Tyree Jackson vs UB History

Comparing Tyree apples to apples to past UB QBs is hard. I did it anyway. Tyree had 410 touches, so I compared his first 410 touches to the first 410 touches of Drew Willy Zach Maynard, Alex Zordich, Joe Licata and the 119 touches of Grant Rohach.

I look at 9 key stats for Quarterbacks:

Yards Per Completion - Is the QB dinking and dunking?

• Rohach: 13.65
• Maynard: 12.35
• Licata: 12.00
• Zordich: 11.53
• Jackson: 10.74
• Willy: 9.82

Grant leads in yards per completion, and UB is left to wonder if he could have maintained that pace with a larger sample size. Maynard in unsurprisingly second, and Tyree is not in too bad shape, almost a yard better than Drew Willy.

Yards Per Attempt - Is the QB efficient?

• Rohach: 7.48
• Maynard: 7.16
• Licata: 6.86
• Willy: 5.97
• Jackson: 5.70
• Zordich: 5.58

Again Rohach-Maynard with Licata in third.

Yards Per Dropback - Yards per attempt numbers are inflated for QBs who take sacks rather than throw incomplete passes, yards per drop back solves this by taking sacks into account.

• Maynard: 6.58
• Licata: 6.12
• Rohach: 5.65
• Jackson: 5.33
• Zordich: 4.62
• Willy: 4.47

Willy was sacked a lot, as was Rohach, yet Grant was able to outpace Tyree in Yards per drop back. Again Maynard and Licata are your cream of the crop.

Yards Per Touch - Incorporates QB runs

• Maynard: 6.50
• Licata: 5.95
• Rohach: 5.65
• Jackson: 5.30
• Zordich: 4.96
• Willy: 4.42

Despite comparisons between Zordich and Tyree, Zordich was the only QB to run for more yards per carry than he threw per drop back. No one was worse at running rom the QB spot than Licata.

Dropback per TD (Lower better)

• Licata: 19.35
• Maynard: 20.47
• Zordich: 32.67
• Jackson: 35.67
• Rohach: 48.00
• Willy: 57.67

Licata and Maynard threw TDs the quickest with Zordich and Jackson in the middle, and Rohach and Willy basically incapable of throwing for six.

Touch per TD (Lower better)

• Licata: 19.52
• Maynard: 24.12
• Jackson: 29.29
• Zordich: 34.17
• Willy: 58.57
• Rohach: 59.50

Jackson was the only QB to improve their scoring frequency with their running game. His ability to find the end zone put Tyree close to Maynard in scoring efficiency.

Dropback per INT (Higher better)

• Licata: 55.29
• Rohach: 48.00
• Jackson: 35.67
• Willy: 28.83
• Maynard: 26.77
• Zordich: 22.62

Willy, who would go on to be one of the best at not throwing INTs, threw them more than Jackson, Licata, who struggled with INTs under Leipold in 2015, was the best at preventing interceptions early in his career.

Touch per Turnover (higher better)

• Licata: 41.00
• Jackson: 37.27
• Rohach: 29.75
• Zordich: 25.63
• Willy: 25.63
• Maynard: 24.12

Adding fumbles, Jackson is up there with Licata when it comes to protecting the ball. Zach “Turnover Attack” Maynard shows where the moniker came from.

Sack Rate

• Jackson: 3.12%
• Maynard: 4.31%
• Licata: 5.94%
• Zordich: 7.82%
• Willy: 11.56%
• Rohach: 12.50%

A big question mark will be whether our offensive line was bad, or if we just didn’t run enough, (Jordan Johnson ran for over 5 yards a carry!) and Grant was just real bad in the pocket. Jackson was the best at avoiding sacks, only sacked on 3 percent of drop backs, while Rohach was the worst, sacked 12.5%. Willy who was never much of a runner, became much better in the pocket under Turner Gill, but was a disaster as a freshman under Hofher.

Overall

• Licata: 82.51 percentile
• Maynard: 69.57 percentile
• Rohach: 54.35 percentile
• Jackson: 52.17 percentile
• Zordich: 30.43 percentile
• Willy: 19.57 percentile

On a percentile basis, Licata was the best we’ve had, and Jackson and Rohach were each in the 50% range.

Rohach’s passing numbers give you some pause about not giving him more time to play at Buffalo, however, even with the small sample size, he was only just a bit better than Jackson. As Jackson is the future, I believe the decision to play Jackson was a good decision.

The ultimate bright side is Willy, either the best or second best quarterback in UB’s modern era, was the worst QB we’ve seen through 410 touches. Which means maybe it’s not time for detailed analysis of Jackson...

Willy saw a breakthrough when a new coach entered the scene, Turner Gill, and really excelled once Danny Barrett became the QB coach (Barrett coached Lativius Murray at UCF and now Jay Ajayi in Miami, funny breakthroughs seem to follow him).

We saw the opposite impact on Joe Licata under the Lance Leipold/Andy Kotelnicki regime. So the main question will be is our current staff the people that will develop Jackson into the next star QB, will they waste his talent, or does someone else need to come in and help Jackson take his game to the next level?