Spencer Rattler just put together one of the best freshman seasons for an Oklahoma quarterback in recent memory, but there may be reason to believe that his heroic debut was even better than it seemed.
There are a number of ways to measure a quarterback’s performance, but two of the best emerging methods are known as expected points added (EPA) and completion percentage above expected (CPOE). Both are explained at the bottom of this post. I’ve plotted both for all power five quarterbacks with at least 250 plays in 2020 below:
Rattler ranks solidly above-average in both, but remains pretty clearly behind the top tier, consisting of Mac Jones, Kyle Trask, Justin Fields and Matt Corral.
But as we know, not all teams are created equal, and these quarterbacks each played on vastly different teams. This is particularly relevant for Rattler, whose offensive line and receivers went through their fair share of struggles in 2020.
The remainder of this article will focus on quantifying the performance of each team’s supporting cast and comparing that to each quarterback’s efficiency numbers.