The Luke Falk Stat Machine: Boise State Edition

Well, last week was no fun, but Luke Falk still did what he does. He completed 80 percent of his passes for 418 yards at 8.2 yards per attempt. The completion percentage and yards per attempt beat his 2015 average by 11 percent and 1.1 yards respectively. It’s likely that the Cougs will need another balling out type performance from Falk to pull the upset in Boise.

To that end, this week’s version of the stat machine takes a look at how Falk would perform if he plays to his averages over the last 14 games, or if he plays to Boise State’s.

Before we get to dreaming and playing around with stats, I wanted to drop in a couple nuggets about the Boise State pass defense. The most pass attempts the Broncos faced last season was 51 vs. UNLV, and the WSU offense averaged 56 per game in 2015. Last season BSU was 58th in S&P+ against the pass, which puts them right around Stanford at 57th and Oregon at 61st. However, on passing downs, which Football Outsiders defines as 2nd down with 8-plus yards to go or 3rd/4th down with 5-plus yards to go, they ranked 91st in S&P+. Hopefully Boise State’s struggles on passing downs in 2015 translate into Falk trending more toward his 5 touchdown 0 interception performance vs Oregon rather than his stat line vs the Cardinal.

The left side of the chart below has Falk’s average stat line for his last 14 games; the right side is Boise State’s opponents’ passing stat line over that same span. You can adjust the numbers depending on how you think each unit will do and the stat line will update.

How do you think Falk performs Saturday and what stat line are you projecting?