Deacon Hill ‘played with a lot of poise,’ but data shows improvement necessary ahead of second half of season

IOWA CITY — Before Saturday’s win over Michigan State, it had been a while since Deacon Hill played substantially in a football game of importance.

“My senior year (of high school), I played three games during COVID,” the Iowa quarterback said Saturday. “So definitely a different thing being out there today, especially under those lights.”

Considering those circumstances, it is no surprise Iowa Coach Kirk Ferentz thought Hill “stepped in and did a nice job” filling in for the injured Cade McNamara.

“He played with a lot of poise out there, first and foremost, on Saturday,” Ferentz said Tuesday. “Made some good decisions and played with a lot of poise.”

Hill’s line in the box score did not look quite so dazzling although some factors beyond Hill’s control did not help matters.

He went 11-of-27 with one touchdown and one interception. His Quarterback Rating — more commonly known as QBR, ratings vary on a scale of 0 to 100 — was 23.5 against the Spartans.

Receivers dropped five of his 16 incomplete passes. Had Iowa’s receivers caught three of those five dropped passes, a 51.8 percent completion rate obviously looks much better than 40.7 percent.

Adjusted completion percentage and turnover-worthy play rate — both tracked by Pro Football Focus — offer a perspective into Hill’s performance in a manner that is not skewed by dropped passes.

Adjusted completion percentage, as the name would suggest, adjusts a quarterback’s completion percentage for drops by wide receivers. For example, if a quarterback completes 65 percent of passes and another 5 percent were dropped, their adjusted completion percentage would be 70 percent.

Turnover-worthy play rate is a calculation of how often a quarterback makes a play that has a high probability of resulting in an interception or a fumble. For example, a pass that goes in and out of the hands of a defensive back would obviously not count as an interception, but PFF would count it as a turnover-worthy play.

Hill’s adjusted completion percentage against Michigan State was 64 percent, and his turnover-worthy play rate was 10.3 percent.

Both are subpar when compared to quarterbacks this season across the Big Ten and past starting quarterbacks at Iowa.

Adjusted completion percentage

The median adjusted completion percentage among the 15 Big Ten quarterbacks with at least 50 dropbacks is 72 percent. The only quarterback with an adjusted completion percentage below 64 percent is Rutgers’ Gavin Wimsatt at 62.6.

Hill’s 64 percent against Michigan State is not far off from McNamara’s 66.3 percent through the first five games.

But no Iowa quarterback since 2014 — the earliest year with PFF data available — had an adjusted completion percentage below 66 percent. The next-lowest adjusted completion percentage aside from McNamara was Spencer Petras with 66.8 percent in 2022 and 67 percent in 2021.

Turnover-worthy play rate

Hill’s 10.3 percent turnover-worthy play rate against Michigan State was particularly high compared to his Big Ten counterparts.

Among the 15 Big Ten quarterbacks with at least 50 dropbacks so far, Michigan State’s Noah Kim has the highest turnover-worthy play rate at 5.5 percent.

All others are below 5 percent.

Looking back at Iowa quarterbacks with 50-plus dropbacks in the last 10 seasons, C.J. Beathard had the highest turnover-worthy play rate in 2014 with 5.4 percent.

All others, including Spencer Petras in all three years as a starter, are at or below 4 percent.

Potential for improvement

One game in which Hill had 27 dropbacks — Hill’s first with a substantial number of snaps since his senior year of high school — is obviously a small sample size.

Petras is a case study for the improvement that can happen for a quarterback when they first assume a QB1 role. He had one touchdown versus three interceptions in his first two career starts. He then had eight touchdowns versus two interceptions for the rest of the 2020 season.

Time will tell how quickly Hill can improve as he gains more experience as Iowa’s No. 1 quarterback. His next game will be against a Purdue defense ranks 11th in the Big Ten with 7.22 yards allowed per passing attempt.

“Our hopes and expectations are he'll go out and play better this week than he did Saturday,” Ferentz said. “Should be smarter. He's a little bit more experienced.”

But it also is possible Hill sees some regression as defenses game-plan against his tendencies rather than McNamara’s.

“Part of growth sometimes is going backwards as well,” Ferentz said. “I think everybody needs to be realistic on that.”

Comments: john.steppe@thegazette.com