Last week, we compared the current Michigan State quarterback to a couple former Spartans who transferred out of the program.
This week, we thought it might be interesting to look at another trend which
might not bode too well for the Spartans’ struggle towards bowl eligibility.
We looked at each drive of the season so far for Michigan State and tried to figure out the point in each game that Aidan Chiles maxed out his completion percentage. We also looked at his yards per completion and yards per pass attempt at that point and then compared those statistics to what happened after that point.
If interested, you can see how we tried to do the whole thing here but there is a shorter summary below.
As an example, Chiles started the Western Michigan game going 9-10 (90%) for 80 yards (8.9 yards per completion and 8.0 yards per attempt). For the rest of the game, he went 8-13 (61.5%) for 75 yards (9.4 yards per completion and 5.8 yards per attempt). So, in this game, his completion percentage decreased by 28.5% from this particular point in the game and, while his yards per completion increased slightly by 0.5 yards, his yards per attempt went down by 2.2.
A similar trend is noticeable in each of MSU’s other four games as well, but it’s even more apparent in the two conference losses to USC and Nebraska. At USC, Chiles started 7-8 (87.5%) for 90 yards (13.0 YPC, 11.4 YPA) but finished 4-13 (30.8%) for 125 yards (31.3 YPC, 9.6 YPA). It’s important to note here that his 75 yard TD bomb to Omari Kelly late in the USC game obviously has a significant influence on Chiles’ YPC and even his YPA here.
This disturbing trend continued Saturday at Nebraska. Against the Huskers’ top-rated pass defense, Chiles started 5-8 (62.5%) for 43 yards (8.6 YPC, 5.4 YPA) but finished just 4-14 (28.6%) for 42 yards (10.5 YPC but only 3.0 YPA). This latter performance also included two second quarter interceptions.
We can see the summary in the table below:
The following chart might provide a better visual representation:
In general, through 5 games, the MSU passing game is producing a lower completion percentage and fewer yards per pass attempt as the game progresses. It doesn’t seem like the Spartans are making up for this with bigger plays either as yards per completion generally doesn’t change as the game moves on. Yards per completion did increase against Western, USC, and Nebraska. However, as mentioned, there was the 75 yard pass to Kelly against USC and YPC only went up by 0.5 and 1.9 against Western and Nebraska, respectively.
Chiles getting hit hard and often against Nebraska has to be a huge factor in that game but I’m not sure it explains the drop off in the other four games. Perhaps you could pick a point like for any player and any stat line in any game, but it really looks like there has been a point in each of MSU’s games so far this year where Chiles goes from the very good to ok range only to finish in the ok to really struggling area.
So what’s going on here, TOC? Are opponents figuring out what MSU is doing as the game goes on? Are the Spartans attempting longer or more complicated routes later in games? Is it, like Nebraska, related to the amount of hits Chiles takes just starting to pile up and negatively impacting his performance? Or is it something else?
