Everything’s Made To Be Broken II

Weeden lets one fly against Tulsa

In case you missed it, yesterday we looked at the OSU records within Justin Blackmon’s grasp. Today I want to take a look at what Weeden has at stake.

A few weeks ago I made the case that Weeden is about to have the most spectacular statistical season in school history, eclipsing anything Zac or Gundy ever did and even making his own records from 2010 look paltry.

Last year he pretty much took a dump on everything accomplished in a single season by every other quarterback to ever play at OSU. He broke the attempts and completions records by 25% and 51% respectively. He broke the passing yards record by 36% (context: if someone broke the passing yards record at Texas Tech by 36%, that person would have thrown for 625 yards/game) and the passing touchdowns record by 10% (weak).

Now, to lay aim on two of the sexiest records in college sports for any given school: career passing yards and career passing touchdowns.

1. Zac Robinson (2006-09) 8,317
2. Mike Gundy (1986-89) 7,997
3. Josh Fields (2001-03) 6,090
4. Tone Jones (1993-96) 4,812
5. Brandon Weeden (2008-) 4,533

Jones and Fields are obviously toast, Gundy and Zac will stand until at least November I think but eventually fall. Weeden needs to average just over 291 yards/game (including a bowl game) to catch Zac and given that he averaged 329 a game in his first full year of college football I’d say that’s highly likely.

1. Zac Robinson (2006-09) 66
2. Josh Fields (2001-03) 55
3. Mike Gundy (1986-89) 54
4. Brandon Weeden (2008-) 38

This one is a little bit dicey, but since I think Weeden is going to throw for 40 TDs this year (yeah…I know), I say it falls as well. Unfortunately since Weeden is about the same speed as a three-legged Bullet with arthritis the 88 total TD record Zac set is probably out of the question.

A lot of these career records we’ve been discussing the last few days are pretty poor representations of how effective a given player was for his career. That is, Weeden only gets 25ish games to make his mark specifically because the best quarterback in school history (to that point) was on the field in front of him. What if he’d been around in the mid 90s with Bob Simmons at the helm? I mean aside from Simmons only getting him fifteen throws a game because of our “prolific” running game and all of us wanting to kill him?

I guess the point is: just like advanced stats should be used in addition to traditional stats, traditional stats should absolutely only be used in addition to immeasurable intangibles like anecdotal evidence from the other ten dudes in the huddle with [quarterback X]. To that you might say, “well how are we supposed to determine who the best is if the intangibles are, by definition, immesurable?!?”

And I respond: isn’t that why we spend so much time arguing about sports in the first place?