re: Way too early SEC FOTY prediction.

Obviously, stats can be pretty screwy and not tell the whole story... but let's initially just compare Rosen's season stats to an established upper classman random QB who will remain nameless for now...

Rosen:
Avg Cmp %: 59.96
TD/game: 1.77
INT/game: 0.85
Avg Adj QBR: 64.8

Random QB:
Avg Cmp %: 63.28
TD/game: 1.00
INT/game: 0.17
Avg Adj QBR: 64.35

While you like the TD upside to QB 1, the completion percentage and lower risk of interceptions makes QB2 look pretty comparable, right? Obviously I wouldn't have done this exercise if it wasn't to make a point... so if you didn't piece it together already, unknown QB is Greyson Lambert from 2015.

I was curious what happens if you take out the biggest outlier from both (positive and negative - Lambert USC/UA, Rosen BYU/UVA) and here's what I got:

Rosen:
Avg Cmp %: 58.97
TD/game: 1.73
INT/game: 0.73
Avg Adj QBR: 67.68

Lambert:
Avg Cmp %: 61.84
TD/game: 0.90
INT/game: 0.10
Avg Adj QBR: 66.36

Biggest two things that stand out are:
Longer throws for Rosen - 5 games with a long completion under 40 yards vs Lambert's longest completion being over 40 only twice. In trying to account for this, I took a look at yards per attempt and the numbers actually are slightly in Lambert's favor 7.7 to 7.5.


Larger sample size of throws for Rosen, as they threw it nearly twice as often, but I don't envision a fun and gun style offense with a freshman QB anyways, so would expect a relatively low total pass count from Eason in his Freshman year as well.

Also noteworthy is that Lambert didn't play in the UF game, so it took one of the 3 most challenging defenses off of his schedule.

Anyways, this was just a for fun comparison, but I really think it's interesting that with some of the worst O-line play we've seen in recent years, Chubb going down for the season, and what many of us would call some of the worst QB play in the Richt era, Lambert and Rosen's stats are not dissimilar. The key for Eason will be minimizing the big mistakes. Not all interceptions are created equal. RZ turnovers or turnovers inside your own territory obviously can be killers. I think we most likely finish the regular season with 8-9 wins, but wouldn't call it the ceiling. I don't believe it's outlandish to think that Eason could play better than Lambert, while we do add a more challenging OOC in UNC (replaces the Ga Southern game in my mind), we get Tennessee at home (hopefully with a healthy Chubb - which should also help with UF) and replace Alabama with Ole Miss (albeit on the road). While I wouldn't call it a significantly easier schedule, I do think it turns a bit in our favor which may give us some room for optimism.

ETA: With a 1.5-1.75 TD/game and .75-.85 INT/game stat average... we honestly could be in better shape than you would think assuming the running game is as stout as we'd expect.