Quarterback “survival” versus season success so far in 2015.
No way am I going to go through all 123 FCS teams … so I used as my sample all the teams that were ranked in the opening coaches poll, plus four that were not in that first poll but are now. Because two teams tied for #25 in that first poll, that meant that a total of 30 teams that had to be considered. I then went through the team records to see who took most of the snaps at quarterback, looking for cases where the QB for the opening game got hurt. (I'm sure there are other cases among the "lesser" teams, but these make the point pretty well.)
Most of these teams -- 23 in all -- have gotten this far into the season with their season-starting quarterback healthy, or with no more than some minor dings. Fourteen (roughly two-thirds) of those increased their rankings, several by double digits. Three did drop out, and the common factor seemed to be that they had lost their starting QB from last year and could not decide on a replacement. Aside from that, only five have dropped in their ranking.
In that regard, I suppose it was inevitable that the kitties would be weird. They still have their starting QB, and he has not been seriously dinged up, yet they dropped from #9 to their current #19. (Of course, we all know about the kitties defensive woes … but still.)
That left seven cases where teams have had their season-starting QB go down. The STATS guy (Haley) covered three of them:
Robertson at Villanova went down on Oct 7, and ‘Nova, which started tied for #2, is now out of the rankings.
Wentz at NDSU was hobbled after the game here but they did okay … and NDSU has won a game since he went out for the season. It remains to be seen if they can keep it up. In any case, they went from being tied at #2 down to #7.
Vad Lee at JMU has just gone down, so we don’t know what effect that will have. They are going into a tough conference game with a new QB, so it will be interesting to see how that works out.
Haley left out four teams. One of those is South Dakota State, which opened the season at #10. Their season starter, junior Zach Lujan, was injured on Oct 3 and has been hobbled since. They have dropped to #14. Not too bad, really … but Lujan has been able to play.
New Hampshire, initially ranked #15, lost their season starter, senior Sean Goldrich, on Sept 20. He returned a month later, but was not 100%. UNH is no longer ranked.
SE Louisiana, initially ranked #18, lost their season starter, junior D’Shaie Landor, early in a Sept 12 game. He did not fully recover until Oct 24. SELa is no longer ranked.
Last, but not least (obviously), are the Griz. We all know that story, with Gus going down early and then Chalich. I know it sounds like sugar-coating … but given what happened to these other teams, dropping from #8 to #17 does not look all that bad.
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