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Re: 117th Big Game Thread - CompSci87 - 11-22-2014

(11-22-2014, 06:22 PM)Boston Card link Wrote:Just me or does that look like some weird hulk version of teddy Roosevelt?

Not just you. I was about to say the same thing!


Re: 117th Big Game Thread - stupac2 - 11-22-2014

That series of overturns was absolutely hilarious in the stands. I've never seen anything like it. How long did that series take, 20 minutes? Madness!

And the axe is safe for another year, very good day!

Re: 117th Big Game Thread - martyup - 11-22-2014

(11-22-2014, 06:22 PM)Boston Card link Wrote:Just me or does that look like some weird hulk version of teddy Roosevelt?

BC

Maybe it's a robber baron?  :-\

Re: 117th Big Game Thread - Bruce Wang - 11-23-2014

(11-22-2014, 05:53 PM)washingtonismoney link Wrote:Yikes's constant subbing in and out of Rubenzer may have been the dumbest coaching move I've seen this year. (And, sadly, we've seen a lot of nominees up close and personal.)

I got it wrong.  It's Goff's understudy that looks like a Cobra Kai.

[Image: 1363440.jpg?w=600&h=360&fit=max]

Re: 117th Big Game Thread - CTcard - 11-23-2014

(11-22-2014, 05:54 PM)martyup link Wrote:[quote author=washingtonismoney link=topic=11180.msg106163#msg106163 date=1416704018]
Yikes's constant subbing in and out of Rubenzer may have been the dumbest coaching move I've seen this year. (And, sadly, we've seen a lot of nominees up close and personal.)

That was strange.  Goff was on fire.
[/quote]

It was certainly strange. It is not entirely clear to me it was dumb - certainly not dumbest of the year.

Goff was not on fire. He was completing 51% of his passes and averaging 5.9 yds/attempt and c.a.l. was not scoring. Two ints that were partially not his fault, on the other hand he allowed his throws to be tipped. That is fairly poor - the sort of performance that raises calls for the benching of Hogan.

Rubenzer passed about as poorly, though he clearly has a much lower inherent passing ability. He was a FAR better runner. He ran for big chunks, and was c.a.l.'s second leading rusher. The offense seemed to pick up spark once he stated coming in - though they still didn't score much until it was decided. He was the qb for their last TD drive.

At any rate, it is not at all clear to me that c.a.l.'s performance was worse once Rubenzer started making appearances.

Re: 117th Big Game Thread - BostonCard - 11-23-2014

I'm not sure, CTCard.  Though they had similar stats (Goff 16/31, 5.9 ypa; Rubenzer 5/9 5.4 ypa), it's notable that Rubenzer had two rather ugly interceptions in only 9 passes.  Goff had two interceptions as well, but it was in 31 passes, both on tipped balls.  There was a place for Rubenzer, but probably just with his 12 carries (for 60 yards), and maybe a throw to keep the defense honest.  But there's a good reason that Goff is the starter, and though he didn't look great, there was nothing about Rubenzer that told me he would be any better throwing the ball than Goff (and there's a reason that prior to BG, he only had 12 passing attempts).

He's a good wildcat runner, but he's not a good passer.

BC

Re: 117th Big Game Thread - washingtonismoney - 11-23-2014

Right, to follow up on Boston Card's point...zooming in on just Big Game makes the decision vaguely justifiable. The problem with that assumption is that Goff has been much more effective, at much larger volume, over the season. He, visually, looks like a better quarterback -- better accuracy, better movement in the pocket, better zip. (obviously rubenzer is the better runner...)

I think the gap between them is so big that the logical thing is for that gap to manifest itself over the course of the game, regardless of how well one (or the other) might be playing. If Michael Jordan is shooting 10/30 and B.J. Armstrong's shooting 6/9, do you go with Armstrong in crunch time? Thought so.

Re: 117th Big Game Thread - CTcard - 11-23-2014

(11-23-2014, 08:34 PM)washingtonismoney link Wrote:Right, to follow up on Boston Card's point...zooming in on just Big Game makes the decision vaguely justifiable. The problem with that assumption is that Goff has been much more effective, at much larger volume, over the season. He, visually, looks like a better quarterback -- better accuracy, better movement in the pocket, better zip. (obviously rubenzer is the better runner...)

I think the gap between them is so big that the logical thing is for that gap to manifest itself over the course of the game, regardless of how well one (or the other) might be playing. If Michael Jordan is shooting 10/30 and B.J. Armstrong's shooting 6/9, do you go with Armstrong in crunch time? Thought so.

Your analogy has at least one fatal flaw, there was no crunch time in this game.
And I made no argument that Rubenzer should be their QB, just that the bizarro QB shuffle didn't seem to make c.a.l. any worse.

Rubenzer started playing more than his usual appearance for a wildcat run after Stanford scored to make the game 31-7. c.a.l.'s previous four drives had gone interception, interception, punt, punt - and showed no signs of making any headway. At that point it didn't really matter much what Yikes did - c.a.l. was going to lose almost certianly. So, he rolled the dice looking for a spark.

The next drives were:
1. Goff hands off three times then Rubenzer comes in and takes them 37 yards - another 14 from Goff, then Rubenzer throws an INT on a ball where he is hit.
2. The triple review series, Rubenzer gets them inside the 1, but they end up with a FG. 
3. Onside kick - Goff and Rubenzer share snaps on a drive that gets to the Stanford 27 before turning over on downs.
4. Goff gets the next series, gets 11 yards, punt.
5. Rubenzer gets the next series, 38 yards, TD (against our backups)
6. Rubenzer gets the next series, gets 24 yards then throws the INT that ends the game.


Goff is certainly a much better looking QB than Rubenzer. If Rubenzer starts for c.a.l. against BYU on a coach's decision, then I will agree that Yikes has sunk into some kind of delusional mental illness. And if it turns out that Goff is so traumatized by having to share snaps that he never agains plays well, I'll join in again [along with a little celebration]. But in the Big Game, whatever QBs played in the last quarter and a half mostly made no difference, and c.a.l. did seem to move the ball a tiny bit better with the QB platoon than previously.

Re: 117th Big Game Thread - washingtonismoney - 11-23-2014

But "didn't turn out to make a difference" isn't really the best judge of whether or not something is a good decision, right? Obviously we run into this situation all time, in, for example, going for it in 4th down versus punting or kicking the field goal -- a decision can be correct but not necessarily lead to better results.

This is similar. Yeah, sometimes both Armstrong and Jordan will miss the shot. But that's not the most reasonable expectation when you call the play.

Re: 117th Big Game Thread - CTcard - 11-23-2014

(11-23-2014, 09:35 PM)washingtonismoney link Wrote:But "didn't turn out to make a difference" isn't really the best judge of whether or not something is a good decision, right? 

In this case, that it wasn't likely to make a difference was obvious at the time the decision was made.
In fact, presumably Yikes thought that the only chance of some kind of miracle come-back was a shake up in the offense.
And, to the extent it did make any difference, it at least coincided with c.a.l.'s offense perking up a tad.



p.s. I also disagree with the standard board parsing of whether a decision is good or not by multiplying together a bunch of percentages that not only are unknown, but are unknowable. Nobody bothers propagating the uncertainty in these numbers, which in most cases of interest are going to make all decisions equal.

Re: 117th Big Game Thread - stupac2 - 11-23-2014

(11-23-2014, 09:53 PM)CTcard link Wrote:In this case, that it wasn't likely to make a difference was obvious at the time the decision was made.
In fact, presumably Yikes thought that the only chance of some kind of miracle come-back was a shake up in the offense.
And, to the extent it did make any difference, it at least coincided with c.a.l.'s offense perking up a tad.

If you actually follow that thinking to its logical conclusion (short of nihilism, anyway) then they should've just been throwing deep on every single play since extended drives clearly weren't working, may as well go for home runs. May as well also go for every 4th, which they didn't do. If you're actually doing the "throw everything at the wall and see what sticks" thing then okay, do it. But they didn't, it was just haphazard and pointless.

Quote:p.s. I also disagree with the standard board parsing of whether a decision is good or not by multiplying together a bunch of percentages that not only are unknown, but are unknowable. Nobody bothers propagating the uncertainty in these numbers, which in most cases of interest are going to make all decisions equal.

First, there's no way that's standard. I think besides myself, WiM, and BC no one here really thinks that way. Second, it's like that famous saying about democracy, it's the worst system, except for all the others. Thinking statistically about decision-making grounds you in something tangible instead of relying on vague concepts that may or may not relate to anything at all (things like "giving the offense a spark", for instance, what does that even mean?). There's a reason that coaches who are actually aware of the stats on things like punting vs going for it win more games than the ones who don't. Ron Rivera last year was a great example of that in a single person.

Anyway, in the big picture you're right, taking Goff out probably moved Cal's win percentage from like 2% to 0.5% or something, but even though that's a small absolute difference it's a big multiplier. It doesn't really matter much what the numbers are, or that Cal was pretty solidly screwed no matter what they did, but that if Dykes wanted to give his team the best chance of winning he shouldn't have given the other guy as many snaps as he did. There's obviously a place for taking crazy risks when you're down, but there's just no reason to think that's what he was doing.

Re: 117th Big Game Thread - BostonCard - 11-23-2014

To be fair to CTCard, he's a physicist if I recall, and they (well, his particle physics cousins), require have a five-sigma requirement before they can announce the finding of a new particle. That's a p-value of 0.0000003 for those of you keeping track at home.  Sample sizes in football are never that big.

But I think CTCard does bring up a good point about the error inherent in our calculations.  It's there and it is probably much larger than we are willing to admit.  But if we completely succumb to the tendency to say that any inference, statistical or otherwise, is within the limits of noise, and any prediction is worthless kind of takes the fun out of things.  To the extent that I put up numbers in support of my points, it is usually either a) to overcome cognitive biases that are clearly present in this game and b) to either support or refute the "what do your eyes tell you?" argument, which can be helpful but can also be risky.  Without wishing to re-litigate the whole kick/punt debate, I wish Shaw were a bit more aggressive in those situations, but in the end, I judge him on his larger body of work over four years as head coach, and not based on a couple plays.

But getting back to the dual-quarterback thing, I think Dykes could have gotten the spark he was looking for by inserting Rubenzer in to run the wildcat a few times.  I thought 9 pass attempts was probably 7 too many (it was certainly 2 too many, lol).

BC

Re: 117th Big Game Thread - CTcard - 11-23-2014

(11-23-2014, 10:35 PM)Boston Card link Wrote:To be fair to CTCard, he's a physicist ...

Why do I feel that has the ring of, "Well remember he's special and we have to be understanding".
[emoticon]

There may be a bias based upon being from a field that prefers mechanistic arguments. Medicine, on the other hand, I would assume skews toward statistical analysis as mechanistic arguments are often near-impossible. 

Quote: 
Without wishing to re-litigate the whole kick/punt debate, I wish Shaw were a bit more aggressive in those situations,

I do as well. For thinking about a general approach, a statistical analysis should be appropriate. It just doesn't mean he was wrong in that particular moment (though I think he was).



Re: 117th Big Game Thread - BostonCard - 11-24-2014

Not at all, it was meant as a compliment; suggesting that your rigor was carrying over.

In medicine you get a bit of both.  Statistical arguments are strengthened when there is a mechanistic explanation to them, though unfortunately, all too often the explanation is post hoc and involves a lot of hand waving.

BC

Re: 117th Big Game Thread - washingtonismoney - 11-24-2014

I'm a journalist and I cover health policy, which means I get to misunderstand fun things like "natural experiments." 

Re: 117th Big Game Thread - dabigv13 - 11-24-2014

(11-24-2014, 12:30 AM)Boston Card link Wrote:...all too often the explanation is post hoc and involves a lot of hand waving.

See, hormone replacement therapy, and statins for everybody!