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“Even if you have 22 starters back ... you’re still wondering, ‘Are they ready?’ ”
San Jose State coach Ron Caragher
Perhaps more than any other number in college football, returning starter totals can be a blessing and a curse. If a losing team has an abundance of experience back, is that a positive or a negative? And if a winning team has an abundance, is there a risk of complacency?
“Even if you have 22 starters back and they’re all first-team all-conference the year before, you’re still wondering, ‘Are they ready?’ ” San Jose State coach Ron Caragher said. “Are we pushing them too much? Are we not pushing them enough?”
With the kickoff of the Football Bowl Subdivision season arriving Thursday, USA TODAY Sports examined the relationship between returning starters and won-lost records from the 2010 season through 2014, with the 32 public schools in FBS with the largest football budgets as the sample set. Budget data compiled by USA TODAY Sports was based on the 2013-14 school year.
Strength of schedule and relative competition, expected won-lost records and injuries were not factored. Information about the numbers of returning players and positions at which they played were drawn from Phil Steele’s preseason college football prospectus. The key findings, on average:
Teams without a returning starter at quarterback saw their win totals fall from 7.6 per 12 games to 7.1.
Teams with a returning starter at quarterback saw their win totals per 12 games rise from 7.7 to 7.9.
An ideal number of returning players is 15. At that point, teams win 0.8 more games per 12 games than they did the previous season. Teams in the data set with at least 15 returning players won less than 60% of their games the season before.
Returning players on defense are slightly more important than returning offensive players, outside of the quarter-
back position. Teams returning seven defenders or more saw their win totals rise by at least half a game. To see that improvement solely based on number of offensive returners, a team needs to return nine or more (0.5).
Dave Bartoo, who runs CFB Matrix.com, studied returning starters from 2008 to 2012 at the Power Five programs. He, too, found that a returning quarterback was the most important individual to predicting success, no surprise to coaches.
“You would love to have your quarterback (return),” Georgia coach Mark Richt said. “If you had to say one position that you’d want a guy that has the game experience and the overall maturity to handle the pressures of that job, that would be the first one you’d kind of hope for.”
Other coaches said having a returning starter at quarterback not only is important from a decision-making perspective, it’s also crucial in an era in which quarterbacks are more responsible for offensive yardage, passing and running, than ever before.
“You feel more comfortable when your leadership positions have experience,” Colorado State coach Mike Bobo said. “That’s quarterback, center, (middle) linebacker, one of the safeties in my opinion. The middle of your team. People that have to be vocal. ... The linebacker and the safety, they kind of get everybody else around them set.”
That “middle” should include kickers and punters, according to Bartoo’s research. Those two positions, he said, are significantly undervalued and overlooked in this kind of data analysis. According to Bartoo’s data, 130 times from 2008 to 2012 a team returned both kickers; that correlated with 0.28 more games won per team in the following year.
“If you return both your punter and your kicker, then your average win total was even higher than with a returning quarterback (the 0.2 increase),” Bartoo said. “Field position is critical, and (so is) having a kicker that’s experienced.
“As a fan, kickers drive us nuts. The numbers are telling us, yeah, if you don’t have experience there, it’s going to cost you a game.”
Certain coaches value returners in certain position groups more than others. For example, Arkansas coach Bret Bielema, who loves to run the ball, said he first looks at how many returners he has along his offensive line. “A lot of that is kind of program-specific,” Bielema said. “For us, anytime we return a large majority of our old linemen and then our run game in particular, we’re going to have a lot of success.”
A fascinating case study to watch this season will be No. 3 Alabama. The Crimson Tide return seven starters on defense but three on offense, none of whom is a quarterback. It will be intriguing to see which is a greater factor — the strong number of defensive returners or the few offensive returners.
On average and looking at entire rosters, the tipping point seems to be about 15 returnees; that’s where the experience tends to lead to positive, tangible results. Particularly with more than seven returning defenders.
Bartoo’s data back this up, too, but he cautions to remember that quantity does not equal talent. For example, if you were a head football coach entering this season, would your rather have half of Ohio State’s roster back or all of Vanderbilt’s?
“I think it’s more about quality,” San Diego State’s Rocky Long said. “You could have 10 returning starters on both sides of the ball and you went 2-10, 3-9 the year before. You could guess that experience makes you better, but they’re also used to losing.”