So this Phil Steele "stat" on McSorley and 50-50 balls
- Thread starter michnittlion
- Start date
I would for sure believe it. McSorley tossed the ball up for a jump ball pretty often.. I expect a little regression on his part this year, just because there is no way we can come up on the winning end of the jump balls that often again.
MMMMMMMMMMMMMM.
This does seem to have become "the summer talking point" as regards McSorley and our late-season surge in 2016. I hear it often in particular about the Wisconsin game. But nobody seems to be documenting the actual analysis they're doing. McSorley's 4 touchdown passes in that Wisconsin game:
Yes, the TD pass to Geiscki (our first TD of the Wisconsin game) - that was a 50/50 ball.
Neither of the 2 long TD passes to Blacknall were, however (the Wisconsin DB really screwed up on the one - that should have gone for 10 to 15 yards instead of a full touchdown).
The wheel-route long TD pass to Barkley was a picture perfect pass, absolute beauty. No luck there.
So, I'm seeing 1 50/50 ball. That, yes, Geiscki being the athlete that he is, won.
maybe he sees stuff we don't see. maybe we have great WR's. maybe its part of the plan.
I suspect it is because the S cheat up and there is little to no double coverage or over the top coverage as the S sell out to contain the run.
IDK and I don't care. Just keep doing it.
I suspect it is because the S cheat up and there is little to no double coverage or over the top coverage as the S sell out to contain the run.
IDK and I don't care. Just keep doing it.
Who is pretending they can contrive a "stat" based on "50-50 balls"?
That's just hilarity
It's all about the match-ups. There's no such thing as a 50/50 ball with Gesicki single covered downfield with a safety that might be 6 feet tall.
These "50/50 balls" I keep hearing people who don't understand football talking about are right on the money. So stupid.
Blacknall, Johnson, Charles, Hamilton ...
For sure, Godwin leaves some big shoes to fill, but I still like the odds on 50 : 50's.
Because of this I guess they're not 50/50 balls (more like 75-25 balls). It's really a dumb term. The offensive player knows where he's going, they practice these routes, and the QB knows where he's throwing it...that alone makes it not 50/50. I wish one of these talking heads would define a 50/50 ball. As someone posted earlier, if the receiver is open, even by a step, it's not a 50/50 ball.
Every QB gets bailed out by his receivers from time to time. Of course having giant (or very athletic) receivers helps a lot as well. Terry Bradshaw used to say he loved throwing deep to Swann because the guy could leap out of the stadium to catch anything thrown his way. Or put another way, knowing your personnel makes the decision to throw "50:50 balls" a lot easier.
When you have receivers coached by Gattis ... why wouldn't you. Apparently, the douches in the western mid-west are out of the loop on what the best wide receiver coach in college football teaches.... they will eventually.... They are just slow.... it is their nature.
Disagree that Geisicki TD was 50/50 ball. That play was designed route to expose height mismatch.
Which NFL team do you think will draft McSorley? None, IMO.
McSorley is worse than Danny Wuerfel (sp?) from UF and Danny won them a National Championship.
Trace will lose many of those jump balls against quality defenses.
If one team is catching it 75% of the time is it still called a 50-50 ball??
Who cares which NFL team will draft him? He's playing at PSU, not an NFL team. An NFL team took Hack and I would much rather have McSorley on my college team (and Danny Wuerfel as well).
"50/50 ball" is a misnomer. There are four or five potential results from deep passes: a completion, an incompletion, a pass interference call (which can go against you or for you), and an interception. Of all of those options, only one - an interception - is a definitive bad outcome for the offense.
If only we played a quality defense last year... like say, Wisconsin
Well, well, well!
It's what I said all along.
Now where is that (Mr. I coached Football) at?
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL!
College ball is a different game than the NFL. Many great college QB's don't make it in the NFL. So I don't feel like making it in the NFL is a great qualifier of college QB's.
Yeah, I think there is a problem with calling a deep ball to the outside shoulder of a 6-6 tight end being covered by a 5-10 CB a 50/50 ball. I think there is a little more skill involved in this than they are giving him credit for.
The one in question was more of a 50/0 ball
What the hell does this have to do with how good a college QB he is ( no NFL team will draft him)- stick to your anti-religion rants tool bag and not insulting our players.
That's utter bull$hit - an INTENTIONAL "back-shoulder" throw is not a 50/50 ball as the Offensive Receiver is the only one that knows it is going to be intentionally slightly under-thrown to the shoulder/hip toward the sideline when the D-back is on the inside, downfield shoulder. Utter nonsense that most of McSorley's throws (like the one to #12 on PSU's first 2nd Half drive in the B1G Championship Game) were not INTENTIONALLY thrown to "open space" to let the receiver go get it where the D-back WASN'T, but you're full of $hit like most scUM b1g homers regarding McSorley and his deep passing - go figure!
Last edited:
McSorley will get drafted. Not as high as Hackenberg (2nd round, yikes) ... but he'll get drafted.
Wuerffel got drafted in the 4th round, FWIW. He only won 4 games as an NFL starter, but he did make it. Simply making it is pretty damn good in itself. Wuerffel was also an NFL Europe MVP one year.
It isn't getting "bailed out" when the QB and Receiver both understand that the QB will "read" the situation and throw the ball to "open space" on single coverage where the D-back "isn't" (like the outside shoulder slight under-throw when the D-back is playing downfield on the inside...), but to claim these throws aren't intentional just shows how ignorant of "real football" b1g-homers, especially scUM dork fans, really are....
The shit that comes out of the old guard B1G is such stale... off the l gibberish, that if it weren't so boring it would be funny.
" Uh - oh "
Wisconsin FB announcer radio call while deep throw still on it's way to Blacknall for what would be a 75 yard TD.
You're right --- I re-watched the play and I will revise to call it a 50-10-40 ball. 50% complete, 10% INT, 40% incomplete.
Got it mixed up a bit with the Gesicki TD in the MSU game. MSU safety had a more legit INT chance there.
There were times McSorley under threw the receiver and the receiver, like Godwin, made adjustments. Gattis is a heck of a receiver's coach. They practice contested balls. That is a better word than 50-50, which isn't even a word if you think about it.
Bullspit alert. We had the best receivers and he put the ball where they could catch it. The TD passes to Gisecki and Barkley in the B1G championship game are case in point.
You had to intentionally learn to be stupid. Your level of bullspit can not be reached by accident.
Sounds to me like Michigan is having a hard time figuring out how they could potentially stop our offense with almost no returing starters. Their hope is that our points per game was all luck?
Steele also talks about all the 50/50 balls McSorley threw in the 2nd half against MSU. Again, one could argue the Gesicki one as 50/50, but is it a bad idea to throw to your 6'6" TE who can jump as a 50/50 ball (and already has caught mamy of these passes for you on the year). And the balls he threw to a streaking Godwin (including the one the play after Barkley got hurt) were "dimes", not 50/50 balls. They were 99/1 or 100/0 balls.
It's called lazy journalism. Has anyone actually watched the games?
It's called lazy journalism. Has anyone actually watched the games?
Agreed - between designed back-shoulder throws (see: Indiana game TD throw to Godwin) and catches made despite Pass Interference (see: Hamilton against Wisconsin) the actual number of true 50/50 balls is significantly less than implied by that tweet. It does read more like "I hope we have a way of stopping their receivers or we'll get run over".
Exactly. If you watch the games, it's not McSorley being bailed out so much as it is him throwing to receivers who are taller than the corners trying to cover them. It was the design of the offense. (The other thing that was clearly by design was the underthrow -- McSorley often threw short intentionally knowing that the PSU receiver could adjust faster than the corner)
That said, in a lot of these situation, if the D has an athletic (and usually taller) safety come over to help, the "50-50" ball can turn into an INT. Which of course is what happened at the Rose Bowl.
Defenses are going to be devising ways to cover these "50-50" balls this year. There is only one way to do it -- scheme to have safeties play more center field.
And that is what Moorhead wants to happen. Safeties back and he can run his REAL offense - which is running out of the spread.
The ultimate Moorhead play, if you listen to what they say at Forham, is spread the field, have 4 guys in patterns, and then hand the ball to Barkley who gets a crease up the middle, beats a linebacker, and there's no safety there -- either the safety is too far downfield or the safety is being blocked by a PSU wideout. That is the play I hope we see a lot of this year.
And yes, with 6-3 Blacknall and 6-4 Johnson and Charles and 6-6 Gesicki, Penn State should be able to continue to throw deep with good success.
If you look at most of these passes that people reference, you will see that is always to "isolated" single coverage - situations that JoMo's offense is designed to generate and exploit. In these situations, the QB and Receiver are taught to "read" the play as to how the isolated d-back is covering....the QB is trained to throw the ball where the d-back can not get to the ball. If the d-back is running with receiver on deep-side and to toward inside, QB is taught to throw back-shoulder fade slightly under-thrown (and receiver is taught to look for this). If d-back is underneath and inside (like most of the Gesicki throws), QB trained to throw deep-shoulder and to outside. On Godwin's crossing routed for TD in BCG, QB trained to throw to open area and let receiver go get it (in this case, well in front of Godwin and shallow as the Safety was racing forward trying to provide help), etc., etc., etc.... If you analyze all the throws, McSorley had an uncanny ability to pick the correct receiver who has an advantage in isolated coverage and to place the ball in the CORRECT AREA where only his receiver could catch the ball - calling these throws "50/50" throws is beyond stupid if you have actually looked at the plays collectively. McSorley repeatedly made the right throw (and his receiver made the corresponding correct read) and they might have only had a 50%-to-60% chance of completion but they had a near 0% chance of interception.
Last edited:
For a ball to be 50/50 with Gesicki, he would have to be double covered like Michigan State. That would be an example of an ill advised throw where Gesicki bailed out McSorley. But the dude is huge and can jump and figured out how to catch anything he got his hands on so not a bad option when you need a bail out. Some of the Wisconsin throws looked like they were being thrown to spots, not to the receiver and the receiver, usually Blacknall, would adjust and run to that spot. Pete Carroll was known for recruiting bigger wrs even if they didn't have the best speed. They'd use their bodies and dominate smaller dbs even if they were covered. We have some big dudes. Even when they're covered, they're open if McSorely can get it to where they can can catch it. They'll get good one on one matchups as long as they have most of the defense trying to find 26 the whole game. The only thing lucky last year was other teams got us when we were just figuring things out. If all the only thing they're figuring out from scouting/film is that we were "lucky" then they're all in big trouble..
Another thing McSorley did really well was not overthrow wide open receivers. I thnk he only did it once or twice all year. When receivers broke open, he was willing to sacrifice some yards (and a few TDs) by throwing a little short.
So you ended up with a catch that looked like a 50-50 ball but the DB was at a big disadvantage because they are just struggling to get back into position.
Gesicki's big catch vs. MSU was like that -- he blew by the corner, was wide open, the ball was short and the corner and safety both were able to recover but they couldn't prevent the catch.
Gesicki has gotten really good at using his size to his advantage. He catches the ball high and then has the strength and agility to hold on with a corner hacking at his arms the entire play. That is the classic TE catch in the NFL these days.
So you ended up with a catch that looked like a 50-50 ball but the DB was at a big disadvantage because they are just struggling to get back into position.
Gesicki's big catch vs. MSU was like that -- he blew by the corner, was wide open, the ball was short and the corner and safety both were able to recover but they couldn't prevent the catch.
Gesicki has gotten really good at using his size to his advantage. He catches the ball high and then has the strength and agility to hold on with a corner hacking at his arms the entire play. That is the classic TE catch in the NFL these days.
Well consider a completion rate of about 50%, you would think this would be less on a jump up ball, and we came down with 75%. I call BS
Similar threads
