Keeper's 2024 FCS Returning Starters & Stats survey

[Keeper]

Just for you statistics fans:

My annual single-page survey. Hopefully only a few errors.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wAC-Ok4L6KmuRzrZj-F5NvAgQa7ATZmSnEWrY9KTsW0/edit?gid=692475703#gid=692475703

Absolutely FREE, no ads, no spam links. xthumbsupx

[Redbird 4th & short]

great stuff Keeper !!!!!

[Milktruck74]

Thanks for your time and effort of putting this together. Your data set may prove what I have always said about "returning Starters"...if they weren't any good the previous season, is a returner a good thing? Often times starters from the previous season are already billed to start the current season until someone better comes along and coaches bias can mean the back up has to be significantly better, not just slightly better. So, if a team with 11 returners on offense can replace their starters with someone that is 2-3% better (very slight improvement, which may not be noticable by a position coach with some bias), the team can get significantly and noticeably better as a collective. Also, I feel returners can get complacent and are not as hungry as the backups...so their work ethic may not be as high and their production as a returner might actually be less than the previous year. So, my thought to ponder is if you are someone like Citadel who was 0-11 last season, and you are ranked 11th in returners in FCS, is that something you want to see? Conversely, if you are Lafayette and you went 9-3 last year, you are probably pretty excited to be ranked 4th in returners.

Again, I appreciate your data aggregate, but what does it tell us...I would say the higher your ranking, the more likely you are to finish with a similar record as the previous year (weather that is a good year or a bad one depends on how you did previous).

So, I wonder if we used your end ranking from the data and after the season compared the 2023 win percentage with the 2024 win percentage and stacked those to see how those data sets compare.

My stats professor once told me, "If you torture the data long enough, it'll tell you exactly what you want to hear!" I actually thought he made that up specifically for me (HAHahahah)...but I was told it is actually a famous quote by someone else...I just don't know who.

[Paladin1aa]

Thanks for your time and effort of putting this together. Your data set may prove what I have always said about "returning Starters"...if they weren't any good the previous season, is a returner a good thing? Often times starters from the previous season are already billed to start the current season until someone better comes along and coaches bias can mean the back up has to be significantly better, not just slightly better. So, if a team with 11 returners on offense can replace their starters with someone that is 2-3% better (very slight improvement, which may not be noticable by a position coach with some bias), the team can get significantly and noticeably better as a collective. Also, I feel returners can get complacent and are not as hungry as the backups...so their work ethic may not be as high and their production as a returner might actually be less than the previous year. So, my thought to ponder is if you are someone like Citadel who was 0-11 last season, and you are ranked 11th in returners in FCS, is that something you want to see? Conversely, if you are Lafayette and you went 9-3 last year, you are probably pretty excited to be ranked 4th in returners.

Again, I appreciate your data aggregate, but what does it tell us...I would say the higher your ranking, the more likely you are to finish with a similar record as the previous year (weather that is a good year or a bad one depends on how you did previous).

So, I wonder if we used your end ranking from the data and after the season compared the 2023 win percentage with the 2024 win percentage and stacked those to see how those data sets compare.

My stats professor once told me, "If you torture the data long enough, it'll tell you exactly what you want to hear!" I actually thought he made that up specifically for me (HAHahahah)...but I was told it is actually a famous quote by someone else...I just don't know who.

My thoughts as well. If you had a big losing season and return many of those starters, it takes a special kind of stupid to think you are world beaters this year. However, have a good season, return a lot of those starters, you should feel very optimistic about the season.

And let’s face it, coaches picking who starts among your players is always a question. Thus, good coaches, bad coaches.

[POD Knows]

This is great information and sort of supports in a way why I ranked Albany out of my top 25. I knew they had lost a lot but I didn’t think it was this much.

[Milktruck74]

My thoughts as well. If you had a big losing season and return many of those starters, it takes a special kind of stupid to think you are world beaters this year. However, have a good season, return a lot of those starters, you should feel very optimistic about the season.

And let’s face it, coaches picking who starts among your players is always a question. Thus, good coaches, bad coaches.

Yeah, I would like to stack rank the delta between 2023 and 2024 win percentages and see how that corresponds with ranking of returners...maybe someone who loves to compile data will get on that at the end of the season....I hate to compile...but I enjoy the analysis part. ha

[Redbird 4th & short]

My thoughts as well. If you had a big losing season and return many of those starters, it takes a special kind of stupid to think you are world beaters this year. However, have a good season, return a lot of those starters, you should feel very optimistic about the season.

And let’s face it, coaches picking who starts among your players is always a question. Thus, good coaches, bad coaches.

From MVFC perspective, noticed that about South Dakota and SIU ... both had a very strong year in 2023 .. very strong defensively with modest offensive results.

- USD returns 9.7 offensive starters and just 5.3 defensive starters

- SIU returns 6.1 offensive starters and just 3.1 defensive starters

This doesn't speak to transfers in, though I believe it does reflect transfers out. I think Keeper is trying to incorporate transfers in, in some way.

Separate note, as many of us were already aware, SDSU took a lot of hits to graduation .. lot of 6th year SRs are done. They could revert to their "normal" top 10 year in 2024. But not ruling our they have guys waiting their turn ... they know how to develop and keep their players.

- SDSU returns just 3.7 on offense and 4.2 on defense.

[Paladin1aa]

From MVFC perspective, noticed that about South Dakota and SIU ... both had a very strong year in 2023 .. very strong defensively with modest offensive results.

- USD returns 9.7 offensive starters and just 5.3 defensive starters

- SIU returns 6.1 offensive starters and just 3.1 defensive starters

This doesn't speak to transfers in, though I believe it does reflect transfers out. I think Keeper is trying to incorporate transfers in, in some way.

Separate note, as many of us were already aware, SDSU took a lot of hits to graduation .. lot of 6th year SRs are done. They could revert to their "normal" top 10 year in 2024. But not ruling our they have guys waiting their turn ... they know how to develop and keep their players.

- SDSU returns just 3.7 on offense and 4.2 on defense.

Which is why I think they will have a “good” year but probably won’t win the MVFC.

[Redbird 4th & short]

Just FYI to others .. some of our ISUr numbers looked lite, so I let Keeper know offline

So I checked our Redbird site for starter info by game. For our Murray State game in week 10, neither team had any starters listed in the official box score .. they hosted, but not sure if that means it was their job .. but neither team's website provided starters. Then our opener against Dayton, we had no OL starters listed for some odd reason ... so our box score showed just 6 starters on offense, while 11 on defense. Luckily, there was a game sheet showing the 5 OL starters, so I sent that link to Keepers. But we're missing 1 of 11 games starters.

[Keeper]

One of the next updates will include a team Inbound Transfer Score column but no change to returning stats columns.
Score based on transfer players 2023 stats if any, and comparative strength of new team vs old team.
Example: Stats for a transfer player would be discounted 50%, where the new team was double the power rating from old team.

xrotatehx

[Redbird 4th & short]

Just FYI to others .. some of our ISUr numbers looked lite, so I let Keeper know offline

So I checked our Redbird site for starter info by game. For our Murray State game in week 10, neither team had any starters listed in the official box score .. they hosted, but not sure if that means it was their job .. but neither team's website provided starters. Then our opener against Dayton, we had no OL starters listed for some odd reason ... so our box score showed just 6 starters on offense, while 11 on defense. Luckily, there was a game sheet showing the 5 OL starters, so I sent that link to Keepers. But we're missing 1 of 11 games starters.

So get this ... Keeper got back to me offline. He had already found ISUr missing starts by pulling them from UNDs game notes (showing our games 1-10) against us in week 11. So UND and Keeper has all our starts, but we don't ?????

Great work, Keeper !!

https://media.tenor.com/5GdYv2i4OiAAAAAM/waynes-world.gif

[Go Lehigh TU Owl]

Fordham has the talent/experience to be a sneaky semifinalist type team (ala Albany last year). Unfortunately, until now, their coaching staff has yet to be able to squeeze the potential out of the roster. Even so, at worst, I think the Rams sleepwalk to a 7-5 type season.

[wcugrad95]

To pile on a little to the argument about returners off of bad teams, I of course went straight to the SOCON details. Wofford and Citadel (in that order) seem to be returning the most starts in the league, and they are ranked #10 and #11 in all of FCS. In the SOCON coaches poll, the Terriers are picked to finish 8th (next to last) and the Bulldogs are picked to finish 9th (last). Furman is the lowest "ranked" SOCON team (#121) when it comes to the returning starts, but are in the top-10 in many polls and are expected to push Chattanooga for the league crown.

I aboslutely appreciate the time it took to gather this stuff, and I am sure there are tons of examples of teams with returners who are stacked. But you have to look at the quality of the returners (along with other guys who didn't start but were major contributors) and not just the quantity.

[IslandPard]

Fordham has the talent/experience to be a sneaky semifinalist type team (ala Albany last year). Unfortunately, until now, their coaching staff has yet to be able to squeeze the potential out of the roster. Even so, at worst, I think the Rams sleepwalk to a 7-5 type season.

Agreed. Plus these stats are showing a toss up for places 1-3 rather than a Lafayette repeat. Ugh!