Freshman Snap Counts

[EdEarlDodd]

Vinnie Ronca .....

Texas A&M 7154
Illinois 6395
LSU 4791
Arizona 4148
Oregon 3646
Baylor 3546
Miss St 3466
Wisconsin 3327
Louisville 3071
Oklahoma 2986

https://twitter.com/texags/status/9617053329081344...twterm%5E0

[MechAg94]

I was thinking of different causes of this from the last few years, but I fear it is a rabbit hole that goes pretty deep.
_________________
"The world is not going to be saved by legislation."
William Howard Taft

[Rover]

I'd like to see those numbers for us over the last six years.

It is strange that we've never gotten over the hump with playing a lot of freshmen. Somewhere in all of that we should have begun a trend line toward more upperclassmen.
_________________
Golf is a game invented by the same people who think music comes out of a bagpipe...anonymous

The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has limits...Albert Einstein

[Aggies44]

The shocking aspect of that list to me is that we are 700+ snaps ahead of "2nd place" team (Illinois) and over 2X more than the last team (ou)! I'm no football genius but I can safely say that Freshmen playing that many snaps is not the formula for a successful season...confident that Jimbo will reverse this trend.

[Bobaloo]

Really like our young talent. They got some valuable experience this year.

[Mighty Kyle]

I think that is a bit misleading as well.

We lost two senior DBs one is fall practice and one during the first game. We then had freshmen beat out upperclassmen to take those spots.

We were going to start a freshman or redshirt freshman at QB regardless so there are a ton of snaps there.

Some freshman were going to get snaps by design, Hines, Ausbon, Jones

OL injuries and ineffectiveness made it necessary to play some fish there.

Some of this was due to mismanagement, some of it was due to recruiting some studs, and some of it was just plain old bad luck.

[Agdad78]

I think MK pretty well sums it up.

But championship teams don't have these kinds of problems.

Jimbo may have a year or two of elevated fish snaps. We are terribly thin in several positions...LBer, maybe DB, DE, RB, TE, WR, OL. And I consider some of these positions thin with experience. I think some younger guys probably win some of the jobs.

I do expect this to be a SEC quality depth team by 2021 with vast improvement in that category for the 2019 season.

We may be vastly improved by next year and better by 2019 and close by 2020. I think you can vastly improve your team with one recruiting class, but we are talking about SEC depth. And we were 5th (?) this year in recruiting within the SEC. On paper we did not improve against these teams.

And to be SEC, of course we are talking about at least a team of more upperclassmen starters rather than underclassmen starters...that tells us two years after getting them on campus.
_________________
We can think all we want, we can suggest all we want, we can surmise all we want, we can prognosticate all we want, but ultimately, those boys have got to suit up and play the game.

[Goodson]

[Cotton79]

Firstly, I thought we had already seen the deepest depths of metrics and numbers crunching in sports, specifically football. Apparently, I was wrong.

I must admit, though, that "counting snaps by classification" has some analytical merit. It very much harkens Jackie Sherrill's adage: regardless of how good your team is across the board, you'll lose one game somewhere in the season for each freshman you start. That axiom may have lost some veracity over the years, but it still has enough merit to warrant constant consideration. Just consider Exhibit #1 of said axiom: the first TD of the 2017 Bama game where elite fish DB Derrick Tucker cut a wrong angle on RB Damian Harris, who dashed around Tucker for a long scoring run. The Aggie D was actually playing the vaunted Tide quite well up to that point. There was a collective "OUCH!" heard across Aggieland on that play, along with a few other choice 4-letter words. Unfortunately, it was one of several such "fish mistakes" throughout the season, so Jackie's axiom cast a large shadow throughout the season.

BUT -- and this cannot be overstated at all -- all those "freshman snaps" in 2017 translate into "sophomore experience" in 2018. What's more, many of those freshman snaps were done in the SEC, meaning, elite level football. It translates into chalkboard learning on steroids in the offseason.

I just don't sense that aspect is being considered enough in this dialog. Instead, it focuses on the ranking of recruiting classes from here on out using the well-proven Jimbo formula. I have no doubt that our new coach will bend that recruiting curve upwardly - and soon at that! - but we don't exactly have chopped liver on campus either. We have some talent. No, we have a lot of talent. The question is: how quickly can they adapt and learn Jimbo's offensive and defensive schemes?

I don't know|can't know about the team as a whole, but I'm going all in on Nick Starkel being one of those Super Sophs. I don't see a sophomore slump for him. "Slumps" too often come with a repeat of the "known" (i.e., the existing program/scheme) but with heightened expectations. Instead, Nick has no "known;" he must morph into a new scheme altogether. He has to stay alert on even the smallest of details to compete with a growing cast of teammates in the quarterback room. I know those ranks will grow strongly in the coming months and years, but I do not discount his competitiveness, his intelligence. In short, "his eyes." His mental swiftness is almost as good as Johnny Manziel's. When you mate that to a top-shelf throwing arm, you have a real chance to cause opposing DCs to sweat. While I don't feel as completely sure about other positions on the field, I very much believe that those fish snaps from 2017 will translate into a very salty team next year.

The one true question remains: what about the depth behind all those freshman snaps?

[Agdad78]

To win championships in the SEC, well college football, look at the dang recruiting rankings. Yeah, you gotta have superior talent.

Development, development, development. We know this...Jimbo has repeatedly stated this.

Schemes are important, adjustments are probably more important.

Geez, I guess there are a lot of things that have to be better than average at the same time to win a championship...
_________________
We can think all we want, we can suggest all we want, we can surmise all we want, we can prognosticate all we want, but ultimately, those boys have got to suit up and play the game.

[EdEarlDodd]

As usual KState did not have a single player over 3 stars and they do well (not great) year after year.

[Rover]

Bill Snyder could take our 2017 roster and win the BDF.
_________________
Golf is a game invented by the same people who think music comes out of a bagpipe...anonymous

The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has limits...Albert Einstein

[Agdad78]

I believe that Coach Sumlin could have won the bdf this year, as well.

I think that with the 2017 roster, Coaches Sherman and Fisher could have won the bdf.

With the 2017 roster, I believe that DeLost would have been mud-stomped by Dollar Bill and Woodward.


But, obviously just an opinion that we will never know...
_________________
We can think all we want, we can suggest all we want, we can surmise all we want, we can prognosticate all we want, but ultimately, those boys have got to suit up and play the game.

[MechAg94]

Looking at the link, there is a second graph with the teams with the fewest freshman snaps. They weren't the best teams. I think it is us leading the most snaps by a large margin that bothers people especially in year 6 of a coach's tenure. Yeah, it means sophomore experience, but it also means something happened to all your upperclassmen who should have been there. Either attrition, injury, or recruiting misses. I wonder if the adventures we saw at the QB position over 6 years were happening at other positions also.
_________________
"The world is not going to be saved by legislation."
William Howard Taft

[jamey]

[jamey]

[Goodson]

[CardinalandMaroon]

[Agdad78]

Starkey not getting injured in 3rd quarter of game one might have given us the ucla game and two more, based on how the season played out.

I agree with the premise except Starkel had gone thru 2 each spring and fall practices...
_________________
We can think all we want, we can suggest all we want, we can surmise all we want, we can prognosticate all we want, but ultimately, those boys have got to suit up and play the game.

[12thManMVP]

[AgBeliever]

[Rover]

I am very excited about Spring practice for the first time in a long time.

Real stuff like:

What do the kids look like after a winter with Schmidt?

What defensive scheme will we run?

What does the offense look like scheme wise.

What are the philosophical differences in OL play and passing offense?
_________________
Golf is a game invented by the same people who think music comes out of a bagpipe...anonymous

The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has limits...Albert Einstein

[jamey]

[aggieinjakartatown]

Sumlin could never recover from the 2013 class debacle + the lack of QB depth

[rhennessy]

Rover,

I, too, am excited. I was never happy with Sumlin's offensive scheme, from the day I saw it exhibited in his U of H conference championship LOSS when he was hired. When he showed some initial promise, I kept hoping he would learn, but it didn't happen.

[Rover]

rhennessy,

If you squint and watch a bunch of FSU YouTube highlights, you will get an interesting picture.

Lots of vertical passing, multiple sets with multiple tight ends, seam routes to tight ends, big DL as fullbacks with as many as FIVE tight ends in goal line situations. Jimbo appears to dislike kicking field goals when you were first and goal.

he likes to keep his DL fresh with multiple rotations and he likes big fast DBs.

Looking at our 2018 class, Jimbo went for Tight Ends, DTs and DEs. And he got his quarterback of the future.

Lastly, the blocking schemes on the running plays seems to emphasize putting hats on people, even on stretch plays and zone reads with lots of pulling guards to lead the zone read and traps and counter trey schemes. A very physical style of running the ball...I am sure Jim Turner and his kids will be much happier hitting people more often.
_________________
Golf is a game invented by the same people who think music comes out of a bagpipe...anonymous

The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has limits...Albert Einstein