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When the clock is winding down and the game is on the line, nobody cares what a quarterback’s EPA is. They don’t want to know his QBR or his average air yards per attempt.
No. When the game is on the line, fans and coaches alike want to answer one question: does he have that dog in him?
Well, thanks to ESPN’s Bill Connelly we can now answer that question.
Never let it be said that I don’t take suggestions.
Introducing DOG IN HIM, measuring the QBs who best combine (a) doing stuff, (b) taking hits and (c) being good. Diego Pavia leads the 2024 DOG IN HIM rankings and has had the No. 16 DOG IN HIM career over the last 10 years. pic.twitter.com/jxAzAqXQ0k
— Bill Connelly (@ESPN_BillC) October 17, 2024
Connelly released the first ever “DOG IN HIM” metric on Thursday.
Vanderbilt Star Diego Pavia Tops ESPN’s First ‘Dog In Him’ Metric Ranking
At the top of the list in 2024 sits Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia. That should come as no surprise to anybody who watched Pavia lead his team to a massive upset over Alabama earlier this season.
Pavia is a fifth-year senior who worked his way up from JUCO, to Conference USA, to one of the best quarterbacks in the SEC. So you don’t really need a metric to show that he’s clearly got that dog in him.
The metric combines QBR, any yards gained per attempt, contact percentage, out-of-pocket pass percentage, scramble percentage and rush yards not including sacks to develop the “Dog In Him” catch-all.
But Pavia doesn’t just lead the metric this year. He also ranks 16th among all college quarterbacks in the last 10 years. That puts him above stars such as Patrick Mahomes, Bryce Young, Baker Mayfield and JJ McCarthy.
Pavia also ranked above Penn State’s Trace McSorley, who he was compared to earlier in the year.
“Some people from over there called me a poor man’s Trace McSorley. When you stop me, then you can talk,” Pavia said after a win over Virginia Tech.
The metric could use some fine-tuning and could probably be reduced to just late-game scenarios, but it’s an awesome statistical display of one of the stats we all thought couldn’t be quantified.