Edit Craig: Great work here posted late last night. Bumped to the front page because it provides some excellent and interesting data.
We have all heard it by now, the collective thought that Tuel holds onto the ball too long. To look into this more closely, I decided to watch the game and chart how long Tuel and Halliday held onto the ball each time he dropped back to pass. Additionally, I charted how long each throw traveled in distance, because the other thought is that Tuel holds onto the ball and just ends up hitting his check down. Here were the results:
| Jeff Tuel | Time (Seconds) | Distance (Yards) | Connor Halliday | Time | Distance |
| 6.8 | No Throw | 2.5 | 16 | ||
| 1.3 | 4 | 2 | 4 | ||
| 3.3 | 10 | 2.9 | 20 | ||
| 5 | No Throw | 1.7 | 5 | ||
| 4.9 | 15 | 3.6 | 15 | ||
| 1.5 | -1 | 4 | 27 | ||
| 3.7 | 5 | 1.8 | -2 | ||
| 4.8 | 17 | 3.8 | 17 | ||
| 3.3 | 8 | 2.7 | 15 | ||
| 3.1 | 10 | 3.1 | 36 | ||
| 6.5 | 6 | 1.4 | 7 | ||
| 1.5 | 0 | 1.1 | 2 | ||
| 2.7 | 5 | 2.9 | 8 | ||
| 2.1 | 4 | 3.4 | 30 | ||
| 6.7 | No Throw | ||||
| 3.8 | 32 | ||||
| 7.2 | No Throw | ||||
| 4.8 | 18 | ||||
| 6.1 | 50 | ||||
| 1.7 | 1 | ||||
| 3.7 | -2 | ||||
| 2.9 | 20 | ||||
| 4.5 | 20 | ||||
| 4 | 1 | ||||
| 2.1 | 1 | ||||
| 1.8 | -1 | ||||
| 3.4 | 11 | ||||
| 2 | 0 | ||||
| 3.4 | 6 | ||||
| 4.7 | No Throw | ||||
| 2.4 | 3 | ||||
| Average | 4.37 | 7.84 | 2.63 | 14.28 |
Forgive me if that formatting is a bit sloppy, as I am not an expert at this. (Edit Mark: Formatting is fixed) But there you go, you guys get the general idea.
Some might say that there are some outliers, but for every time Tuel held onto the ball there too long there was a screen pass called. The no throws hurt Jeff, but that was canceled out with a 50 yard throw downfield that overthrew the nearest receiver by 10 yards.
I find it very concerning that Tuel holds onto the ball over a second and a half longer than Halliday on average. I went into this expecting tenths of a second to be the difference, because even that is a large difference. When you're holding the ball for so long, that signals one of two things, neither of them are good. 1) Tuel isn't making the correct reads or 2) Tuel isn't trusting his reads. I think it's more of the latter, which is better than him not seeing the defense.
The yards per drop back is interesting as well. It's not necessarily meaningful that Connor throws it twice as far on average, we all know that's his MO, but the 7.838 indicates to me that Tuel is settling for the check down fairly frequently, which would line up with the amount of time he holds onto the ball.
What does it mean? Maybe nothing, but I think it means that we will see an offense that is much more explosive and in rhythm with Connor running the offense on Friday, which will also be aided by the fact that UNLV is atrocious. To me, that means we could see an interesting chain of events evolve at the QB position over the next month or so.
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