Passing Fancy

Olawale's legs aren't doing all the work this year

After two games, M.A. Olawale leads the Ivies in the nebulous stat known as "pass efficiency."

I wasn't a math major and I'm still not sure how those passer ratings are compiled, but I think a huge reason for Olawale's leadership on that board has to do with his very impressive 7.1 yards per pass attempt... that's a stat worthy of a top NFL QB.

Add in the lack of even one interception in two games with 44 attempts, and you have at least a partial sigh of relief in the Lion pride.

Indeed, Olawale has answered a lot of questions about how good a passer he would be this season. He is doing more than an adequate job, but as Coach Wilson has said in some of the newsconferences this season, there's more work to do.

On 3rd down passing, M.A. is just five of 13 for 75 yards, two first downs, one TD, but four big sacks for a total of 31 yards lost.

On 4th down passing, Olawale is one for one for 24 yards, one first down, but also a sack for a loss of six yards.

Coach Wilson has talked about those taken sacks as an area where he wants Olawale to improve. And I noticed that while Olawale is a great runner, he wasn't scrambling that much to buy himself more time to throw... that is, until late in the game against CCSU when he made a great set of moves to avoid the rush and eventually find TE Andrew Kennedy for a big completion.

I expect Princeton to pressure Olawale early and often Saturday. The Tiger strength comes from their quick and hard-hitting linebackers and safeties who will probably look to shut off the outside running lanes for M.A. and then come at his flanks on passing plays. If Olawale can scramble and throw in those situations rather than taking sacks, the Princeton defense may be sucking wind by the second half.

I see this as another big game for the offensive line, which needs to do just as good a job in pass protection as it has in run blocking so far.

... but more on all this tomorrow when I list the "5 Keys."


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