Given how much I’ve heard about Dampier’s passing TD:interception ratio from 2024, I decided to take some time to watch replays of each, and here are my notes.
Arizona:
* close miss, probably should have run out of bounds or taken the sack instead of throwing
* pass that hit the receiver in the chest and bounced into the hands of a defender
Auburn:
* semi-dangerous pass that again hit the receiver in the chest and the defender stripped it away from above/behind the receiver
* pressured bad pass, right into the defender’s arms and out of reach of the receiver
Fresno State:
* wild pass over the heads of receivers
* pass behind the receiver, easy pick
Utah State:
* pass behind the receiver, easy pick
* pressured hail mary attempt at the end of the 1st half from midfield, well short of the end zone
* hail mary attempt at the end of the 3rd, slightly short, impressive catch by the defender
Colorado State:
* pass into traffic (didn’t see one of the defenders?) UNM down 6-17 w/ 5:21 left in the game, seemed to be pressing hard given the low offensive output and remaining time
* 0:58 left in the game, still down 6-17, pressured and thrown yards behind his intended receiver
Wyoming:
* stares down his receiver, the defender reads his eyes and jumps the route
My take:
After seeing each of these plays, I feel that about half of them were bad decisions or bad throws. The others were either high-risk/high-reward plays (e.g. hail mary), exceptional defensive plays, or bad receiver play. There are certainly some things to fix, but I’m much less concerned about his interceptions from last year than I was going into this exercise.
If any of you want to repeat this exercise and/or otherwise share your thoughts, I’d be curious what you think. I found that the easiest way to find the plays (so I didn’t have to watch whole-game highlights) was to check the interception count at ESPN’s Player Game Log, open the game’s Play-by-Play log to find the timestamp of the interception, then fast-forward in the highlights to the play in question.
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