Phil Steele's fuzzy math

by Mike Breese on May 7, 2010 7:54 AM CDT in Football

It's only a month away from the release of Phil Steele's college football preview and he's started to release tidbits of information on his blog, like he does every year. The first one he's doing is % of yards returning and here's how he calculates the numbers:

Today I want to look at the % of yards returning for the offenses. I took all of the yards each QB threw for as well as all of the individual rushing yards and receiving yards for each team. I then took all of the returning yards from ‘09 for the percentage.

For some reason, NIU's percentage is disturbingly low for the amount of talent that we are returning back on offense for 2010

104

N Illinois

MAC

39.46%

Let's try and do the math ourselves: 2,537 rushing + 1,950 passing + 1,950 receiving + 224 punt returns + 1,160 kickoff returns = 7,821 net all-purpose yards.

Now let's take a look at All Purpose Yards Not Returning:

RB Me'co Brown, 726 yds (9.3%)
WR Marcus Lewis, 299 yds (3.8%)
RB Justin Anderson, 151 yds (1.9%)
TE Reed Cunningham, 70 yds (0.9%)
TE Bryan Beckner, 64 yds (0.8%)
KR John Tranchitella, 63 yds (0.8%)
WR Preston Williams, 14 yds (0.2%)
KR Jason Onyebuagu, 7 yds (0.1%)
PR John Kremer, -1 yds (-0.01%)
QB Ryan Morris, -22 yds (-0.3%)

The total is 1,371

1,371 divided by 7,821 = 17.53% yds lost.

Or 6,450 (82.47%) of NIU's total yards will be returning in 2010

Could he have not counted on Chandler Harnish returning in the fall because of his injury? How much does he count for in the scheme of things?

QB Chandler Harnish, 1,670 yds passing + 229 yds rushing = 1,899 all purpose yardage (24.28%)

Even if you don't factor in Harnish, that still puts the Huskies at 58.19% returning yardage.

As you can see, the correct total would put us at 4th in the MAC and 39th in the nation:

Nat’l Rank	Team	% Total Yds Ret
18	Temple	90.77%
19	Kent St	90.54%
27	Ball St	87.76%
48	Miami Oh	77.75%
54	E Michigan	74.81%
80	Akron	58.15%
98	Toledo	45.48%
101	Ohio University	41.33%
104	W Michigan	39.46%
104	N Illinois	39.46%
114	C Michigan	31.35%
116	Buffalo	27.52%
120	Bowling Green	21.90%

Somehow, over 3,000 yds got lost in the shuffle when he was calculating this out. I sent an e-mail to Phil about his miscalculations, but he still hasn't gotten back to me.

Now, with everyone returning, how much better will this version of the Huskie offense be than last years?

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