Terrific article and angle. Emphasizes big picture logic and ruins the Happy Adjusters. I posted last week on the college forum of a Dolphins site that Alabama should be the preseason
#1 every season in this era, as long as they keep up the surreal recruiting pace and rare defensive intensity. Otherwise you're making subjective decisions where they don't belong.
Subjectivity and current form are the tools of fools. When I arrived in Las Vegas in 1984 I noticed immediately that everyone was applying subjectivity and current form to wager on games, and virtually everyone was losing and whining. Huh. Some kind of disconnect going on here. Since the subjectivity is unlikely to improve dramatically, maybe the idea is to jettison subjectivity as much as possible.
That's where the wonderful systems come into play. Of course, you have to find them. It wasn't as easy in that era because I was doing it all manually using every record book I could find. Not until years later did I wisely invest in a Quadra 610 and figured out how to compile spreadsheets. I found lots of angles like the one identified in the article. At one point I had far too many of them and there were inevitable conflicts, some systems pointing to one team and others to the other team. I had to dial back to the most basic and most reliable.
Ohio State, as indicated, is on an amazing recruiting run itself. That has been somewhat camouflaged the past two seasons due to the staggering ineptitude of Little Game Barrett at quarterback. Meyer's offense always relies on high volume rushing attempts which paves the way for effective lethal passing. Virtually every starting quarterback under Meyer has managed huge yards per attempt. Alex Smith averaged 8.9 YPA for his career under Meyer at Utah. Tebow was 9.3 at Florida. At Ohio State every starting quarterback has been above 8.0 yards per attempt except Little Game each of the past two seasons. Barrett was 6.7 in both 2015 and 2016.
That is beyond disgraceful, given the overwhelming NFL talent on that roster. It should have made Little Game the subject of national scrutiny and ridicule throughout, but somehow he dodged it completely. Barrett was at his worst in the most meaningful games, like 2.9 YPA in the home upset loss to Michigan State as 14 point underdog in 2015, the game that kept an absolutely stacked Buckeye team out of the playoffs. Then last year Little Game managed 3.8 YPA in the playoff shutout loss to Clemson. That Clemson team had excellent talent but was hardly a juggernaut defensively, as evidenced by the Pittsburgh game and several other games. A loss wasn't particularly unexpected but to be shut out was Little Game at his finest.
The bizarre aspect is that Barrett was among the quarterbacks who managed the 8.0+ under Meyer. He had an excellent 9.0 YPA as freshman starter in 2014. So somehow Barrett bypassed the 8s and 7s completely all the way down to 6.7 twice.
I am unaware of a similar inexplicable decline in college football history.
Anyway, as a probability guy I would expect Barrett to rebound sharply this season. If he does not, and puts up anything resembling that 6.7 again, Barrett deserves to be one of the true laughingstock quarterbacks in college football history. He almost singlehandedly restrained those two great Buckeye rosters of 2015 and 2016. Cardale Jones was averaging well above 8 YPA in 2015 when Urban Meyer made the masochistic subjective decision to change quarterbacks.