PART II: GRADING BRYAN STINESPRING
One thing we did a little differently this season as compared to last here at FBS was include a weekly poll where you, faithful reader, could express your own opinion and give your own feedback about Stinespring's performance within very specific, rigidly set parameters.
The "Grade Stiney's performance" poll was very popular, and I personally enjoyed reading comments explaining why a particular person had given Stiney a particular grade that week, and what would have had to happen for Stiney to ever earn a higher grade. Some weeks the poll was hotter than others, with the very first poll of the season following the Alabama game getting well over 1000 responses. Others limped their way to a couple of hundred clicks. Obviously there wasn't quite so much activity following a Hokies win with good offensive production. (I think I heard a few crickets chirp around here following the BC game.)
The "grade Stiney" setup was pretty straightforward. We used VT's gradepoint scale (which is somewhat unconventional among collegiate scales, using the +/- system), and converted each week's poll results to the nearest letter grade. We then averaged all the games played so far into Stiney's season average.
The results are in: Stiney got a C-.
A f--king C-? Are you f--king kidding me??? Bryan Stinespring is a slightly below average offensive coordinator?
Something just didn't smell right, as evidenced by the fact that in this weeks poll, asking if Stinespring had earned his retention, about 90% of respondents answered in the negative. But if Stinespring really were only slightly below average, cutting ties could potentially do more harm than good. There are a lot of average-to-slightly-subpar OCs out there, and it would be difficult to lure a top tier OC to be third fiddle in Blacksburg. In truth, if we really did have an average to slightly below average OC, I think I'd be thrilled.
But I think I might have discovered the error of my logic.
As we went along the season keeping tabs on Stiney's grade, we weighted all twelve games equally. The Marshall game had exactly as much grading weight as Alabama. Maryland as much as Miami. Virginia as much as Nebraska. And that quite simply isn't accurate. Some games are bigger than others. While in general I think it's true that conference games carry more weight than non-conference games, Alabama and Nebraska were more critical games than NC State and Maryland. And even within conference play not all things are equal. Who would argue that Georgia Tech was not a bigger game than Duke?
So how do we weigh a game's significance in the grading scale? It's important to remember that what we were asking poll respondents to grade was Stinespring's performance, not the offense's performance. It can sometimes be difficult to extricate one from the other, but in general I tend to follow this maxim: if a team wins without having to alter their initial strategy and gameplan, credit for that victory is shared somewhat evenly by the players and the coordinator; if a team has to alter strategy and gameplan to win, more credit goes to the coordinator. Put another way: the more evenly matched two teams are in terms of talent, the more credit the coordinator deserves for the win.
Looking at it that way, I'd argue this season could be broken into three categories: games where VT was evenly matched or at a slight disadvantage, games where VT held a slight to moderate advantage, and games where VT had the clear advantage. It shakes down like this:
Even to Slight Disadvantage
Alabama
Nebraska
Georgia Tech
Slight to Moderate Advantage
Miami
UNC
Boston College
East Carolina
Clear Advantage
Marshall
Duke
Maryland
NC State
Virginia
And Stinespring's performance when we break it down this way:
Even to Slight Disadvantage: F (0.3 GPA)
Slight to Moderate Advantage: C (1.9 GPA)
Clear Advantage: C+ (2.3 GPA)
When playcalling was most critical, Stinespring performed worst. In other words, when he had to do his job, he couldn't. But he sure made up for it by beating up on overmatched teams. With that sort of track record, Stiney'd be a perfect fit on Pete Carroll's coaching staff this season.
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