As you can see the numbers are fairly stable after the 2001 season. Each year varies slightly of course due to the depth and experience at quarterback, wide receiver, tight end, running back, as well as the offensive line. 2006 was an "average year" in hindsight with a slight drop off in yards per completion and total yards.

What I thought would be more interesting is to see what position is catching the ball the most in each year. As you can see in this next chart it bounces around a bit but not too much. The WR's caught the majority of the passes in in every year and in 2002 the WR's caught 203 of the 313 completions. Of course this tells us nothing of where the ball was thrown on the field. That would take more film breakdown and tracking to see if the pass was a screen play, a slant route, a post route, or a hitch route for example. But this shows a few things of note. One example is that in 2004 when USC was the undefeated national champion they utilized the WR's less and threw to the tight ends more. The reason was that Steve Smith broke his leg and the coaching staff ran more routes and plays for Alex Holmes and Dominque Byrd out of necessity.

In 2006 we can see that the WR's again took the lions share of the receptions. The big drop off was in the area of pass plays to the fullback and tailbacks. The reason was probably two-fold 1) injuries to the fullbacks and 2) a younger backfield in general. In 2007 this number will probably edge back upwards to a more normal range. Steve Sarkisian has commented in the offseason that he'd like to use more two back sets (e.g. I Formation Plays) and this will probably mean more play action passes and short throws to either the FB or RB out of the backfield. The incoming freshman Joe McKnight will make things interesting as well with his receiving skills.

One inherent problem in this chart is the following. It merely lists receptions by the "home" position of the player by year. Reggie Bush caught passes out of the backfield but also caught passes while lined up as a wideout. This simple chart does not reflect that more complex reality. So for 2004/2005 seasons when Reggie Bush caught about 40 passes per year this would mean shifting perhaps 15 or so completions out of the RB segment and up into the WR segment. Also as stated above this graph doesn't tell you where the ball was thrown on the field either (short, medium, long, left, middle, right, etc.). However it gives you a *rough* idea of where passes went and how the distribution has slightly changed. We'll check this at the mid-point of 2007 and see where things stand next season.