This One's For You, Brian

In the last edition of Duds and Studs, the Nasties judged Clausen's performance somewhere between the two: not quite duddly, but not quite studly. One of our loyal readers challenged us on this issue, and it caused me to contemplate the quarterback situation as I have never contemplated it before.

Coming off of two seasons of high octane offense led by a future first round draft pick and Heisman finalist, I seemed to have forgoten what it was like to develop a young quarterback. After seeing so many rookie quarterbacks struggle in the NFL the last few seasons, it amazes me that I hadn't made the connection that adjusting from high school to college must possess similar challenges.

With these thoughts in mind, I whipped out my pocket calculator and set out to compile some statistics with another Notre Dame quarterback who saw playing time as a freshman. The statistics are from each quarterback's first 8 games (except for one of Brady's*).

Also, the stats I was using didn't have a QB rating for Brady, but according to a und.com article, Brady had a 93.53 rating after 9 games and Clausen had 98.77 after 7. Anyone can put together a simple table in Excel, but in order to take full advantage of my incredibly difficult integrated applications course I took in high school, I thought I should display some of the data in a more visual way, using an appealing orange and brown for Brady and a traditional blue and gold for JC:
A couple things jump out:

1. Brady threw the ball on average about 10 more times per game, and this partly contributed to Quinn averaging about 60 more yards per game (167 to 108).

2. One of Brady's outlier games included 59 attempts for 297 yards against Purdue in his third game, but he threw only 1 TD and 4 INTs in a 23-10 loss. His other came against BC, where he threw the ball 39 times for 350 yards, 2 TDs and 2 INTs in a 27-25 loss.

3. Ignoring those two games, Clausen's yards per game were more or less statistically indifferent even though Quinn was throwing the ball more. This especially makes sense when comparing Jimmy's 57% completion rate to Quinn's 45%.

Summary:
It's official, I have let the emotional student fan in myself completely bias my opinion of Jimmy Clausen, and I apologize for being so harsh before looking at the numbers. The most underrated part of his performance appears to be his efficiency, averaging just over 36 attempts per interception (compared with Brady's 22), which is even more startling when considering that Quinn's offense was able to average over 170 rush yards a game (41 yards this year) and had been sacked half a frequently as Clausen. It's hard not to criticize the quarterback when the team is 1-9, but these numbers indicate that Jimmy may eventually live up to the promised hype that surrounded him. Let's hope for the best.