Yards Above Replacement – Week 1
If you’ve read any of my stuff on this site, you’ve undoubtedly heard about Yards Above Replacement (YAR).
YAR is a statistic that I developed because I realized that with the arrival of spread offenses in college football, the value that a QB brings to the table running the ball is significant and needs to be quantified.
This past weekend (9/3/2022) is a great example. Kentucky’s Will Levis threw for 303 yards and averaged 9.5 yards per attempt. Florida’s Anthony Richardson threw for 168 yards and averaged 7.0 yards per attempt. Levis had the better day, right?
Well, the thing missing from that analysis is that Levis ran the ball 7 times for -18 yards (4 sacks) while Richardson ran 11 times for 106 yards. What that means is that on a per-touch basis, Richardson averaged 7.8 yards per play while Levis averaged 7.3
But more than that, the average QB pass in college football is somewhere around 7.5-8.0 yards per attempt while the average QB run in college football is somewhere around 2.5-3.0 yards. That means that we should weight Levis’ and Richardson’s averages to reflect that if we’re looking for a comparison.
That’s how you end up with Richardson having a YAR of 1.57 against Utah with Levis having a YAR of 0.34 for Kentucky. And also why I heavily lean Florida this week against the Wildcats.
Those are just numbers, but they’re normalized to zero, meaning that a WAR of 0 is considered an average QB. For frame of reference, here’s a list of some QBs you might know from last season and where they stood in regards to YAR.
- YAR = 0, average QB (Levis Lewis, Louisiana, -0.17)
- YAR = -1, terrible (Will Rogers, Mississippi State, -1.28)
- YAR = 1, very good (Matt Corral, Ole Miss, 1.05)
- YAR = 2+, Heisman candidate (Stetson Bennett, Georgia, 2.32)
The following is the top-5 SEC QBs by YAR during this week and then a running tab of where all of the starting SEC QBs stand (minimum 25 combined passing and rushing attempts per game).
Week 1:
Overall:
