Diving Into the Numbers: Trey Lance
What can Expected Points Added tell us about the North Dakota State QB?
Trey Lance seems to be the biggest enigma for the 2021 draft class of quarterbacks. The only football action he saw in 2020 was a one off game in the fall due to covid. For the majority of fans out there their only glimpse of Trey Lance has come from highlights of his spectacular 2019 season. We also have to throw in the FCS debate and how he will react to the leap from Division 1-AA to the professional ranks. In order to get a better idea of Trey Lance’s game, lets dive into the numbers and see what they tell us!
Before I get started I just wanted to shoutout Gameonpaper.com, which is where I got the play by play data for NDSU. If you wanted to look up stats/advanced stats for any college football game, thats your website. Be careful though…. you lose track of time going through the games!
It can be difficult to tell how good an expected points added number is at times. Its easy to see 300 yards or 4 TDs is good… but 0.32? Is that good? No fear, ill lay out some quick bullet points:
0.47 EPA and higher: Greater than 90th percentile. (Video Game Elite)
0.27 EPA: 75th Percentile (Great performance)
0.13 EPA: 60th Percentile (Good performance)
0.05 EPA: 50th Percentile (Not noteworthy performance)
Negative EPA: (Yikes)
I won’t spend too much time on comparisons because the competition level does make it hard to compare with the rest of the draft class, but it is interesting to see where he stacks up. He was the true definition of a dual threat QB, with hyper efficient EPA/Play numbers passing and rushing.
As you will see later on, Trey Lance was as explosive as they come. In terms of explosiveness (Simply the EPA/Play of ‘successful’ plays), Lance ranks 2nd in passing explosiveness and 1st in rushing explosiveness out of QB prospects in this class. Its extraordinary what he was able to get done averaging only 18 passes and 11 rushes a game!
*Note* NDSU played Illinois State twice this season, which is the reason for the increased number of plays
Speaking of which, you can really see in this graph how many games he played where he didn’t record a lot of snaps. One of the beauties about cumulative EPA is you can see how his play progressed over the course of a game. Typically you will be looking for a steep upward trajectory to show consistent efficiency. Flatter lines indicate more of an inconsistent performance as the negative EPA plays cancel out the positive plays.
For games like Butler and Youngstown State, it was quick and lethal. In the Youngstown State game he only throw 9 passes, but 3 of them were touchdowns. The one in which he truly struggled was UC Davis, which was the only game he finished with negative EPA/Play when looking at passes combined with rushes. In games like Missouri State and the FCS Championship against James Madison, Lance struggled to stay consistent through the air, but used to legs to maintain efficiency.
Game specific EPA can be useful when gauging efficiency, but it does come with its drawbacks. Specifically, it can be rather volatile, with tipped interceptions or small sample sizes causing wild positive/negative swings from game to game. Remember the Butler and Youngstown state game? He averaged well over 1 EPA/Play, which is firmly in the 99th percentile for single game performances.
A better way to look at how his play over the course of the season is by looking at a rolling average. Lance’s passing fluctuated between great and video game like efficiency, which is essentially “theres no where to go but down” in football throwing form. His rushing was a bit more consistent, which is another sign he can still maintain efficient football even if his passing is letting him down. That gives play caller’s ample options to maneuver the various situations that arise during a game.
To end this numbers dive lets look at a little situational analysis. For those unfamiliar a passing down is any of the following down and distance combination (Coined by Bill Connelly):
2nd Down: 8 or more yards
3rd Down: 5 or more yards
4th Down: 5 or more yards
A violin plot allow us to show the entire distribution of Lance’s EPA, and we can add in percentile cutoffs to show his floor/ceiling. In both cases the 50th percentile median (the middle line) is actually lower than his average, which would indicate a positive skew. So what does it mean? It means Trey Lance has explosive tendencies, which you can see from the plot stretching as high as 6.75 EPA on one play! On passing downs, Lance averaged 0.514 EPA/Pass, and 0.712 EPA/Rush. This is extremely encouraging for NFL teams, as it shows he can still perform at a high level if he is backed up into a less than ideal situation. On standard downs his range of outcomes were more tightly concentrated, but nevertheless averaging 0.375 EPA/Pass and 0.330 EPA/Rush will get the job done.
Conclusion
At the end of the day we still have to consider the FCS level of competition Trey Lance faced. The last FCS QB to reach this level of QB prospect was fellow NDSU QB Carson Wentz, who showed some promise with Philadelphia before flaming out. That being said, Trey Lance is an entirely different person, so Wentz career bears no weight on his future. Trey Lance has shown he can produce hyper efficient results either through the air, or on the ground. He has also shown if he gets backed up into passing down situations, he has no issue creating highlight plays. It’ll be interesting to see which NFL team rolls the dice on him, and how they plan to fully unleash this swiss army knife of a QB.
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