Blackwell's QB EPA Rankings, week 2

In football, individual players produce in a lot of ways. They rush and pass and catch and tackle and sack and fumble and get first downs and score touchdowns and kick field goals, etc. But as with teams, all that really matters is points. Expected Points Added looks at the points a team can expect to score before a play occurs and the points after the and subtracts the difference to see how points the play, and the players involved in the played, contributed. 

Each week, Brent Blackwell pours through thousands of plays to calculate EPAs and NEPAs* for hundreds of college football quarterbacks and running backs. Throughout the season, we will be ranking these players by their EPA contribution. As the season progresses, we hope to also include rankings for EPA per play and conference rankings. These rankings include all games through week 2.

A Texas Tech quarterback tops the rankings. This is most notable because Tubberville is now the man in charge there and not Leach (who does not have a quarterback in the top 100 after getting manhandled by his alma mater in week 1). Tech is scoring over 50 points per game, Doege has thrown for over 300 yards in the last two and has a QB rating over 200 in both games. The going will begin to get tougher this week, though, when he faces an Iowa St team that has a 48% completion percentage against.

Arizona St's Taylor Kelly, not to be confused with Kelly Taylor, is second in EPA (but significantly down the list in NEPA). He is fourth nationally in yards per attempt and led the Sun Devils to 108 points in their first two games.

A number of big names fall in the 5-11 range: Tyler Bray, Tyler Wilson (who will probably benefit from missing the Alabama game), Matt Barkley, Collin Klein, Braxton Miller. David Ash for Texas at 14 is a bit of an eye opener - quarterback play has helped hold the Longhorns back since Colt left. Zach Mettenberger and Aaron Murray fall just behind Missouri's second quarterback, Corbin Berkstresser, at 61st and 62nd. 

*NEPA is net expected points added. It includes both the points the team can expect to score on this possession and also the points their opponent can expect to score on their next possession.