Time for some fun with math. Both FSU's Deondre Francois and Duke's Daniel Jones are coming off successful freshman campaigns. Let's project how they may perform as sophomores.
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First, here are there numbers for the 2016-17 season:
| Name | Games | Comp | Att | Yds | TD | Int |
| Deondre Francois | 13 | 235 | 400 | 3350 | 20 | 7 |
| Daniel Jones | 12 | 270 | 430 | 2836 | 16 | 9 |
Let's take a look at a few ACC comps with comparable freshman campaigns from the past few years...
| Name | Season | Games | Comp | Att | Yds | TD | Int |
| Jameis Winston | 2013 | 14 | 257 | 384 | 4062 | 40 | 10 |
| Brad Kaaya | 2014 | 13 | 221 | 378 | 3198 | 26 | 12 |
| Lamar Jackson | 2015 | 11 | 135 | 247 | 1840 | 12 | 8 |
How did these guys perform in their sophomore season?
| Name | Season | Games | Comp | Att | Yds | TD | Int |
| Jameis Winston | 2014 | 13 | 305 | 467 | 3907 | 25 | 18 |
| Brad Kaaya | 2015 | 12 | 238 | 389 | 3238 | 16 | 5 |
| Lamar Jackson | 2016 | 13 | 230 | 409 | 3543 | 30 | 9 |
Let's compare their Sophomore numbers to their Freshman numbers in all categories and see the per game percentage change.
| Name | Comp | Att | Yds | TD | Int |
| Jameis Winston | 21.8% | 23.6% | 3.5% | -48.6% | 48.4% |
| Brad Kaaya | 14.3% | 10.3% | 8.8% | -50% | -121.5% |
| Lamar Jackson | 30.6% | 38.6% | 38.6% | 52.7% | -5% |
Trends
- In each case completions and attempts go up at without a large change in completion percentage.
- Yardage didn't go up significantly except for Lamar Jackson. Likely this was due to a focus from defense on forcing him to throw the ball. Throw in Louisville's dynamic offense and it explains the large jump in passing yards.
- TDs went down significantly for both Kaaya and Winston. See point 2 for Jackson. A decline in TD passes may well have to do with defenses focusing more on a sophomore QB. The expectation would be that INTs would also go down with a year of experience and this is true for Kaaya and Jackson, but not for Winston.
Projections
| Name | Comp | Att | Yds | TD | Int |
| Deondre Francois | 282 | 480 | 3517.5 | 24 | 6.3 |
| Daniel Jones | 324 | 516 | 2977.8 | 19.2 | 8.1 |
- For completions and attempts, I gave both Francois and Jones a 20% increase.
- For yardage, I gave both a 5% increase which was in line with the case study above.
- I wasn't sure I could draw a reliable solution for TDs and INTs so I went with a 20% increase in TDs (same as attempts), and a -10% decrease in INTs.
