Nebraska 2006 - Dropped Passes

Well, I’ve finally finished charting all of the plays from the 2006 season including formations, personnel, shifts/motions, etc. I still haven’t figured out exactly how I want to utilize and share the information, however.

Until then I thought I’d start with an easy, but rarely tracked variable – dropped passes*.

First, the good news, as a team the Huskers had just 20 drops by my count. With 411 total passing attempts, that’s not bad at all.

Now for the scoreboard:

Frantz Hardy – 4
Brandon Jackson – 4
Terrence Nunn – 4
Mo Purify – 3
Nate Swift – 2
Todd Peterson – 2
Marlon Lucky – 1
JB Phillips - 1

I was surprised Hardy didn’t have more, as his seemed to stick out more and conventional wisdom around Husker Nation seems to paint him as our least sure-handed WR.

When I looked at which down the drops occurred on, Hardy’s drops became more noticeable. As a team, Nebraska had 7 drops on 3rd down plays. Those are absolute drive-killers, obviously and 3 of Hardy’s 4 drops just happened to occur on 3rd down. Ouch.

Next we have a breakdown of the drops by game:

Louisiana Tech – 3
Texas – 3
Oklahoma State – 3
Oklahoma – 3
Texas A&M – 2
Colorado – 2
Missouri - 2
USC – 1
Kansas – 1
Auburn – 1

Three losses at the top of the list, is I guess not surprising.

Now we have drops by quarter:

1st Quarter – 2
2nd Quarter – 3
3rd Quarter – 8
4th Quarter – 7

And just a little reminder Nebraska’s 2006 scoring by quarter:

1st 117
2nd 135
3rd 49
4th 120

So, there’s that.

Anyway, I’ll be trying to post interesting findings from now until the 2007 season realy gets going. Let me know if there are issues you are interested in from a year ago and I will try to see what the data shows.

*A note on “drops” – My job was a lot like the official scorer at a baseball game deciding between a hit and an error. Solid contact from a defender generally eliminated the scoring of a “drop”. Overall, I was probably fairly conservative in my decision-making.