Records in college football are broken with such frequency that you rarely pause to absorb the silly numbers posted week to week.
But in Arizona’s wild loss to USC, quarterback Anu Solomon threw 29 incomplete passes (he was 43 for 72), which is a school record.
The “old” record didn’t last long: Solomon threw 26 incomplete passes against Cal last month; he finished 47 for 73 in the “Hill Mary” win over the Golden Bears.
Arizona is on pace to break its season record for incompletions; it already has 106 at the regular-season midpoint. The record is 212, which includes bowl games.
But a lot of football analysts now compute stats the way baseball sabermetrics in recent years declared that items such as singles and stolen bases have lost significance. (Although I don’t agree.)
The new football math says that incompletions aren’t as important any longer because teams like Arizona snap about 20 more plays per game than in the years before spread offenses.
Arizona snapped 1,082 plays in Rich Rodriguez’s inaugural season, the first UA team to hit 1,000. A year ago RichRod called 1,030 plays. If this year’s Wildcats play in a bowl game, 13 games, it is on pace for a record 1,142 plays.
So what’s 29 incompletions as long as Solomon’s completion percentage remains close to the current 62.6 percent?
In the pre-spread days, incompletions were a fatal statistic. Arizona’s pre-RichRod team record was 25, in a 51-37 loss to Stanford in 2001. Its individual record for incompletions was 24 by Willie Tuitama in a 2007 loss at ASU, and 23, both by Tuitama, in two puzzling losses to New Mexico in 2007 and 2008.
To me, the most damaging statistic through Arizona’s first six games is that opponents have completed 64.1 percent of their passes. Only the 2011 team that got Mike Stoops fired, at 65.9 percent, has been worse.
