So, I got this idea the other day, just kicking around thoughts about college football, and landed on the Syracuse quarterback spot. Don’t ask me why, sometimes these things just pop into your head. I figured, hey, let’s dig into it a bit, see what’s what. Maybe look at performance over the years, you know?
Starting the Dig
First thing I did was hit the search engines. Typed in the usual stuff: “Syracuse quarterback history,” “Syracuse QB stats,” “famous Syracuse QBs.” You get a lot of results, news articles, fan forums, the official athletics site.
Spent a good while just clicking around. Found some lists of starting QBs for different seasons. Found pages on specific players, guys like Donovan McNabb obviously came up quick. But getting a clean overview, like year-by-year performance data all in one spot? That was tougher than I thought.
Trying to Make Sense of Numbers
I decided to focus on stats for the past, say, 15-20 years. Thought maybe I could see some trends. I started pulling numbers:
- Passing Yards per season
- Touchdowns
- Interceptions
- Completion Percentage
Honestly, it was kind of a manual process. Copying from one site, pasting into a spreadsheet. Some sites had tables, which was nice. Others just had stats buried in paragraphs. It took way longer than I expected just to get a basic dataset together. Felt like I was doing data entry, not really analysis yet.
Hitting the Wall
Okay, so I had this spreadsheet. Rows of names, years, and numbers. Now what? I tried charting passing yards over time. Looked for spikes or dips. Calculated average TDs per season for different guys.
But here’s the thing, and it hit me pretty quick: the numbers alone don’t tell you that much. You look at one QB’s stats, maybe they look great. But then you remember, oh yeah, they had that amazing receiver corps. Or maybe another QB’s numbers look lower, but they played behind a terrible offensive line or faced a brutal schedule.
Comparing across different coaches and offensive systems? Forget about it. One coach loves to air it out, the next prefers a ground-and-pound game with the QB managing things. How do you compare those QBs fairly just using passing yards and TDs? It felt kinda meaningless without all that context.
I thought about looking for more advanced stats, like QBR or adjusted net yards per attempt, but finding that consistently, especially for older seasons, was another headache. The data was just all over the place, inconsistent.
So, What Did I End Up With?
Basically, I ended up with a spreadsheet. A spreadsheet with a bunch of numbers that confirmed what I probably already knew: evaluating quarterbacks is complicated. It’s not just about the stats line. It’s about the system, the supporting cast, the opponents, the era they played in.
My little “practice” of digging into Syracuse QB stats didn’t really lead to some big revelation. It mostly just reminded me that armchair analysis is tough. You can pull numbers all day, but understanding the why behind them takes a lot more digging, probably watching a ton of game film, which I didn’t really have time for.
So yeah, that was my adventure into the world of Syracuse quarterback stats. Learned a bit, got frustrated a bit, and ended up with a spreadsheet. That’s the process sometimes, right?
