave. He plans to enroll in classes at Notre Dame on Tuesday.”

Scarborough went on to add that “[w]hat has been relayed to me is that he wants to come to LSU, but his parents want him at Notre Dame because it is closer to home.”

Sure, the takeaway here is that Brian Kelly is managing to compete with the big dogs in college recruiting using tactics that going back to the very beginning of his tenure at Notre Dame, has allowed him to routinely land 4 and 5 star recruits without enjoying the advantages of being an annual national championship contender and also without Notre Dame being the pro-football factory it once was.  And part of the reason Kelly is the head coach at Notre Dame is so that he can modernize the Notre Dame football program and re-brand it as a modern football powerhouse, instead of the relic it’s detractors claim it to be.

It would be an issue if Notre Dame falls down the recruiting rankings because they can’t get the elite players to sign.  But the problem preceding Kelly’s administration wasn’t that they weren’t winning on signing day.

Notre Dame Rivals.com Recruiting Rankings 2002-2012

2012 – #22
2011 – #10
2010* – #14
2009 – #21
2008 – #2
2007 – #8
2006 – #8
2005* – #40
2004 – #32
2003 – #12
2002 – #24

Median recruiting ranking, by coach
Tyrone Willingham – 24th
Charlie Weis – 8th
Brian Kelly – 14th

Separated by coach, you can kind of see why there was reason to be concerned over the downward trend in recruiting under Ty Willingham, but after Charlie Weis put the Irish back in the BCS in his first two seasons, you can certainly see how recruiting simply hasn’t been an issue for the fighting Irish.  Since 2006, their mean ranking according to rivals is 12th, which is much higher than the average finish in the AP poll for Notre Dame over that timeframe.  Is is that the classes are overrated?

To a degree, sure, when you don’t win, anything that indicated future success is overrated.  But looking at Charlie Weis’ best three classes, most of the big name prospects panned out.  This is the second rated recruiting class according to Rivals in 2008.  Braxston Cave and Kapron Lewis-Moore are slotted as excellent fifth year seniors, who will combine to start 7 seasons for the fighting Irish, although both were injured and missed the end of last season.  Ethan Johnson was a three year starter.  Of course, Kyle Rudolph and Michael Floyd are going to be very significant NFL players over the next few years.  Rudolph profiles as one of the best in-line tight ends in football.  Floyd is projected to go in the first round of this draft.  Trevor Robinson has started for the Irish since 2009.  Darius Fleming could go on the second day of the upcoming NFL draft.  John Goodman and Jonas Gray were never starters, but bloomed late to contribute to Brian Kelly’s offense.  Robert Blanton was a four year starter.  If this class underachieved as the second best recruiting class as ranked by Rivals, it’s because Dayne Crist only provided ND with one injury-truncated season as a starter.

Both the 2006 and 2007 classes ranked and to list players who are in the NFL currently from those recruiting classes: Patriots DB Sergio Brown, Saints G Eric Olsen, 49ers TE Konrad Reuland, Cardinals G Chris Stewart, Dolphins TE Will Yeatman, Falcons CB Darrin Walls, Bills OL Sam Young, Bears RB Armando Allen, Browns LB Brian Smith, Seahawks WR Golden Tate, 49ers DT Ian Williams, and soon to be free agent Jimmy Clausen.  How did those recruiting classes result in Charlie Weis getting fired?

Unlike the 2008 class, there were some pretty significant recruiting busts and painful transfers.  Both Yeatman and Reuland transferred after they lost playing time to Rudolph.  Allen started for four years at RB, but didn’t break out until Kelly came in.  Darrin Walls was off the roster in 2008, perhaps when he was needed the most.  And the five stars from those classes really didn’t pan out.  Sam Young did not play like the best OL recruit of the last decade.  James Aldridge was a five star RB out of nearby Crown Point, IN, and finished his career as a fullback on a team that needed someone to stop its spiral.  And of course, Clausen didn’t stay long enough to achieve college immortality, instead giving way to another 5-star QB who never played like one (Dayne Crist).

But if it seems unfair to put the failures on an entire program on a couple of highly rated high school kids just to justify a theory about the Irish being unable to recruit elite athletes, it is only because it is unfair.  It is very clear that the issues for the Notre Dame football program run deeper than recruiting.  Perhaps a deeper examination of how Notre Dame is getting their recruits will show why they are struggling to consistently win with them.

Brian Kelly’s early success at Notre Dame was driven by the overachievement of Weis’ final recruiting class.  That 2009 class was perhaps Weis’ best, even though it wasn’t as highly rated as the others.  And over two years, Kelly changed the coaching  staff and put elite defensive talent on that side of the ball, fixing the single biggest problem of the Weis era, a leaky defense.

It is in spite of the great treasure trove of offensive talent Kelly stepped into that the Notre Dame offense hasn’t been all that good under Brian Kelly.  The quarterback play has been largely abysmal.  The rushing attack consistently good, though if the backs had been able to contribute even a little bit in the passing game, that would take pressure off the overmatched quarterbacks.  TE Tyler Eifert has developed great under Kelly and even considered leaving for the NFL draft this year with two years of eligibility remaining.  The offensive line has gone from a highly recruited weakness to an overall strength with lesser recruits.  But the receivers have been a largely frustrating group despite consistently high recruiting results.  Combined with the quarterback play, Notre Dame’s potentially explosive passing attack has never been particularly strong.

Two or three results, like those seen in the cases of Kiel, Greenberry, and now Neal is not necessarily indicative of a bigger problem, but all three mean comprise the future of the passing attack that has held the Fighting Irish back to date.  And it will be interesting to watch over the next few years: are the players who Notre Dame is signing going to help them compete on a national level, or are they specifically competing for ‘overrated’ high school recruits that SEC and Big XII schools are focusing elsewhere on.  Is it problematic that the talent that the Irish are relying on for the future are considering Houston and Arizona, and decommitting from LSU en route to Notre Dame?

It’s probably not a big deal so long as ND is able to win those recruiting battles.  It’s just something worth keeping an eye on if Brian Kelly’s recruiting classes don’t lead to more consistent winning.

Why I still think Notre Dame, Oregon will win 10 games

I didn’t see more than a half of either the Oregon-LSU or the Notre Dame-USF games, but I was engaged enough to note that both Fightin’ Kelly’s suffered one of the more frustrating losses of their respective coaching careers.  The teams combined for 9 turnovers in 120 minutes of football.  I have that as “way too many.”

Oregon at least can step back, attribute the turnover silliness to injury, and move on.  This is a little more difficult for Notre Dame.  Weather was a factor for the Irish, sure, but their wounds were painfully self-inflicted.  The Notre Dame defense more or less stifled USF QB B.J. Daniels all game, and even given the fact that the Irish went into half down a fortunate 16-0, I still feel underwhelmed at the second half effort that saw them outscore the Bulls by a margin of 20-7 with two additional turnovers.  Even if you give Notre Dame a complete mulligan for the first half, 20-7 is probably not the margin at home they should be beating a team like USF by.  The offensive performance under Tommy Rees in the second half left plenty to be desired, which is something to keep in mind before Brian Kelly announces his quarterback for a really big game in his tenure at Michigan.  With that said, even an underwhelming performance as such should be enough for ND to win at least 75% of its games going forward.  Going 9-3 or better will require wholesale offensive improvement.

Notre Dame’s blessing is that they get another hyped, national game in just a Saturday.  Oregon won’t be so lucky.  Their next four opponents: Nevada, Missouri State, Arizona, California.  Then after a fairly interesting Pac-12 matchup with Arizona State, they get Colorado, Washington State, and Washington.  Oregon will not play another nationally ranked opponent (in all likelihood) until November 12th in Palo Alto, California, where Andrew Luck and the Stanford Cardinal play.  The Ducks will be punished by national pollsters for not running through this schedule in a series of blowouts leading to an 8-1 record.  Fortunately, they are more than capable of exactly this kind of run.  But there’s no question that Oregon’s season has a different feel if they had knocked off an LSU team that they certainly felt was inferior to them in many ways.

It’s never easy to stomach a loss in college football when the other team absolutely lacks the ability to attack you through the air, since FBS offenses have long played a schematic game well ahead of their defensive counterparts, a lot of guys who are just now catching up to the days of read option.  But Oregon and Notre Dame both gave their opponents enough short fields to make exactly this a reality.  But their ability to be stingy to opposing passing games is exactly why the Irish and Ducks merit belief going forward instead of scorn.  An offense that coughs up the ball too much is one of the easiest things to correct during the practice week, and it goes without saying that each team will make this a point of emphasis.  For Notre Dame, who only gave up 15 first downs, and Oregon, who gave up just 16, defensive strength must overshadow their offensive ineptitude going forward.

Notre Dame has a tough schedule the rest of the way, and a 10-1 finish will make this loss look more fluky than anything, but that’s the mentality they should take to Michigan next week.  Oregon plays a very soft Pac-12 schedule until they end with at Stanford, vs. USC in consecutive weeks.  10-2 or better should be the Ducks’ expectation at this point.  It would be easy to lose faith in a positive preseason prediction for either team after not just an upset loss to open the season, but one where neither team appeared to be impersonating a BCS-bound team, but upon a deeper examination of what went wrong in the opener for Notre Dame and for Oregon, it’s probably an overreaction to the first game to jump off the bandwagon right now.

FNQB: What Kind of Trouble is Jimmy Clausen Worth?

One of the decisions that the Carolina Panthers will have to make in deciding whether to select a quarterback is whether or not 2010 second round pick Jimmy Clausen is worth playing for another year.  Clausen just wasn’t good at all as a rookie in 2010, but as a rookie playing with many other rookies in a horribly understaffed offense, his performance hardly qualified as a crime against humanity.  Clausen did not offer a great Lewin Career Forecast projection coming out of Notre Dame, but would have conceivably rated highly in this upcoming draft had he been a 4 year starter with, say, a 63% completion percentage.

Suffice it to say, Clausen may have been better off playing in a new system at Notre Dame to show his versatility than leaving for the NFL draft when he did.  The team he plays for now has the first overall pick and is at least considering drafting a quarterback who they believe in more than Clausen.  I wanted to investigate the wisdom of such a decision.  To spend the first overall pick on a quarterback — even one that the Panthers believe in — you would first want to accurately conclude that nothing can be had from Clausen in 2011.

I was able to quickly generate a list of Jimmy Clausen comparable quarterbacks using only Clausen’s stats from his rookie year.  Turns out it was a pretty unique season.  Only rookies and second year players (compared to third and fourth year players) have ever achieved the kind of poor season that Clausen had in 2010 while also limiting an interception rate to a reasonable league average.  The way to describe the careers of the Clausen comparables is that they all went to improve their careers and enjoy some success with the exception of Akili Smith.  Smith had the kind of year that Clausen did as a second year starter, so he can be thrown out.  McNabb, Cunningham, and particularly Carr all make for more sensible comparisions.

Of all comparisons, Jack Trudeau is by far the best for Clausen.  The 1986 second round pick out of Illinois struggled to the tune of an 0-11 record as a rookie on a terrible team.  The next year, the Colts were able to add Eric Dickerson, Trudeau settled in as an above average NFL quarterback for the next four seasons, leading the Colts to the playoffs in just his second year of 1987.  Trudeau did not last in the NFL as a long term starting quarterback like McNabb or Cunningham did, nor did he get the opportunities that David Carr did to succeed.  But Trudeau proves that it would not be unprecedented for the Panthers to get to 9 wins under Clausen next year by adding an offensive difference maker to pair with Steve Smith.

David Carr never did get the Texans to the playoffs, but as recently as 2006, it was thought that the Texans at least had the quarterback position filled.  Carr never materialized as the Texans franchise quarterback for the same reason that Clausen couldn’t win in 2010: indecision with the ball led to too many sacks.  Carr had a solidly above average season as a third year player in 2004, and improved greatly as a player in 2003.  Truth is, if Jimmy Clausen ends up being either Jack Trudeau or David Carr, it would be hard to fault the Panthers for drafting Blaine Gabbert or Cam Newton in this draft.

However, a cursory look at the careers of Donovan McNabb and Randall Cunningham shows exactly why its too early to give up on Jimmy Clausen as a pro player.  In each player’s first season as a starter, they lost more games than they won while posting rate stats near the bottom of the NFL.  Each of the next two seasons, both McNabb and Cunningham threw 20 TDs for the Eagles as 24 and 25 year old players.  If the belief is that Clausen can approach the 20 TD mark in 2011, the Panthers can win a bunch of games with him and there’s absolutely no reason to draft Gabbert or Newton.  The pick, instead, would be best spent on an offensive talent that can help Clausen reach those goals.

Perhaps the best sign that the Panthers are planning on giving up on Clausen is that they aren’t considering drafting either A.J. Green or Julio Jones in that no. 1 slot.  A defensive player at no. 1 wouldn’t make a lot of sense in the context of developing Clausen.  Clausen would still likely fail to lead the Panthers to the playoffs throwing to just an aging Steve Smith.  A defensive player makes sense for the Panthers if Clausen is just holding the QB spot warm while the team rebuilds, but in that case, I would support drafting a quarterback now instead of waiting.  History shows that Clausen should be good enough to lead the Panthers to the playoffs, but that not all of Clausen’s closest comparables were able to do that, and those who didn’t lead teams to the playoffs in their first three seasons didn’t do it later on.

The Panthers should either give Clausen some help and develop him as a pro prospect or replace him now with Blaine Gabbert.  While there isn’t strong evidence that Gabbert will develop into a better player than Clausen, getting Gabbert now buys more time for the coaching staff, and if the Panthers like him enough, I think that looking at Clausen’s closest comps shows that it makes sense for the Panthers to go in a different direction, if they feel Clausen is the next coming of Jack Trudeau or David Carr.

The Unwritten Narrative of the Michigan-Notre Dame Game: Clausen, Tate’s Departures Cost Irish

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There has been plenty written about the lone college football game of this past week that lived up to the hype, a 28-24 thriller between the Michigan Wolverines and the Notre Dame Fighting Irish.  This game was hardly any different in outcome from last year’s game: Michigan builds a sizable lead early in the third quarter, Notre Dame comes all the way back to take the lead, and Michigan holds for the last drive, a very successful TD drive.

Much has been written about Michigan’s Denard Robinson, who personally accounted for more than 500 yards of total offense in this game.  Much more will be written about him, because he won this game with his arm and his legs.  Michigan simply didn’t have many other valuable players and the valuable players they did have all play on their offensive line.  Non-Robinson skill positions at Michigan are simply of bad players.  When Robinson gets help from some blue chippers in future seasons, just think how dynamic he will be.

Robinson won the game, but faced a much improved Notre Dame defense in the process.  Michigan scored four TDs, but one of those was set up by turnovers, one was a long play from Robinson, and then there was the last drive.  In between, Notre Dame had the Michigan offense under wraps.  Those 500 yards can be deceiving: they came in chunks against a defense that was up to the task of stopping spread offenses.

This game wasn’t lost on defense for the Irish.  Rather, it was lost at the point when Jimmy Clausen and Golden Tate decided to fore go their senior seasons to enter the NFL draft.  Because the story in this game is that the Irish weren’t deep enough offensively to compete with Michigan.

Quarterback Dayne Crist got hurt after the teams first drive — a touchdown drive.  He did not return for the rest of the half.  True freshman Tommy Rees (Lake Forest, IL) and Junior Nate Montana (So. California) led the offense for a quarter and a half, and didn’t do particularly well.  But had Clausen still been the starting quarterback, or had Tate still been in the mix at receiver, there would have been a game-long offensive advantage for the Irish, instead of just two and a half quarters of one.

Even accounting for injury to the starting quarterback (in this case, Clausen), Notre Dame would have been prepared to beat the weak Michigan secondary with some depth at the position, or more options at wide receiver to get wide open for a green passer such as Rees.  But by losing both, the Irish went on a -21 point differential streak from the time Crist left the game, almost entirely (but not completely) due to offensive inefficiencies.

And so while we give Denard Robinson all the credit he deserves for winning this game on the road in South Bend, keep in mind that the Irish are a top heavy offense this season, and need to fill in the holes with Brian Kelly recruiting classes before they have the offensive depth to pull their quarterback due to a concussion, and play players way down on the depth chart instead.  If Charlie Weis is still coach, who knows?  Maybe Clausen and Tate stay another year, and then Notre Dame completely overpowers Michigan in a game which Robinson’s awesomeness is merely an afterthought in the coffin of Rich Rodriguez.

But the transitional aspect of this game has been wildly overlooked.  Notre Dame is a BCS team if their 5-star recruit laden offense were to remain perfectly healthy throughout the season, but they are in trouble if Dayne Crist, or Kyle Rudolph, or Michael Floyd, or Armando Allen misses any time.  Crist missed just a quarter and a half, but ND’s offensive efficiency numbers may take weeks to recover.  What ultimately puts Notre Dame 12 months away from contention is that they can’t ever count on all these players being healthy at once.

If they can’t get their seniors to stay, it’s going to be hard for the Irish to line up the pieces for a run under Brian Kelly in the near term future.  But this year’s comeback in a losing effort to Michigan suggests that they can beat anyone, when that health falls into line for Brian Kelly and his forward-thinking spread offense attack.

So, how much can you bracket?

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Some disjointed thoughts on some very interesting teams that will play in a very uninteresting NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship Field.

Notre Dame A basketball team that completely re-invented itself in the middle of it’s season, faced with the necessity to do so, or to end it’s season early in the Big East tournament.  The result: six straight wins in the NCAA’s toughest conference, and a two point loss at the buzzer to Big East Champion West Virginia.  Notre Dame enters this tournament as one of the toughest outs anywhere in the bracket, but they’ll have to handle another tough out, Old Dominion, in the first round.

Oklahoma State beat Kansas decisively in Big 12 conference play, so they might be the team best equipped to handle Georgia Tech and Ohio State in the first two rounds.  If and when they can get by the two teams they’ll play this weekend, Georgetown is going to be a near reprieve in the sweet sixteen.  I think they can come out of this and earn their rematch against Kansas.

Kansas State is the team that first de-throned the Texas Longhorns, and this was before we found out that UT wasn’t going to be much of a threat down the stretch.  They’ve been unable to overcome Kansas, but they’ve been a top ten team in the country throughout the year, and they’ve got the best chance to play in the final four of any team that is not a number one seed.

Michigan State is never really not a great pick to make a run in the tournament, as they are pretty much an ACC team stranded in the north. Duke, without the villain aspect.  But this year, there’s simply not a whole lot of upside for last year’s runner up.  They’re going to be a dead heat with Maryland, and that’s if they can get out of the first round against New Mexico State.  And if they happen to make it through to the Sweet 16, which wouldn’t be all that shocking given their history, there’s not a whole lot Michigan State can do to beat Kansas.  It wasn’t a good draw for Tom Izzo’s crew, and they’re not playing their best game right now to boot.

Marquette is such a strong team that squeezes the most out of its recruits, and on top of their accomplishments, their draw in the tournament is really good.  And yet, I don’t think they are going to be able to travel out to the west coast and beat a less accomplished but more talented Washington team.  Marquette will make an early exit before they can get going.

Baylor sports very strong fundamentals this year, which would normally make them a great investment to do well in this tournament.  But, if Notre Dame can slip by ODU (and that’s far from a certainty), the culmination of everything they have accomplished in the past three weeks will come to a head against Baylor.  And at the end of the day, the number one peripheral value in college sports is program history.  Notre Dame has had it’s best tournament season in school history, Baylor is talented but unestablished, and I think they’ll make the exist prior to the sweet 16, one way or another.

[picapp align=”right” wrap=”false” link=”term=jon+scheyer&iid=8234614″ src=”d/c/b/8/ACC_Basketball_Tournament_9590.jpg?adImageId=11303185&imageId=8234614″ width=”234″ height=”366″ /] The Kansas City area media, normally the poster children for midwestern modesty, are nearly unanimous in their assertion that this year’s Kansas team is the best college basketball team any of them have ever seen.  Jason Whitlock, in particular, has been notoriously vocal in this assessment.  The numbers support them.  Kansas appears to be every bit as dangerous as any team has been going into the tournament.  I cannot say the same for an overachieving Syracuse, or even a great team like Kentucky.  However…

They are not my favorites to take the tournament.  The favorites, according to this non-expert, are the Duke Blue Devils.  My comment about program strength should have probably given this away, but Duke excels in two critical areas: perimeter shooting, and perimeter defense.  For all of what OSU’s Evan Turner can do, I wouldn’t bet against even odds that Jon Scheyer has the best tournament of any player.  Duke is a near lock to be in the final four, thanks to their lucky draw, and beyond that point, they will progress purely on merit.  I do not feel comfortable picking anyone in this weakened field besides Duke, which makes them the pick.

Bradford vs. Clausen, and why McCoy is still tops in this draft class

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At this point, it seems safe to define that the first two quarterback selected in the NFL Draft–the only two that will be selected in the top half of the first round–will be Notre Dame’s Jimmy Clausen, and Oklahoma’s Sam Bradford.  The natural question: who is better?

The natural answer: it depends.

Here’s what you need to know.  In a true vacuum, the best quarterback in this draft class is Jimmy Clausen.  That’s true if I know absolutely nothing about the team I am supposed to be advising.  Clausen would have been the best prospect in the 2009 draft as well, and is worthy of the first overall pick in most years.  One could say that Clausen is destined to be successful at the next level–but that’s really missing the point.

Clausen, who left Notre Dame after a wildly successful junior year, is not destined for anything.  Look no further than his career at Notre Dame: as a freshman, he was greatly overwhelmed and out talented and got absoultely creamed behind a sieve of an offensive line.  The team greatly improved the following season, but Clausen really didn’t.  He got his first taste of college success in the first half of the 2008 season, but the team collapsed down the stretch and Clausen struggled against top competition, even while having the best offensive line he would have at ND.

In 2009, Clausen finally enjoyed a breakout year, leading the nation in passing efficiency at the mid-way point of the season before being part of another late ND collapse.  Jimmy Clausen wasn’t really a major reason for the decline, but he does seem to have a few major flaws as a passer, namely if you take away the deep ball, he hardly has shown any ability to move the chains and sustain longer drives.  He is not, contrary to the belief of some, a one year wonder because even though he only has one strong year, the year itself was quite predictable based on his statistics from prior seasons.

Clausen is the type of quarterback who can ride on the coattails of other elite offensive performers, while using his experience at the position, he’s good enough to salvage a mediocre performance from offensive scraps, as he did with his personal statistics on a terrible team in 07, winning all three of NDs victories that season.  That’s the salvaging part.  2009 was Clausen with a superior offense, his true value to a team with some elite talent around him.  2008, on the other hand, represents Clausen’s downside to potential NFL employers.  With a running game, and with a strong OL, and top receivers, and the best defense of the Charlie Weis tenure, Notre Dame went…6-6, and Clausen threw 25 TD and 17 INTs, completing only about 60% of his passes.  It seems safe to suggest that Clausen is a guy who lives off the talent around him, with the rare exception of a situation where all the talent on a team is on defense, and then he won’t be bamboozeled quite as badly as Mark Sanchez was for the Jets this year.

The bottom line with Clausen is that 80% of potential NFL employers will be a lot like that 2008 Notre Dame team relative to it’s competition.  With some extreme exceptions at either end of the spectrum, Clausen projects as an average to slightly above average player.  That’s valuable enough to justify a top five pick…but teams with the ambition necessary to turn teams that are picking in the top five into championship contenders, those are the teams that will pass on Clausen and look for someone better.  Clausen is safe, proven, comes with a (relative) pedigree, and his strengths and weaknesses are well understood coming out.  No analyst is going to project him below the second round.

Sam Bradford, on the other hand, represents very much of what Jimmy Clausen does not.  Here’s a man who was wildly successful at the college level in consecutive years.  Every statistic for Bradford jumps right off the page.  Touchdowns.  He threw a college TD more frequently than once every 11 attempts.  In this class, only Tim Tebow and Tony Pike are remotely close to that figure.  Interceptions.  Bradford was intercepted less frequently than once every 50 attempts.  Only Tebow is anywhere near that number.  Sacks.  Bradford was sacked less frequently than once every 35 attempts.  Only cross-state rival Zac Robinson is anywhere near that figure in this class.  Bradford’s numbers are just so excellent in every way.

But the catch is huge.  Bradford got injured so early and so badly in 2009 that, combined with the decision to leave Oklahoma with a year of eligibility remaining, Bradford accrued less than 5% of his total value after the midpoint of his college eligibility.  The only other first round pick in history to accomplish the same amazing feat is Rex Grossman.  Grossman ends up being one of Bradford’s nearest comparables in any analysis.  To be fair to Bradford, Grossman failed in the NFL in part because of an inability to complete his passes, and Bradford completed 67% of his passes at Oklahoma.  There’s no way to project Bradford as a low efficiency passer in the NFL given those college statistics, so there’s little worry about him becoming an epic bust.

But NFL teams don’t want to spend top draft picks on questionable decision makers, either, and there’s not a whole lot of film of Sam Bradford under duress.  And what film does exist on Bradford under duress is of him as a freshman, and won’t be all that relevant to the grand scheme of things.  Combined with his injury concerns, and inability to throw for scouts coming off offseason surgery, the team that takes Bradford is going to be very much in the dark regarding his true potential.

The good news with Sam Bradford is that the only real path down the road to Bustsville is through a right shoulder that never really heals.  If teams are prudent in listening to the advice of their medical staffs, there’s hardly a ton of downside here.  A team may very well find out that Bradford is a terrible decision maker off of play action when he gets to the league, but then instead of having a franchise quarterback, you’re left with a quick decision maker who you might have to throttle back at the end of games with leads if he develops a Favarian turnover propensity (a la Grossman).  The “floor” on Bradford looks something like Jon Kitna, so if the arm is okay, you’ll get something average looking out of him at worst, and a franchise signal caller at best.

Bradford simply didn’t turn the ball over much in college though, and unlike Clausen, he never had to grow into his role as OU quarterback.  It always seemed to come naturally to him.  But that apparance may have just been being in the right place, in the right time, with the right team, and his season-long arm injury as a 4th year junior opens up all sorts of questions that neither I nor Sam Bradford can really adequately answer until after the draft.

Either would have been the best QB in last year’s draft (not if they had come out then, but if we compare them now to Sanchez and Stafford at this time last year), but neither would have been a top ten pick in either 2006 or 2008.  It’s an average looking class at the top, but a stronger quarterback class in the middle.  Earlier, I said, in a true vacuum, you would take Clausen.  This is because of his college career path “ending” with his best year (though my formula marks a “zero” for quarterbacks who leave their Senior seasons on the table; technically, that is their true ending value, per my formula).  Bradford gets a really low grade for his injury plagued senior year.  In finance terms, Bradford would be considered the higher risk-higher return investment (you wouldn’t invest in him at the price if you didn’t have a much higher return on him than Clausen).  In scouting terms, it’s known as “boom or bust” potential.  I don’t like to think about it in scouting terms, because if you take a QB at fourth overall and you get a league average player, have you really taken a bust?  I don’t think Bradford will bust, rather, I think any weighted average probability matrix suggests that his return will be neck and neck with Clausen, and that Clausen is the sounder investment.

But what if you are a team like Washington or Buffalo or Seattle who can’t really protect the passer, and already have a competent incumbent?  Exactly why would a team like that be after Jimmy Clausen?  They can’t protect him will enough right now to get a good return on his play as a rookie, and his peak value may not be all that much higher than either Jason Campbell or Trent Edwards (with Hasselbeck, his peak value is in the past, obviously).  Adding Sam Bradford makes a lot more sense for those teams because if you consider it reasonable to project his college performance to carry over through this lost year and into the NFL, you’re getting a high-efficiency, high-return type that offers you something you aren’t getting in Clausen.  Sure, if everything goes right developmentally with Clausen, you’ll get a franchise player out of him, but you’ll need to strive to be the type of dominant offense that say the 2000 Vikings, 2006-9 Saints, or 2005 Bengals were to make him that franchise player.  The Bradford formula for success is a lot simpler: draft him if you believe that his 2009 injury season was a complete fluke, and that he would have light up the scoreboard if he was healthy.  That’s way simpler than building around Clausen, the better prospect, isn’t it?  All you have to do is…be right.

Once a player is drafted, he ceases to be a prospect anymore.  Clausen has more draft value, but Bradford is the more accomplished college player.  Knowing the difference is critical for an NFL GM, and since theres no such thing as an NFL vacuum, knowing where your team stands is critical for making the right choice.

Ultimately, Bradford vs. Clausen is a particularly interesting draft debate between two solid-looking prospects, but it’s hard to see either being the most successful quarterback from a very deep class.  Historically speaking, the best quarterback in a draft class comes from the top (two-three) quarterback debate less than half the time.  This seems like one of those years.  I wouldn’t bet against Dan Lefevour, Colt McCoy, or John Skelton this year, but the class is SO deep, that the eventual best quarterback might end up being left off my top ten list.  Right now, Bradford, Clausen, and McCoy sure seem like the three best quarterbacks in the class (you can take them in any order, even McCoy first), but it’s not heavy at the top.  McCoy will be heavily reliant on a strong system and the coach/playcaller/quarterback relationship, Clausen will be reliant on the entire talent around him, and Bradford needs good health and to not take a pounding into the turf to make the adjustment to the next level.

McCoy tops Bradford and Clausen in this class, in my mind, only because there is no scouting error with him.  If a team exists that can give him exactly what he needs to be successful, systematically, he’s the surest thing in the NFL draft since 2004.  If that team doesn’t exist, then he’s going to flounder around as a backup in this league.  But he’s no worse of a prospect just because the team that can win with a winner doesn’t exist.  He’s the best prospect because of his college success, and the more talented types will find homes either with a team that will make them successful, or with a joke of an organization that offers nothing but struggles.

McCoy hardly has to worry about what Bradford and Clausen do from a team-building standpoint, which makes him the top dog from a projection sense.

Parsing Quotes from Stoops, Kelly Regarding Irish Coaching Vacancy

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The search for the man who will replace the man who replaced the man who replaced Bob Davie began in earnest on Monday, and the two front-runners are saying all the right things.

Oklahoma HC Bob Stoops:

“I will never confirm or deny whether I talk or not talk to anybody, and I won’t be interviewing for any jobs,” he said.

…

“I’m going to be at Oklahoma next year,” he said. “If (athletic director) Joe (Castiglione) will have me and President (David) Boren, that’s what I intend to do.”

Cincinnati HC Brian Kelly, on Monday:

“Oh yeah (laughing).  Every day it’s a flood.  I get real estate cards and it’s crazy.  (Things like) ‘I want to be your new real estate agent in South Bend.’ I just laugh and my administrative assistant, she kinda just throws most of that stuff away because she knows I’m not interested in anything that doesn’t have a Bearcat on it.”

And this is Kelly earlier today on a Cinci-area radio show,

“I’m Staying, Man!  I’m staying. Why would I go? I’m very happy in Cincinnati.”

Do we believe either of these guys?  Should we?

Yes, you should, but if you’re going to, you better learn how to read between the lines.  And if you can see between the lines, you’ll notice three things.

• Kelly and Stoops are both legitimate candidates for the Notre Dame job,
• They both want to be there,
• Neither really believes that they are going to get the ND job.

The armageddon situation for a division-I college football head coach is to let it slip that you are interested in a job, but to not land it.  In Kelly’s case, he’s simply been too careful with his language in prior interviews to not be taken seriously as the front runner for the job.  He’s almost the ideal candidate: offensive guru, wildly successful at every level, Irish Catholic in heritage, runs a strong program based around high graduation rates: Kelly is the prototype Notre Dame man.

And, to be frank, I have it on good accord that he absolutely wants to take the Notre Dame job this year if it’s offered to him.  He’d be gone in a heartbeat, and there’s no amount of money Cincinnati can offer him once he’s been offered the ND job that would keep him.  But, reading between the lines, the job has not been offered to him yet, despite mutual interest from the university.

And, given that, nothing Kelly has said this week is incorrect, when taken at face value.  The simple probability of it suggests that there’s a higher probability that Kelly will never be offered the job than that he’ll get it.  Oh, and by the way, he’s still the front-runner for the position.  But until Kelly is sold that he’s actually going to get the opportunity, it would be completely irresponsible to offer potential Bearcat recruits any inkling that he won’t be the head coach of Cincinnati next year.

I should elaborate: Notre Dame wanted Brian Kelly at this time last year.  He was interested at the time, but the situation was far more murky: the Irish still had faith in Charlie Weis to get the program turned around, and weren’t going to let him go on the off chance that they could get Kelly or a Kelly-equivalent.  The timing of the move was poor, so Kelly essentially told them he was not interested at the time.  One year later, Weis is definately out, the coaching position is vacant, Kelly’s stock is at an all-time high, and you can see why everyone sees this move happening in the near-term future.

But what of Stoops’ quote?  There’s not a whole lot of uncertainty there.  He’s going to be at Oklahoma next year, and that means he’s not a candidate for the ND job?

Untrue.  He is a candidate, and never denied speaking to Notre Dame.  Now, according to Irish AD Jack Swarbrick, the conversations between Stoops and Notre Dame had not occurred as of Monday, which would make Stoops’ statement stronger.  But we’re not supposed to believe that at least a cursory interest conversation will not happen, are we?

Like Kelly, Stoops being a candidate hardly means he’s going to get a job offer, and unlike Kelly, there’s a good chance that Stoops would turn down the job if offered.  But as long as Notre Dame remains merely a remote possibility, Bob Stoops can’t do anything that could be interpreted as interest in the job.  And whether he is, or isn’t looking at getting the heck out of Norman, I have no idea.

The only constant with these quotes is 1) that both coaches truly believe that when this situation unfolds, they’ll remain employed by their current employers, and 2) if Notre Dame calls with two bagfulls of hundred dollar bills in hand, they’ll be listening.

Why Don’t Coaches Go-For-It Near the Goal Line?

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Watching the UConn Huskies put the emphatic exclamation point on the Charlie Weis-era at Notre Dame really helped to take this point and put it in perspective: coaches who kick the field goal on 4th and goal from inside the oppoenents 5 yard line really put their teams in a bind, and yet, this is standard football operating procedure.

This applies to professional football as well, and is not simply just a college thing.

Watching Weis this year really hammers the point home, for me at least.  Weis, and most other coaches, really structure their coaching style as if they have one of the best defenses at the level, but this is hardly a universal given, and in fact, I think a lot of the coaches who make these baffling decisions actually have below average defense.

The downside of a failed fourth down conversion is pretty obvious: a highly successful drive often comes away with no points.  I think the biggest problem is that the commentators and fans and coaches all put this premium on coming away with something in the points department as the name of the game on offense.  In many ways, this is not an incorrect line of thinking, as offenses will always be judged by the point total they produce.

But the problem is that, very often, a points-centric approach to decision making often comes at the expense of the alternative: a wins-centric approach.  “Going for the points” is never a bad decision from a points-centric approach.  Kicking that field goal gives you the same three points whether you kick it from the 5 or from the 35.  Going for the touchdown on fourth offers about the same amount of expected point value, but really increases the variance at which those points get scored.  From the points-centric line of thinking, point production is better when fewer risks are taken inside the payoff zone.

But the ND-UConn game offers up a good reason to suggest that only a loser would take the “safe” route there.  From the two yard line in the third quarter up by four, Notre Dame passed up another shot at the end zone for a chip shot field goal.  That decision gave them an instant three points.  It also took the ball out of the shadow of the UConn goalline and forced the Irish to kick off to the Huskies.  Connecticut’s Jordan Todman found a seam on the kickoff return and took it back 96 yards to the end zone to tie the game up.

Here’s the bigger picture:  if Notre Dame had gone for it on fourth down, and gotten into the end zone (the best case scenario from Weis’ perspective), it does nothing to stop Todman’s return and the corresponding “momentum” swing at Notre Dame stadium for those who believe in such concepts.  But in that case, it would have made the net point trade-off equal to zero.

Coaches, on the whole, do not seem to realize the negative side of “taking the points.”  You’re not just taking points, you’re also giving the opponent field position.  That field position can easily turn itself into points for the opposition, especially in the worst case scenario offered up by Todman.  It’s not like coaches disagree about the value of field position, as even the most aggressive of coaches prefers to punt in opponent territory rather than risk a really long missed field goal.  That’s the precise opposite of “taking the points”, but I’d say more often than not, it’s the right move from the wins-centric perspective.

Weis made similar mistakes earlier this year against Michigan (ND loss) and against Purdue (ND win), when he judged the value of three points to be worth letting the other team out of it’s own end zone free.  Now, if it’s a game where the coach expects scoring opportunities to be limited, going for the points might help you win a 9-6 game and would be a good decision if the gamble about the value of the score pays off.  Weis’ decisions cannot really claim that as an excuse.  Notre Dame is a team that lives off of what it’s offense can do, and has to overcome the consistent failures of the defense.

It’s a classic case of a guy who simply isn’t doing what it takes to win.  In the absence of a great defensive unit, settling for three is nearly always a losing play.  When Notre Dame’s only chance to win involves having the offense score touchdowns more often than not, there’s really no excuse to cost them a shot at the end zone inside the five yard line.  Weis’ teams struggles in the red zone should have made the need to go for it really very clear.

His tenure ends with him not doing what I feel is neccesary for a team on the margins to win more close games than they lose.  There are plenty of other coaches out there who would fall into the same “taking the points” trap, but the great programs and franchises need to find the coaches who understand the difference between mindless gambling and winning football.  Then, maybe, there can be a return to glory.