Tag: ratings

Pete Carmichael was one of the NFL’s worst offensive play callers, says analyst

The bar isn’t very high for Klint Kubiak. He’s replacing Pete Carmichael, who this analyst says was one of the NFL’s worst offensive play callers in 2023:

Three of the NFL’s four worst play callers worked in the NFC South last year, according to research from pro football analyst Steven Patton. That includes former New Orleans Saints offensive coordinator Pete Carmichael, who was dismissed after the season. He’s expected to be replaced by San Francisco 49eres passing game specialist Klint Kubiak, who is unallowed to sign a contract until after Super Bowl LVIII.

Patton’s methodology considered “personnel and market efficiency with team constraints” which reflects performance relative to other teams facing the same opponents and key players missing due to injury or suspension. And Carmichael ended the 2023 season with the third-worst rating; only ex-Carolina Panthers offensive coordinator Thomas Brown (hired by the Chicago Bears for 2024) and recently-fired Atlanta Falcons head coach Arthur Smith (picked up by the Pittsburgh Steelers) ranked lower.

Carmichael struggled to adapt the Sean Payton offense to modern times. He was too slow to add motion to the offense and took too long to emphasize the play action passes that Derek Carr thrived with throughout his Raiders career. The Saints were too predictable in their personnel, often keying in opposing defenses to whether the play was a run or pass by relying too hard on blocking specialists at wide receiver. A bigger problem than that was predictability in their formations; New Orleans only rarely threw out of running looks and vice versa, giving Alvin Kamara too few light boxes to run against.

Hopefully Kubiak can liven things up in 2024. The Saints are betting that he learned a lot from his year in San Francisco working under Kyle Shanahan (who, Patton says, was the league’s fourth-best play caller on offense) and his previous experience calling plays for the Minnesota Vikings (in 2021) and Denver Broncos (during six games in 2022). And the good news is the bar isn’t too high in New Orleans. If Kubiak can stay about the bottom-tier he’ll be an improvement over past results. Obviously the Saints are betting he’ll do much better than that.

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Notre Dame Football: Early enrollee earns fifth star

Well earned although they should have given him it a while ago…

One of the prized jewels of the 2024 recruiting class for Notre Dame has earned a fifth star in his recruiting rankings according to Rivals.

Linebacker [autotag]Kyngstonn Viliamu-Asa[/autotag], who enrolled at Notre Dame as a part of the 2024 recruiting class earlier this month, was given the fifth star by Rivals on Monday.

From the Rivals writeup:

For a long time, the people at powerhouse Bellflower (Calif.) St. John Bosco said Kyngstonn Viliamu-Asa could end up as the best defensive player in program history, and the Notre Dame signee has proven it time and again.

He’s mature and serious about what he wants to accomplish on and off the field. Viliamu-Asa goes out and delivers every single time. Whether he’s blitzing, dropping in coverage or running sideline-to-sideline, the five-star linebacker can do it all. He could be special in South Bend.

That’s great that he earned the fifth star I suppose. When we look back at ratings in the years to come we can say Notre Dame landed a five-star talent in the recruiting class, and he finished 19th overall in the Rivals ratings.

Getting excited about this is a bit weird to me, though. If you’ve been paying attention, you’re well aware Viliamu-Asa is a mega-talented recruit regardless of whether he had a fifth star by his name.

Notre Dame Football: Best Offensive Players of 2023 Ranked 1-15

Which grades surprise you the most?

Notre Dame’s offense in 2023 goes down as one of the most successful in program history by a numbers standpoint.  By a viewers standpoint they were also towards the top of the list of being the most frustrating we’ve ever seen.

Great against poor competition while seemingly unprepared for the likes of Ohio State, Louisville, and Clemson.

So from a completely emotion-less perspective, who had the best seasons on Notre Dame’s offense?  And who left a decent amount to be desired?

Pro Football Focus has their grades for Notre Dame’s entire roster for 2023.  We went through and found the 15 offensive players they ranked the highest for their performances in 2023.  See who made the top 15 below.

Players included in this top 15 had to have played a minimum of 100 snaps on offense in 2023.

Pac-12 closes with highest-rated game in conference history with Oregon vs. Washington

Pac-12 closes with highest-rated game in conference history with Oregon vs. Washington

With numbers like these, it’s still a wonder why this conference couldn’t find a television deal in order to keep the lights on.

ABC announced Saturday morning that it drew an average of 9.2 million viewers for the Pac-12 championship game where Washington defeated Oregon 34-31. It was the largest rating for the game since its inception.

The rating is 47 percent more than last year’s game where Utah beat USC 47-24, a game that was televised by Fox. At its peak in the middle of the second half, 11.1 million viewers were tuning into the last-ever Pac-12 football contest.

Unfortunately, it really was the last Pac-12 game as the conference couldn’t get any network to buy into the league. Ironically, this might have been the Pac-12’s finest season with two playoff contenders, two Heisman contenders and it was perhaps the deepest league in the country, even better than the mighty SEC.

For a finale, the Ducks and Huskies put on a good show where the game went down to the wire.

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NBC Sports claims best IndyCar season audience in 12 years

NBC Sports has tallied its year-to-year television and streaming metrics for the NTT IndyCar Series, and says the audience that watched across all of its platforms was the largest since the 2011 season. Measured against its numbers from 2022, it …

NBC Sports has tallied its year-to-year television and streaming metrics for the NTT IndyCar Series, and says the audience that watched across all of its platforms was the largest since the 2011 season. Measured against its numbers from 2022, it secured a two-percent gain in Total Audience Delivery (TAD).

“Headlined by Alex Palou’s second career series championship and Josef Newgarden’s Indy 500 victory, [NBC] averaged a TAD of 1.32 million viewers across NBC, USA Network, Peacock and NBC Sports digital platforms,” NBC Sports noted in announcing the numbers. “This ranks as the most-watched season for the IndyCar Series since 2011 (1.39 million viewers, NBCSN/ABC) and the best in NBC Sports history, up 2% vs. last year’s then-record viewership (1.30 million viewers, NBC/USA Network/NBC Sports Digital). TAD is based on data from Nielsen and Adobe Analytics.

“Half of the season’s 16 races on television delivered a TAD of more than 1 million viewers, tying last year for the highest mark since 2008. NBC’s 13 races posted a TAD of 1.47 million viewers, up 4% vs. last year’s coverage on NBC (1.42 million, 14 races).”

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Two other metrics of interest were also reported by NBC.

“Overall viewership was led by the 107th running of the Indianapolis 500, which delivered a TAD of 4.93 million viewers across NBC and Peacock. The race also had a 13 share (percentage of homes watching television at the time of the race), its best in 15 years (2008; 13 share),” NBC Sports’ release noted.

“Led by comprehensive streaming coverage on Peacock, including the platform’s exclusive presentation of the Honda Indy Toronto on July 16, the 2023 season ranked as the most-streamed IndyCar season on record with an Average Minute Audience (AMA) of 58,000 viewers, up 15% vs. 2022.”

College football rankings: 247Sports Releases Team Composite Rankings for 2023

It’s not X’s and O’s, it’s Jimmy’s and Joe’s!

In college football a ton is made about playcalling and offensive and defensive schemes.  As the saying goes though, “It’s not X’s and O’s, it’s Jimmy’s and Joe’s!”

That’s the purpose behind the annual 247Sports Team Composite Rankings.  It bases its ranking on the entire rosters, including transfers, and eliminates those dismissed and other early exits.

The number takes the rostered players based off their high school recruiting rankings and compiles each team’s total score before the year.

As you’d expect, most of the key figures find their way towards to the top.  However, it wasn’t Georgia in the top spot and the two-time reigning Big Ten champions barely squeaked in the top 15.

Notre Dame checked in 11th, one spot ahead of a rival that hasn’t performed like a top 12 team anytime recently.

Here are the entire 247Sports Team Composite Rankings for 2023 from No. 40-No. 1.

ESPN FPI Rankings Updated: Notre Dame leapfrogs pair of ’23 opponents

Irish on the move!

Only a handful of teams played during college football’s Week 0 to kickstart the 2023 season, but one was certainly impressive to the computers.

Notre Dame, who dominated Navy 42-3 in Ireland, was impressive to anyone who watched and to ESPN’s Football Power Index formula as well.  With the win Notre Dame moved from No. 10 to No. 7 in the weekly ratings.

By moving up three spots the Irish also passed a pair of teams they’ll see later in the season – both Clemson and USC who now check in at No.8 and No. 9 respectively.

Check out how ESPN FPI ranks all of the top 40 teams and where five of Notre Dame’s opponents for 2023 rank this week below.

Notre Dame football: Former Irish player ratings for Madden ’24

What year Madden was the first you remember playing?

It’ll be another year until EA Sports releases the college football video game again but we’re quickly approaching the release of Madden ’24 for fans of the NFL game.  As the countdown for football is on, the countdown to Madden’s release is celebrated annually as players and gamers alike take note of the ratings that each player gets.

The player ratings have been updated and we decided to go through and find everyone that played college football at Notre Dame to see what they were rated as for the 2024 game.  Below are the rankings we found, sorted from lowest to highest:

Packers QB Jordan Love is 70 overall in ‘Madden NFL 24’

Packers QB Jordan Love is 70 overall at launch in “Madden NFL 24.” He ranks tied for 33rd among all quarterbacks. Ouch.

Green Bay Packers quarterback Jordan Love won’t start out as a great virtual passer in “Madden NFL 24,” the new video game from EA Sports.

Love, the first-year starter for the Packers, is a 70 overall in the launch ratings.

Love has 90 throwing power, 81 speed, 85 acceleration, 67 awareness, 73 break sack, 82 throw under pressure, 84 short accuracy, 79 medium accuracy, 79 deep accuracy, 83 throw on the run and 80 play action.

At 70 overall, Love ranks tied for 33rd among all quarterbacks.

Madden just doesn’t have much to work with from an evaluation standpoint. Love has made one NFL start and thrown 83 regular-season passes (that said, rookie Anthony Richardson is also a 70 overall). The Packers’ new starting quarterback will have a chance to make a big jump, especially virtually, if he’s solid during the 2023 season.

The Packers backups? Even worse. Sean Clifford is a 59 overall, while Danny Etling is a 48 overall (Note: Etling’s rating looks wrong compared to his overall stats and an adjustment could be coming). Alex McGough is not on the Packers virtual roster as of Friday.

Madden 24 player ratings for former Georgia football safeties, WRs

Here are Madden 24 ratings for former Georgia Bulldog safeties, WRs

EA Sports’ Madden 2024 is releasing player ratings ahead of the game’s roll-out scheduled for Aug. 18.

Former Georgia Bulldog safeties Lewis Cine, Christopher Smith, Mark Webb Jr., Richard LeCounte and wide receivers George Pickens, Mecole Hardman, Isaiah McKenzie and Chris Conley already have their ratings set ahead of the 2023 season.

Here are their ratings: