Wisconsin QB Russell Wilson will enter the 98th Rose Bowl game with a passer rating of 191.6.
I bring this up because Heisman Trophy winner Robert Griffin III just finished the 2011 season (including the wild Alamo Bowl win) with a pass efficiency of 189.5, which broke the FBS (previously known as college football Division-1A) single season record formerly held by Hawaii’s Colt Brennan.
I think we can officially call this the year of quarterbacking statistics.
Drew Brees just broke Dan Marino’s single season passing yardage record; which dated back to 1984. The Patriots Tom Brady could also pass Marino’s mark, but surpassing Brees would require a lot of unlikely things to happen. Three more quarterbacks could find themselves within a hundred yards or so of Marino’s 5,084 by the time 2011 is through.
And Houston’s Case Keenum broke the college career passing yards, TD passes and completions record earlier this season. Back to this statistic:
The stat is called Passer rating in the NFL; passing efficiency or pass efficiency at the college level. Passer rating is calculated using each quarterback’s completion percentage, passing yardage, touchdowns and interceptions.
I’m not going to even begin to try and describe the computations, but if you want to see the actual formulae go here. The calculation for college ball is far more simpler, and I assume that has something to do with why it seems to be light years more lenient. But I guess that’s all relative and subjective. if you learned the college formula first.
A perfect passer rating in the NFL is 158.3. A perfect passing efficiency in college football is 1261.6 I think that numerical disparity says it all.
Anyways, it will be interesting to watch RussellMania’s numbers on Monday afternoon, just like we’ll be paying extra attention to Montee Ball getting that 39th touchdown of the 2011 year to tie the record held by Barry Sanders.
Wilson enters the game already having broke one record- he has a current streak of 38 straight games with a TD pass. That’s a very special page to be added to the Rose Bowl history book; potentially.
Paul M. Banks is CEO of The Sports Bank.net, an official Google News site generating millions of unique visitors. He’s also a regular contributor to Chicago Now, Walter Football.com, Yardbarker, and Fox Sports
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