Each week, fans eagerly await the Game Notes to be published, so they can see who the anticipated starters will be - "Has the dreaded OR battle for QB1 been decided yet?". I recently started paying more attention to the Participation section of the final Box Score. In addition to the starter and backup, I wanted to see who else played. Who else was gaining experience, especially for the upcoming years. To understand the following tables, let's take George Wolo as an example The "gp / gs" column simply means that he played in a total of "4" games so far, and he started "1" of them. Next, in the NIU column, the "3" means that he was not listed on the depth chart. And, the "p" means that he was a participant. Moving to the Kent game, the "1" means that he was listed as the expected starter, and the "S" means that he did in fact start.

Sometimes an established starter gets forced to the sidelines for a week or more. Their first action back may be in a limited role at the end of the game. Technically they would receive a "3 / p" rating. To be clear, these previous starters have been removed from this exercise. What we're left with, is The Third String. The first table shows what we have so far this year.

It seems that the defensive line has been getting the most rotation, and perhaps stayed the freshest on the field. For comparison, the following chart shows data from last season. Of course with so many more games, there was more opportunity to give a wider range of players a chance to see the field.

This time, perhaps due to the length of a typical season, the ratio of offense to defense is basically equal. I wondered if there would be any trend aligned with either close games, or wider margins of victory, or defeat. Although I couldn't find any, perhaps you see something you'd like to point out? As stated earlier though, this was just an attempt to see who is getting experience for future years.