I've watched 9 udub games this year -- all of the conference games. See, I don't look at the games like a homer. As the saying goes, I "put my money where my mouth is" if you catch my drift.
Here's what I've seen from udub... great team speed. Quick team who makes up for technical deficiencies with pace. Untested. Udub has been fortunate to not really play many good, healthy teams. Cake non conference all at home. Shaky against anyone who shows competence.
How many CU games have you watched?
I doubt the number to be very high. Otherwise, you'd be a lot more concerned since udub has had great difficulties against above average defenses. Hidden within your copious notes is the assumption that CU's players simply aren't very good or fundamentally sound. Teams have made this mistake this season. The metrics disagree with your notion that we don't have highly skilled players or that we can't game plan to confuse your relatively inexperienced QB. You mentioned the USC game. We have a better defense than USC. Why wouldn't you envision problems? Just because you use flawed metrics and assume we aren't athletic or skilled....
Interesting you mention Stanford. I'd hardly compare us to them since their passing attack is extremely remedial. It's pretty easy to stop a one dimensional team, especially one who has a piss poor receiving group.
You're set with the YPC metric, which is a bad one. If a team sees a ton of volume (as both teams have) the better route would be to look at their effiency in denying catches. We'll have to disagree about how we play defense since your concept is based in some awful assumptions noted above.
I also think that your preference here exists to cover up for the fact that udub concedes far more completions than Colorado. Even including the cupcakes, udub allows >10% higher completion percentage per game. At a clip of a 1/2 yard more per attempt than Colorado, I'd say it's the udub defense who ought to be concerned with explosive plays.
I'd also have great concern since we don't let teams complete passes at a high rate (<49%). Picking up first downs on throws Browning makes against scrubs will probably not be available tonight. You're mistaken to think Browning will automatically complete 55% of his passes. Think more like 49-50% for 5ish per attempt.
I had mentioned that I had watched in detail the last 2 games ... which are in my opinion very indicative of how Colorado is playing at the moment. What a team did in September and October matters to the resume ... but may or may not be indicative of what the team is today.
As for my referencing of Stanford, it was in response to the notion that UW can't stop a running game. It was not in trying to compare what Colorado does to what Stanford does.
I agree that completion percentage CAN matter. But with the way some teams play, completion percentage CAN also be overrated. For example, Sam Bradford is completing over 71% of his passes this year for the Vikings ... would you say that the Vikings have a successful passing game? If an offense is completing a high percentage but are full of check downs and inconsequential passes, does it really matter? That's why I compare about yards per completion ... it's a measure that tries to magnify how explosive an offense is through the passing game. Is it perfect? No ... but few things are in measuring statistics. It's why you have to measure statistics against what you see with your eyes.
The other thing with statistics is that depending on bias you can spin in any way possible. It's one of the reasons why I use conference only ... it eliminates noise and keeps consistency better. That being said, the reality is that teams do things differently depending on the situation ... again, why you need to measure what you see versus what you get in the data. There's a massive difference in what UW has done throughout the year in the 1st half and the 2nd half ... does that mean that they tire easily? Fail to make halftime adjustments? Lots of backups playing? You have to watch the games to have a great feel.
As for completion percentage against Colorado, the 3 best passing teams with the combination of QB/WRs most comparable to Washington in conference would be Oregon, USC, and Washington State. The completion percentage/yards per attempt/yards per completion for those 3 games are as follows:
Oregon: 66.7%, 8.9 yards per attempt, 13.3 yards per completion
USC: 67.6%, 9.7 yards per attempt, 14.3 yards per completion
Wazzu: 49.1%, 6.1 yards per attempt, 12.5 yards per completion
I've talked previously at length about what I thought that Colorado did well against Wazzu ... it was a very strong game plan. Oregon/USC athletically are at a different level than Wazzu ... Wazzu is largely scheme. You can question Browning but he was offensive player of the year in the conference. Ross is the kind of receiver that there are few of in the conference (think JuJu Smith Schuster as a comparable). And like Oregon/USC, Washington strives to achieve balance in the run/pass game where Wazzu is so heavily pass.
I've said previously that I'm very impressed by Colorado's defense and the job that Leavitt has done there. He's getting the most out of the defense ... that's great coaching ... and the results from the defense tell you that comparatively to most teams Colorado's athletes are not taking a back seat. I do think that there's a bit of a difference between for instance Colorado and USC's athletes (it's why USC was +177 in offensive yards gained in the game) ... and for the record I think that USC has slightly better athletes than UW has in most places. It's not that I think Colorado is bad ... far from it. I do think that there's a gap athletically between Colorado and Washington ... just like I would say that there's an athletic gap between Washington and Alabama. I think that based on the numbers, most here are anchoring that there isn't a difference between the teams. Pointing to how "close" the USC game was comparatively to the UW game versus USC as another data point ... whereas the closeness in the USC/Colorado game to me was largely dictated on the turnovers that Colorado was able to force.
