The Jump

There's an old coaching adage that says "the biggest difference is made between year one and two." Michigan fans saw that with the Wolverines offense this past season, as it performed extremely well in some games, and still not quite good enough in others.

More importantly though, this coming season will be the second season for Tate Forcier. Now, don't take this as me counting out Denard Robinson or Devin Gardner to win the quarterback job. But if everything goes as planned, Forcier should be the starter when the fall rolls around. Tate will have another full spring and fall camp to continue to work on his mechanics, the playbook, and the other nuances of the quarterback position.

So how much of a jump will he make?

First, I'm going to take a look at a few quarterbacks here in the Big Ten for comparison. The first graph is comprehensive of all the players first years starting (some redshirted or didn't play right away). The second is of course, their second year.












Nothing too surprising here. Daryll Clark have a very good year, while Juice Williams was very raw coming out of high school and basically a better runner than a passer. Pryor's rating is a little high considering he didn't throw many passes, and the low interception rate.












Now taking a look at the second graph, we see widespread improvement in a lot of areas. Every player listed increased their total completions, attempts, and yards thrown. There were touchdown jumps for a number of players, with Ben Chappel tacking on 13 to his past season's work. The only concerning thing as a fan for me is the number of interceptions. Stanzi, Chappel, and Pryor all made big jumps in throwing picks.

Stanzi and Pryor were the only ones who didn't increase their passer rating. That doesn't meant they didn't advance as quarterbacks.. that just means their coaches opened the playbook more and they threw more passes, (and in the case of Stanzi.. a lot more intercepted passes).

So what does this mean for Tate? Last season he completed 58.7% of his passes for 2,005 yards, with 13 touchdowns and 10 interceptions, with a 128.5 QB rating. Overall, pretty consistent with the numbers we've seen from Big Ten quarterbacks. With another year in the system under his belt though, Tate should experience a solid jump in accuracy, yards, and touchdowns. With more of the playbook open to him, don't be surprised to see him throw the ball a little more often, and hopefully that will include more of the vertical passing game.

With steady improvement at the quarterback position, that could mean the difference between 5 wins and 7 or 8 wins for Michigan this coming season. The pieces are finally there on offense, for the most part. And with quarterback being such a vital position, it's going to be the last piece of the puzzle (aside from the defense) for Michigan to go bowling once more.

I wouldn't be surprised if Forcier ends up in the top 3-4 quarterbacks in the league, considering Daryll Clark and Mike Kafka both graduate. If Ricky Stanzi can lower his interceptions, I'd say Scott Tolzien, Stanzi, maybe Kirk Cousins, and Tate Forcier are the top 4 quarterbacks in the Big Ten. But that day is still far away.. so we'll have to wait and see!