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YOUR BALANCE
Zerrick Cooper vs Hunter Johnson - facts based on game tape
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Zerrick Cooper vs Hunter Johnson - facts based on game tape


Oct 15, 2017, 3:03 PM

The backup QB situation at Clemson has been a recent point of debate among the fan base. I'll go into more detail below but here are the facts of our two backup QB's from their game performances to date:

Zerrick Cooper has completed 75% of passes 9 yards or less from the line of scrimmage. Cooper has completed 27% of passes 10 yards or more from the line of scrimmage.

Hunter Johnson has completed 90% of passes 9 yards or less from the line of scrimmage. Johnson has completed 50% of passes 10 yards or more from the line of scrimmage.


Detailed information regarding the above facts.

There is no one that wants to win more than the coaches and players. Accordingly, the coaches will play the athletes they believe give us the best chance to win. They make these decisions based on what they see everyday in practice and game performances. Having said that, I decided to look at every pass Zerrick Cooper and Hunter Johnson have thrown this year in their game performances. Here are the facts:

1. Zerrick Cooper has completed 12 of 16 passes that are 9 yards or less from the line of scrimmage. That is a 75% completion rate and the majority of these passes are where they need to be for the receiver to catch the ball (i.e. not a bunch of acrobatic receiver catches making the QB look good)

2. Zerrick Cooper has completed 3 of 11 passes that are 10 yards or more from the line of scrimmage. That is a completion rate of 27%. Of these 3 completions two were made by Hunter Renfrow and were amazing catches by Renfrow as the ball was low and/or behind him. The remaining 8 incomplete passes were mostly high (way over thrown) but a few were short (lawn darts) by more than 5 yards.

3. Hunter Johnson has completed 9 of 10 passes that are 9 yards or less from the line of scrimmage. That is a 90% completion rate and the majority of these passes where well placed for the receiver.

4. Hunter Johnson has completed 1 of 2 passes for 10 yards or more from the line of scrimmage. That is a 50% completion rate. His 1 completed pass was on the money and resulted in a TD. His 1 incomplete pass beyond 10 yards was a throw away into the sidelines.

Based on what has happened in actual games, Zerrick Cooper must improve on his deeper balls of 10+ yards from the line of scrimmage. These are the more difficult passes and one would expect the completion percentage to be lower on these passes but his current 27% completion rate is a big detriment to our offense. Defenses will simply load the box and come after him with virtually no fear of him taking the "top off" the defense. If there is no improvement from Cooper our offense will look eerily like the Cole Stoudt driven offense several years ago. If Cooper can improve to 50% or more on 10+ yard passes it will provide our offense with many more opportunities/options to move the ball as well as give play callers more options. Game tape reveals that Zerrick Cooper is perfectly capable of managing the "dink and dunk" offense where the vast majority of passes are between (-)2 yards (screens) to 7 yards beyond the line of scrimmage.

Likewise Hunter Johnson has also proved he is more than capable of managing the "dink and dunk" offense in the limited snaps he has thus far received. Unfortunately, we only have a sample of 2 passes where Hunter Johnson has thrown the ball for more than 10 yards. Hard to say if he has an accurate deep ball based on two passes but he did complete a 12 yard pass ("on the money") that resulted in a TD.

I have not looked at Kelly Bryant's numbers - figured that was immaterial as he is clearly the best overall QB on the roster right now and gives us the best chance to win if he is healthy. I think Cooper has the ability to improve his 10+ yard balls but I don't know if it will happen in two weeks time if Kelly can't go for the GT game. Hunter Johnson just has not had enough game snaps for me to definitively claim that he should start ahead of Cooper. I do, however, think the coaches should give Johnson more game opportunities to show his 10+ yard pass capabilities in order to make an informed game based (not only practice based) decision. I trust our coaches and that they are looking at the same information coming from actual games and will start making decisions based not only what they see in practice but what is happening in actual games.

One important final note about the above - the breakdown does not consider if the QB is making the right read for the play being called but strictly what happens once the QB actually throws the ball. Having a QB that can make the right decision/correct read is a huge part of whether the Clemson offense is successful. So no total decision regarding who should be the starting QB can solely be based on passing ability alone.

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Re: Zerrick Cooper vs Hunter Johnson - facts based on game tape


Oct 15, 2017, 3:21 PM

THANKS for the Info... Compelling!

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The sample size is too small to be meaningful.***


Oct 15, 2017, 3:22 PM



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Re: The sample size is too small to be meaningful.***


Oct 15, 2017, 3:47 PM

Don't disagree but since we aren't allowed to see the QB's in practice we can only document what is shown during games. For the record - Zerrick Cooper is NOT the reason we lost to Syracuse. We lost because of the overall sloppy and unfocused play of the team for much of the game. Coaching errors, mental errors, missed assignments and substandard performance cost us the game. The 4th quarter really killed us when our defense allowed Syracuse to take possession of the football with 6 minutes left in the 4th quarter and maintain possession for the remainder of the game. We are better than that but did not show it Friday night.

The reason of the analysis is to shine a little light on something more than emotion and feelings. If you look at the numbers, you will see that ZC is actually doing well for the majority of plays he is asked to perform. However, there is no denying that ZC is having an issue in the longer passes and if he doesn't improve, it will render our offense ineffective in future contests as defenses see the same game tape as the rest of us. The small sample size is exactly the reason I don't call for HJ to start right now, but I do think HJ should be given at least a series or two to see what he can do if ZC continues to struggle completing passes of 10+ yards.

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Exactly. That's why so many fans are calling for more


Oct 15, 2017, 4:34 PM [ in reply to The sample size is too small to be meaningful.*** ]

samples, from Hunter.

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good read,have you sent this to Dabo yet***


Oct 15, 2017, 5:30 PM



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Numbers look off a bit


Oct 15, 2017, 3:22 PM

http://www.espn.com/college-football/team/stats/_/id/228/clemson-tigers

HJ has only missed one throw and that's when he threw it out of bounds to avoid the sack.

I'd add to your comparisons the running and sacks given up. I know I don't see practice, but HJ is significantly better than Cooper come game day.

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Both played when the opponent's defense was well worn.


Oct 15, 2017, 3:25 PM

HJ only played in three games against teams who didn't have too much of a defense to start with.

I'm not against starting HJ but I'm not for it either. Frankly, I admit don't know. I wish everyone here had such honest comments on this topic as 'Frankly, I admit I don't know.'

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Re: Numbers look off a bit


Oct 15, 2017, 3:29 PM [ in reply to Numbers look off a bit ]

I looked at ESPN and can tell you for a fact that their stats numbers are off. I have gone through every game and can provide you with the quarter, and clock time for every pass thrown. If you desire the list I will post it so you can look at every pass thrown for yourself.

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I believe that the coaches


Oct 15, 2017, 3:32 PM

start whichever QB gives us the best chance to win. We don't get to be at practice everyday.

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Re: Zerrick Cooper vs Hunter Johnson - facts based on game tape


Oct 15, 2017, 3:43 PM

We were at the game 90 minutes before kickoff. It was obvious during warmups that KB could not cut. He could barely run along the sidelines without limping. He should have never played. Our D was never set. The HUNH Cuse O kept them off balance all night. Both of these situations are the result of POOR COACHING, SOMETHING we have not seen in many games.
Reply

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Re: Zerrick Cooper vs Hunter Johnson - facts based on game tape


Oct 15, 2017, 4:04 PM

Cuse matched up surprisingly well against us. They have a bunch of playmakers with a bunch of experience on their offense. BV likes to wait as long as possible to get the defense set, so a well-executed HUNH offense is going to expose our defense. We didn't see that last year because Dungy got hurt, but they gave us hell in the Dome two years ago.

Our defense started to believe the hype about themselves and Cuse was able to get in their head on the first drive.

What went wrong was that we couldn't put up the points we needed to win that kind of game. Cuse's defense is bad. But with the injuries we had on offense (including the kicking game) and no good game plan to compensate for that, we couldn't put the points on the board we needed to.

The coaches made the call that a limping KB was the best QB we had. It was the same decision they made to play a one-legged DW4 against SC instead of Cole Stoudt. I don't think ZC would have had much success as a starter either and HJ is too much of an unknown.

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Re: Zerrick Cooper vs Hunter Johnson - facts based on game tape


Oct 15, 2017, 3:57 PM

It was probably a slip up but the coaches have said that HJ made the correct read of the defenses each time he was in and even checked out correctly on several plays.

I remember a couple interviews from Renfrow back in spring that he was amazed how good HJ was and there was no separated at that time between the two.

I’m not sure why the coaches appear to be defensive when questioned by it. My only concern is that Dabo does and has favored seniority. That’s not a bad thing if you’re equal but two points on that. 1. It’s a bad thing if to the detriment of a team, and 2, you never know how a youngster will do in real meaningful games.

So far HJ has been real good in limited meaningful games. He deserved a shot Friday and he deserves a chance going forward. I think he deserves the start against ga tech, we may all be pleasantly surprised... and I’m afraid the coaches know that too and that may just cause controversy they don’t want.

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Re: Zerrick Cooper vs Hunter Johnson - facts based on game tape


Oct 15, 2017, 4:05 PM

If you want a more plausible conspiracy theory, Dabo doesn't want to make Hunter Johnson a star until Trevor Lawrence is enrolled.

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I agree 100%***


Oct 15, 2017, 4:36 PM [ in reply to Re: Zerrick Cooper vs Hunter Johnson - facts based on game tape ]



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Proverbs 16:18


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