First, Ted Miller rolled out this year’s official tally of returning starters. If you don’t want to click over, here’s the cut-n-paste job from ESPN:
PAC-10 RETURNING STARTERS
| Team | Offense | Defense | Punter/kicker | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Washington | 10 | 7 | 2 | 19 |
| Oregon | 9 | 8 | 1 | 18 |
| Oregon State | 8 | 7 | 2 | 17 |
| Stanford | 8 | 7 | 2 | 17 |
| California | 8 | 6 | 2 | 16 |
| Washington State | 8 | 6 | 2 | 16 |
| Arizona | 8 | 4 | 2 | 14 |
| UCLA | 7 | 5 | 2 | 14 |
| USC | 6 | 6 | 1 | 13 |
| Arizona State | 3 | 4 | 2 | 9 |
| Average | 7.5 | 6 | 2 | 15.3 |
- Of those returning starters, there are nine first-team and nine second-team 2009 All-Pac honorees.
- Seven teams have returning starters at QB. Only Arizona State, Oregon and Oregon State will have new starting QBs.
- 16 of the 23 leaders in the individual statistical categories are back.
Phil Steele has been on this kind of thing for a while, looking beyond just returning starters. Instead, he’s looked at the two-deeps, but also weighs out the sheer number of returning lettermen to try and formulate a thorough picture of the year ahead. What does it all mean? What did Steele find? Read on….
First, some history. Some very good teams in the last decade have returned very few starters from the prior year. And conversely, some very good teams in the last decade have returned a ton of starters, and not lived up to the hype for that season. Per our own Bloguin.com blog, an Oklahoma site called BlatantHomerism.com, they found the following examples:
Ohio State – Won the 2002 National Championship, topping Miami in the Fiesta Bowl in overtime. The following year, 2003, the Buckeyes brought back a ton of starters, up to six more than the 2002 team, but they didn’t even win the Big 10 (however, it wasn’t like they were a complete failure – they did go 11-2 with a Fiesta Bowl championship! Not too shabby. But a loss to Michigan killed their title hopes).
UCLA – Coming off a 7-6 campaign in ’06, including an upset of USC to knock the Trojans out of the title game, the Bruins brought back TWENTY starters for 2007. Everyone was singing their praises, and even Matt Hayes of the Sporting News declared that the Bruins could make some serious noise that year. The end result? A 6-7 record, and the end of the Karl Dorrell era.
The flip side:
USC – The Trojans would lose just one game in ’03, but things looked uncertain heading into ’04, as SC would return just nine starters. The result? 13-0, a National Championship blowout over Oklahoma, and a team regarded as one of the best of the modern era!
But Phil Steele takes it several steps further, and actually comes up with a “Experience Points” system to project success. Here’s what Steele looks at to come up with his experience points.
1) Senior returning starters.
2) Seniors listed as backups in the two-deep roster.
3) Senior experience points.
4) Percentage of returning lettermen from the prior year.
6) Total number of tackles returning.
7) Career starts from the returning offensive linemen.
For the experience points, what Steele does is take all the categories and come up with a point system between 100 and 0. 100 would be the ideal scenario: 25 seniors in the two-deep’s, 100% returning offense, 100% returning tackles, and 120+ career o-line starts. 0 would be, well, 0 across the board: 0 seniors in the two-deep’s, 0% returning offense and tackles, 0 career o-line starts.
Now, Steele’s chart for the entire country can be found here, but I’ll show the Pac-10 teams ranked 1-10 for your enjoyment:
| Rk | Team | Exp Pts | Total Strs | Senior 2 Deep | Senior Exp Pts | % LTR Return | % YDS Return | % TKL Return | OL Car Sts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Washington | 76.6 | 8 | 5 | 75 | 72.5% | 99.1% | 72.5% | 88 |
| 2 | Oregon | 73.6 | 12 | 4 | 73 | 71.9% | 86.2% | 78.7% | 85 |
| 3 | WSU | 71.0 | 10 | 5 | 71 | 71.4% | 72.3% | 72.1% | 85 |
| 4 | CAL | 68.3 | 8 | 7 | 73 | 75.3% | 75.7% | 65.3% | 70 |
| 5 | Stanford | 66.6 | 11 | 5 | 74 | 72.9% | 71.6% | 60.6% | 66 |
| 6 | Arizona | 65.2 | 10 | 6 | 75 | 73.4% | 91.5% | 39.1% | 71 |
| 7 | Oregon St | 62.2 | 10 | 5 | 70 | 77.3% | 54.7% | 68.5% | 74 |
| 8 | UCLA | 60.6 | 3 | 4 | 54 | 65.2% | 68.2% | 52.2% | 92 |
| 9 | USC | 58.6 | 10 | 5 | 68 | 67.5% | 62.7% | 61.1% | 59 |
| 10 | ASU | 42.3 | 4 | 4 | 67 | 70.8% | 25.8% | 53.4% | 47 |
1) UW and Arizona bring back the most offense from last year, both over the 90% threshold.
2) On the flip side for Arizona, they bring back the fewest percentage of tackles from last year. You can see why the experts are concerned about their defensive shortcomings.
3) And of course, you can see why Oregon was picked by the media to win the Pac-10. Most senior starters, and 16 total seniors in starters and backups, tied for most in the conference. But they also bring back the most defense, with the highest percentage of tackles from last year.
4) ASU is REALLY inexperienced! Just eight seniors among the starters and backups, and the fewest yards returning. And the O-line brings back just 47 career starts, by far the fewest in the conference.
5) UCLA is the least experienced among senior starters and backups, just seven overall. They also return the second-fewest tackles from last year. But in a weird twist, they bring back the most career starts among offensive linemen!
Finally, for our Cougs – not looking too bad is it? 15 seniors among starters and backups, tied for 2nd in the conference. 85 career O-line starts, tied for 3rd. 72.1% total returning tackles, tied for 3rd. And overall, ranked third with 71 experience points.
Oh yeah, one more thing – for what it’s worth, the #120-ranked team in the nation under this formula? Oklahoma State, with just 33.8 experience points. The same Oklahoma State that WSU opens with on 9/4.
So, all that out of the way, is this system all that accurate? Well, Steele rolled these experience charts out last year, prior to the ’09 season, for the first time ever. How did it play out in the Pac-10?
First some hits:
- Stanford, UW and UCLA were 1-2-3 in experience points in ’09, and all three teams improved – Stanford from five to eight wins, UW from zero to five wins, UCLA from four to seven wins.
- USC and ASU were 7th and 8th, and both teams were down in ’09 – USC from 12 wins to 9, and ASU from five wins to four.
Now some misses:
- Arizona was sixth in experience points, but they were one of the surprise teams of ’09, holding the line at eight wins but finishing tied for second and getting the Holiday Bowl bid.
- And the HUGE misses?? How about the last two teams in the experience points system, ninth-ranked Oregon State and tenth-ranked Oregon! Yeah, both those teams actually played for the Rose Bowl bid! In fact, Oregon only had eight seniors among the starters and backups, the fewest of any Pac-10 team last year, and an unbelievable 20 career starts from their o-line. And the Beavs had just 10 seniors among starters and backups, second fewest in the conference, as well as just 37 career o-line starts, again the second fewest in the conference.
Anyway, the bottom line? Take all these returning starters and backups and all the returning percentages with a boulder-sized grain of salt. You still have to see how it all comes together, and no matter how things might look in the preseason, there aren’t any guarantees whatsoever. You just don’t know about who and how hard the injury bug will bite, but you know it’s going to nail teams across the country. But still, I guess all this is an interesting look beyond the usual returning starters argument….right?!?!
That’s it for now. Enjoy your day, and GO COUGS!
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