WR's Dropped passes the last 4 years

#51
#51
xpsyclonex2002 said:
I'm one of his biggest critics and even I don't think he sucks. But he dang sure isn't "as advertised" and he definitely isn't living up to the NIL money he's getting. We are missing out of other players that would add quality to our depth and could be the difference between breaking through to the next level but instead we are giving all that money to one guy. At the end of the day we could fix all problems with more money. But so far that's not in the cards and as log as that's the case, we are not going to improve. Sure we can eliminate dropping the once a season game to inferior teams, a la Arkansas, but getting past Georgia and getting beyond the first or second round of the playoffs is a pipe dream.
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I promise you Nico's money has ZERO to do with other players. We have plenty of money to give to the right players. That will never be an issue. CJH isn't going to go all Lane Kiffin and just start adding guys that are bad culture fits. He's very selective about the type players he adds, but the money is there to get WHOMEVER he wants. Very few QB's have elite first years at a starting QB, especially in the SEC. Look at Peyton's stats his FR year. It's not even close, Nico's are far superior to Peyton's each of their 1st year. Not to mention, Peyton was an Int waiting to happen. Nico had a 4:1 TD/ Int ratio, which is amazing for a RS FR who is a first year starting QB. Lastly, it's hard to elevate your game when our pass blocking is so bad and our WR's are some of the worst at dropped passes. Nico's 2 million a year isn't keeping us from getting anybody, I can promise you that.
 
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#52
#52
LegionnaireOfTheMiserable said:
Joe and Nico were both issues. Bru barely played with Joe, but he was good with Hooker. Brazzell didn’t play with Joe. Squirrel was good in spite of Joe.
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Squirrel was tied with the most drops in the SEC in '23. WR's have been issues pretty much since Pope took over.This year Brazzell was tied for 3rd with the most drops in the SEC. God only knows how many drops Keyton had, but it was a lot.
 
#53
#53
sjt18 said:
Receivers dropped passes. AND Nico has not developed the skill to read Ds and find the right guy consistently. Why some want to completely absolve him as being part of the problem is beyond me. You can complain about protection but about as often as not he held the ball too long after being confused by coverage. The OL always needs to be better. The WRs always need to be better. AND Nico needs to be better.

BTW, the job of the OL gets a lot harder if a DC sees ways that a QB is consistently confused with coverage. It allows them to dedicate more guys to containment or pass rush. Again, Nico isn't 100% to blame but it isn't everyone else's fault either.
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Smartest post to describe our offensive problems.
It is not just the OL, or just the WR drops or just Nico or just the RB protections.
It is all of them. Heupel says all the time all 11 guys need to be on the same page doing their job correctly.
Sometimes its Nico, sometimes the OL, the WR or the RB.
It's all of them at various times.
 
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#54
#54
VolPack22 said:
That 20 passes could have been the difference in finishing 11-1 or 12-0 in the regular season and hosting or getting a bye in the CFP vs going 10-2 and going on the road in the CFP.
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Maybe, but that’s true of a dozen other stats too. If we had been just a little better at any number of things, we could’ve/should’ve done better. No reason to overreact to anything now.
 
#55
#55
jasonvol18 said:
I came across this the other day and the VQ guys were discussing our WR's and breaking down Hendon, Milton and Nico's dropped pass percentage the last 4 years.Somewhat disturbing, hopefully they don't keep going in this direction.

So, basically this is the dropped percentage each QB has had with their on target passes the last 4 years.

In '21 and '22, Hendon had 9.1% of his on target passes dropped each season.

In '23, Milton had 10% of his on target passes dropped..

Now to Nico and this is alarming. In '24, Nico had 15.8% of his on target passes dropped. Between the subpar pass blocking and this % of dropped passes, it was honestly pretty impressive that he put up the stats he did. Obviously, he has room to grow, but we all knew that with him only having started 14 games and not even old enough to drink. Hopefully, his pass blocking is better and that drop % goes down. If it does, I look for him to have a really good year and get closer to living up to his expectations.

Not sure if it's the WR's just not being that good or if it was coaching( or lack of it). Brazzell was the team leader in dropped passes and was #3 in the SEC in passes dropped this past year. Squirrel was tied with the most drops in the SEC the year before.

GBO!!
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Those are fairly small differences in percentages without the raw numbers and more context it's a tad misleading. What is the average of dropped passes normally?

We cant get an exact number without the raw data they have because I'm missing one factor on-target passes. Because some of their completions were not on target passes. So knowing that number would be very helpful and give us another metric to boot. But I'll try. Lets assume all their completions were on target then we can just assume that completions+drops= on target passes?

Nico was 213-334 so 213/0.842=252.7.36 so call it 253 means he had roughly 40 drops the real number is probably lower because all his completions wouldn't have been on target.
Joe was 229-354 229/0.9 would be 254.4 round to 254 so 25 drops
Hendon 435-631 435/0.909- 478.5blahblahblah 479 so 44 drops 22 a year.

Now all of these numbers are going to be either slightly or greatly inflated depending on how they define 'on target' passes. But it gives an idea. By this WR's dropped almost twice as many passes in 24 as they did the previous 3 years.
 
#57
#57
jasonvol18 said:
That's why that % was on catchable balls. Which means it basically hit them in the hands and has zero to do with knowing where the ball was.

I do agree that Nico did miss some wide open WR's, especially on the deep ball. But he got better with that as the season went along.
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UTEP was at the end of the year, and he was throwing 4 yards behind dudes on slants. He threw a horrible pick against Vanderbilt. He didn’t approach 50% against Ohio State.

The guy quite literally never improved the whole year. The schedule was just a little easier in the second half of the year. Given the expectations he had, watching him is the single most disappointing thing I’ve ever witnessed in regards to Tennessee football.
 
#58
#58
LegionnaireOfTheMiserable said:
Hard to catch a ball when you don’t know where it will be. All you have to do is watch the start of that UTEP game to know that Nico is a long way from where he should be. Other elements could and should be better, but it starts with him.
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„Dropped“ passes have little to do with QB ball placement. These are passes that the qb delivers into the receiver’s hands. After that point, it is up to the WR to pull it in.
I do give the WR some latitude under Milton, because the ball was coming in way too hot most of the time. But Nico isn’t throwing literal missles like that
 
#59
#59
5% will help, but its still a pretty small number. he definitely improved over the course of the season, just needs to keep doing so.
 
#61
#61
BigOrangeTrain said:
Legion of the miserable posting his usual BS trash. Dude thinks he knows about football. He thinks we should just overlook the many great passes thrown by Joe and Nico that were flat out dropped. Oh he brings up Bru? Bru doesn’t look anywhere close to what he did in his first year. I guess his injury had nothing to do with it 🙄. Let’s just ignore the almost 10 TD passes in 2023 that were dropped. Oh but Joe. lol. The WRs practice on machines that throw it harder than Joe did.

Yeah obviously all these drops were on Nico. I mean what most of us witness was fake. We didn’t see the WRs dropping passes. We’re all of the perfect? Nope. But many hit them in the hands and were dropped. At the college level, you should catch something that hits you in the hands. Yeah let’s ignore multiple sports broadcasters and analysts that said our WRs were not very good. We should just all take legions of the miserable child’s word. He is almost in D4H level idiocy.
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Nico made more horrible passes than he had drops. Same with Joe. I don’t think our receivers were that great, but if the 4 who played a lot and had played previously, 3 of them looked much better under different quarterbacks than Nico.

The guy was a problem for us. We had to win in spite of him. Maybe this year he shows something he never showed after the Kent State game, but you and your ilk have said this same shít about coaches who couldn’t coach and players who couldn’t play for many years, and 99% of the time you look like a fool when it all comes out in the wash. Then you never admit you were wrong, you just go back to whining about people seeing what you can’t see until it’s over and done with. And what makes you so mad is deep down, you know I’m right.
 
#62
#62
OrangeTsar said:
„Dropped“ passes have little to do with QB ball placement. These are passes that the qb delivers into the receiver’s hands. After that point, it is up to the WR to pull it in.
I do give the WR some latitude under Milton, because the ball was coming in way too hot most of the time. But Nico isn’t throwing literal missles like that
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Plus all the WR wear those gloves that are like rodent traps. If it hits you in both hands and you don't bring it in, that is not on the QB, but it does reflect on his stats.
 
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#63
#63
OrangeTsar said:
„Dropped“ passes have little to do with QB ball placement. These are passes that the qb delivers into the receiver’s hands. After that point, it is up to the WR to pull it in.
I do give the WR some latitude under Milton, because the ball was coming in way too hot most of the time. But Nico isn’t throwing literal missles like that
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No Nico is just struggling to hit the broadside of a barn when he isn’t running out of bounds to lose games.
 
#64
#64
I think one issue with 2024 is that the WR core and Nico looked like they were on the page with each other all of season based on feedback from coaches, the WRs, and Nico but once the games started happening, it fell apart (especially starting with Oklahoma).

I think this issue was hard to measure until we got on the field and into big-time game. Some of it was talent and some of it was just confidence issues. There was some improvement in last 3-4 games until the buzz saw that was Ohio State (although i think the defense collapse gave Ohio State momentum against our offense and the line just didn't hold up). Hard to judge everything based on Ohio State as everything went against Tennessee, not just WR core but there was a mark improvement against Vandy, Georgia, and Miss State vs other games of the season.

Hopefully, the problem is known and it will be a focus this off season.
 
#65
#65
jasonvol18 said:
I promise you Nico's money has ZERO to do with other players. We have plenty of money to give to the right players. That will never be an issue. CJH isn't going to go all Lane Kiffin and just start adding guys that are bad culture fits. He's very selective about the type players he adds, but the money is there to get WHOMEVER he wants. Very few QB's have elite first years at a starting QB, especially in the SEC. Look at Peyton's stats his FR year. It's not even close, Nico's are far superior to Peyton's each of their 1st year. Not to mention, Peyton was an Int waiting to happen. Nico had a 4:1 TD/ Int ratio, which is amazing for a RS FR who is a first year starting QB. Lastly, it's hard to elevate your game when our pass blocking is so bad and our WR's are some of the worst at dropped passes. Nico's 2 million a year isn't keeping us from getting anybody, I can promise you that.
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I won't defend the blocking. It was god awful more times than not. But CJH knew Nico was suspect his season. That play calling was no accident. The run heavy offense was a reaction to CJH not having 100% faith in Nico. Helen Keller can see that. Can Nico be brought up to meet expectations (not just mine but nearly every football pundit I've seen)? Probably. How many lesser true freshmen have we seen step in and take over games or whole seasons? FL has made a career of dropping backups in against us and making s look stupid. Being a freshman, RS or not, isn't an excuse if you're the starter.
As for the money, You think CJH is sitting on money? This isn't some "culture" problem. I'm not talking about bringing in the kids kicked off other teams. I'm talking about 5 star recruits in high school and top players in the portal. We are now in a "Money talks and BS walks" environment in football. If the money is there, the kids go to it. Look at Carson Beck. He's been a legend at Georgia and pulls out his senior year to go to Miami? That makes no sense. Until you follow the money. No. We are at least $5M away from punching through to the next level.
Look at Colorado. Shedeur Sanders is the highest paid NIL QB in the country. He might be the highest paid of all players...IDK. But Colorado doesn't have the money so they have no one to complement him except Travis Hunter who is making the second highest of any player in the country. They blew their wad on 2 guys. How's that working out for them? Well......they are getting wins now that they weren't before. But they aren't even getting a sniff of a playoff birth much less a title. If they had spread that same money over 5-6 players that were a significant step up at multiple positions, they likely would be getting those same wins plus a few more.
 
#69
#69
xpsyclonex2002 said:
I'm one of his biggest critics and even I don't think he sucks. But he dang sure isn't "as advertised" and he definitely isn't living up to the NIL money he's getting. We are missing out of other players that would add quality to our depth and could be the difference between breaking through to the next level but instead we are giving all that money to one guy. At the end of the day we could fix all problems with more money. But so far that's not in the cards and as log as that's the case, we are not going to improve. Sure we can eliminate dropping the once a season game to inferior teams, a la Arkansas, but getting past Georgia and getting beyond the first or second round of the playoffs is a pipe dream.
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We aren't giving all that money to one guy. It's around $2M which is about 10-20% of our NIL budget. QB has almost always been the best paud position in football.The market for QBs has severely increased since then. We aren't paying him for solely what he was as a RS Freshman. We're paying for what we believe he can develop into and the attention that it attracted for other recruits at a time where we severely need it.
 
#71
#71
jaguinn5 said:
Maybe, but that’s true of a dozen other stats too. If we had been just a little better at any number of things, we could’ve/should’ve done better. No reason to overreact to anything now.
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Nothing to overreact to now because the receivers that were dropping passes are out of there and the OL is improving with the incoming recruits and transfers. There is a clean slate now.
 
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