Thursday, December 11, 2008

A Quick Glance At Rutgers

               Yds/G  Yds/Play   Pts/G      YdsAllowed/G   YdsAllowed/Play   PtsAllowed/G
1st 6 (1-5) 318.3 5.0 17.5 323.2 5.3 21.3
2nd 6 (6-0) 472.0 7.4 40.5 324.7 5.4 15.7

At some point in October, quarterback Mike Teel achieved omnipresent supergalactic oneness, or something, and the Rutgers offense has been nearly unstoppable since. Seven-point-four yards per play is rather not bad. Teel completed about 55% of his passes and managed a modest 6.4 yards per attempt over the first six games; then, kaboom: a completion percentage over 66% and an average of 10.6 yds/att in the second half. While their ground game also got a bit better, most of the credit for their offensive resurgence goes to the passing game.

It's not all bad news, though. They've been mediocre defensively all season, and their secondary in particular has been terrible, allowing 7.8 yards/attempt (we're allowing 7.1).

With a couple of hot offenses going up against a couple of blah defenses with bad secondaries, the Pizza Bowl looks like it's going to be one of the most exciting games of the bowl season. Sounds good to me--we haven't had a good shootout in a while.