College football’s most underrated

This an article about the most underrated, well, everything in college football. I’m writing what I find to be the most underrated coach, player, and stat in all of college football.

CFB’s most underrated coach- Gary Pinkel, Missouri

Gary Pinkel is one of the finest coaches in the NCAA. I don’t know how he does it, but every year, he gets a recruiting class devoid of talent, never having a top 25 recruiting class (or, even being close to a top 25 recruiting class) since he’s been at Missouri, and he turns it into a solid football team. Never has he had a top 25 recruiting class, yet, in the last 4 years, Missouri has finished in the top 20 of the final AP poll 3 times and in the top 5 once.  I don’t know how he turns such average players into major success stories, but he finds a way, and he has designed a high caliber offense that can make the most of his players.

There is one story in particular that exemplifies how great of a coach Pinkel (and the rest of his staff) really is; the story of Aldon Smith. Most of us know that Aldon Smith was a Missouri defensive end that was the 7th pick of this year’s draft, going to the 49ers (where he will play linebacker). Some background on Smith; in 2009, in his redshirt freshman season, he was one of 6 FBS players that got 60 tackles and 11 sacks in the season. It really put him on the map. That’s impressive enough by itself; turning a redshirt freshman into such a dominant force is amazing. What’s even more impressive is that he relied on hand usage and fundamentals to be that dominant force. He was the most fundamentally sound redshirt freshman I’ve ever seen. He didn’t just rely on athleticism and physical tools; in fact he doesn’t have amazing athleticism or strength. But the most amazing thing about the Aldon Smith story is the fact that Smith played WIDE RECEIVER in high school (and was recruited at that position)! Pinkel can never receive enough credit for having the talent evaluating skills to know that Smith could be a great end, and for having the coaching skills to teach Smith the position in such a small amount of time. If Ohio State is smart, they’d make Pinkel their next head coach.

CFB’s most underrated player- Kawann Short, DT, Purdue

Purdue’s Kawann Short is a talented and underrated player. Last season, he managed to get 46 tackles and 6 sacks, impressive numbers for a sophomore that are usually good enough to make a defensive tackle a second round pick, even though he doesn’t get that kind of recognition, and is unlikely to go in the second round. But what’s even more impressive about Short is his ability to deflect passes; last season, he led the Purdue in passes deflected, with 8 breakups on the season. To give readers an idea how impressive that is, I’m almost sure I have never scouted a college defensive lineman that has deflected more than 3 passes in a season, other than Short.  That’s amazing. I believe that the reason why he doesn’t get credit for his success is the fact that pass deflections are treated like a stat that involves “being in the right place at the right time,” and doesn’t involve skill. It would be accurate to say that a defensive linemen that gets interceptions is often in the right place at the right time, but nothing could be further from the truth with regard to pass deflections, and Short is a perfect example of that.When you see Short deflect passes on film, it’s never luck. On any pass play in which the offensive lineman has blocked him well enough so that he is about 6 yards away from the quarterback, Short doesn’t even make an effort to rush the passer.  He uses his tremendous height to see over shorter guards, look for the ball, and then he reads the quarterback’s eyes and gets into position to make a play, but he still makes sure that he is close enough to the quarterback so that he can’t scramble through a gap created between Short and one of his teammates. Much of the time, he’ll deflect the pass. And let me ask readers this question: is deflecting 8 passes as valuable to a team as 5 or 6 sacks? By deflecting a pass, a player has stopped a pass play from gaining any yards. By getting a sack, he usually turns a pass play into a 5 yard loss. Is the difference really that significant? I don’t think so. And if you consider deflecting 8 passes to be as valuable to a team as getting 5 sacks, then Short provided 11 sacks worth of pass defending production as well as 46 tackles. Sounds like a first round pick to me.

Bonus: NFL’s most underrated player- Jason Campbell, QB, Oakland

I don’t know how he does it. How Jason Campbell maintains consistently average stats. He’s the biggest overachiever at quarterback in the NFL. Since his third season, Jason Campbell has maintained a quarterback rating in the mid 80’s every year, which is firmly the NFL average. No more or less than the NFL average. This would imply that he is an average quarterback (calling him an average NFL starting quarterback is already giving him more credit than he gets). But what’s so amazing about Campbell’s consistently decent stats is the terrible supporting cast that has surrounded him since the day he got into the NFL. If there is any justice, in 20 years, Jason Campbell will have a reputation similar to the one Archie Manning has today; a good quarterback that just couldn’t single handedly make a terrible supporting cast into a playoff team. Think of the guys that Campbell threw to and the kind of role they would have on other teams. For years in Washington, Santana Moss was the number one receiver; he’s decent, but on most teams, he’d be the second string receiver or maybe a third receiver that works well in the slot. Washington didn’t have much talent around him when Campbell was there, so Moss was number 1. And then you have Antwaan Randle El, who was Washington’s number 2 receiver every year Campbell was there. Randle El proved this year that he isn’t talented enough to be a number 2 receiver on any team after his season with Pittsburgh, just a year removed from being Washington’s second leading receiver with 530 yards. He finished 2010 number 5 on Pittsburgh’s depth chart behind Mike Wallace, Hines Ward, Emmanuel Sanders, and Antonio Brown. But that’s the kind of talent that surrounded Jason Campbell in Washington. As a result, he relied heavily on tight ends and running backs for receiving production (namely Chris Cooley, Clinton Portis, and Fred Davis when Cooley was hurt), and he was able to maintain solid production in spite of an awful supporting cast.

When Campbell was traded to Oakland, his supporting cast got even worse than it already was in Washington. First of all, owner Al Davis made the shocking decision to bench Campbell after 2 games (on second thought, I don’t think anything Al Davis does should be shocking to anyone anymore), in favor of Bruce Gradkowski. Gradkowski was injured during the season, and Campbell still started 11 games. The team’s number one receiver was (gulp) Louis Murphy. No quarterback deserves to have Louis Murphy as their go-to receiver. It’s not fair. Simple as that. It’s also not fair that Darius Heyward-Bey was the number 2 receiver on that team. Campbell had nothing to work with at all. With his wide receivers averaging a horrific 6.8 yards per target (meaning, pass thrown in their direction) and only getting 1,645 yards on the season, Campbell had to throw to other players to have passing production. He relied heavily on tight end Zach Miller, running back Darren McFadden, and fullback (yes, fullback) Marcel Reece for passing production. They averaged 8.1 yards per target, an impressive number, and Campbell eked out a solid 84.5 quarterback rating, ranked 18th in the NFL, in spite of some of the worst receivers in NFL history. Pretty impressive.

The best evidence of how much Jason Campbell made of a horrible supporting cast can be found by looking at the stats of other ill-fated quarterbacks sent to Oakland and Washington. Long-time Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb was traded to Washington in 2010 to replace Campbell. McNabb was coming off one of the best seasons of his career, maintaining the second best quarterback rating of his career (92.9) at the age of 33. How’d he do in Washington? Badly, with a quarterback rating of 77.6 (which is 9 points lower than Campbell was during his last season in Washington), and the dishonor of being benched during the season. So how about Oakland? Over the last 3 years, Oakland quarterbacks not named Jason Campbell have average a quarterback rating of 66.6. Campbell had an 84.5. That’s a significant difference

In the end, the stats clearly show that Jason Campbell is one underrated player. If I were him, I’d file a complaint with Goodell about the poor receivers that he has to throw to year in and year out. Because it just isn’t fair.

CFB’s most underrated stat- Yards from Scrimmage

I’ll start out by explaining yards from scrimmage for those of you who don’t know; it’s simply receiving yards added to rushing yards. I guess it’s just as underrated in the NFL as it is in the NCAA, but either way, it’s a valuable stat. It isn’t that important when evaluating a wide receiver, but, when evaluating a running back, it’s the only stat that shows how much of a better player a guy like Marshall Faulk was compared to a guy like Corey Dillon. Same yards per carry and similar career rushing yards, but Faulk was the best receiving back ever to play the game. It’s the only stat that separates the 2 players. Yards from scrimmage might be the best way to evaluate a running back.