Answering the really important questions: How far did McCarthy chuck that thing?
The game commentator Dan Orlovsky estimated that it went over 50 yards in the air. MGoBlog's Alex Drain simply said it traveled over 35 yards in the air. I'm of course talking about JJ McCarthy's 4th quarter "throw heard around the world" to Daylen Baldwin for a 69-yard touchdown against Western Michigan. So, with estimates ranging that far apart, let's dig into this and find how far it really went. (Here's the play in question if you want to enjoy it in all its majesty again: Arm Cannon. Sorry the quality isn't great, and sorry that there's no way I'll figure out how to embed a YouTube video, so I'm not even going to try).
Here's McCarthy's release point:
He gets rid of the ball at about the 28-yard line, and is about 5 yards from the right sideline - making him 48 yards from the left sideline.
Here's where Baldwin catches it. He's probably at about the 37 and a half-yard line, but I'm just going to say the 38 to keep things simple. He's approximately 14 yards (though it might even be as close as 12 yards...14 yards is the halfway point between the numbers and the hash) from the left sideline. That means the ball traveled about 34 yards across the field (48 yards from left sideline to 14 yards), and coincidentally, 34 yards down the field (28-yard line to the 38-yard line). So, now that we know that, we can use our 10th grade geometry lessons to find out how far the ball carried total.
(Yeah, I know, my MS Paint skills are almost as awe inspiring as McCarthy's arm.) Using the Pythagorean theorem and taking the square root of 34 squared plus 34 squared gives us 48.08 yards.
Yeah, I'm a little disappointed too that it wasn't longer than that, but I was rounding numbers down, and the ball would have carried a good 3 yards or so past Baldwin had he not been there, so in actuality it almost certainly cleared 50 yards. That's not bad for a frozen rope with a defensive lineman barreling down at him.
What to take away from this information here? Not much, except that if Michigan needs to throw a Hail Mary from our own side of the field later this year, McCarthy is the man for the job. You're all welcome. I don't think the coaches could have figured that out without me. Now I can't wait for the MGoBlog crowd to find tons of holes in my work in the comments.
September 6th, 2021 at 3:37 PM ^
Name the last qb we had that could accurately chuck it 48 yards downfield, under pressure, and lead his receiver away from coverage. I’ll wait…
September 6th, 2021 at 3:41 PM ^
That's 2 times in one post the word "chuck" was used, and it's not someone's name. That's gotta be a record.
September 6th, 2021 at 4:31 PM ^
In middle school, we loved saying "Chuck you, Farley," because it was daringly almost swearing. Adding spice to the fun, one of the cutest girls in school had the last name Farley.
September 6th, 2021 at 3:44 PM ^
Maybe Henson? I think Mallett had the arm strength, but not the accuracy. Henne I don't think quite had that kind of arm strength. Yeah, I really don't know, but that throw definitely got me excited for the future.
September 6th, 2021 at 6:32 PM ^
Mallett threw for maybe 67 in an entire game so you can take him off the list.
September 6th, 2021 at 9:30 PM ^
Sorry to hear about Michael Williams passing. RIP Omar
September 7th, 2021 at 7:59 AM ^
Damn - I had to google this, I did not know...sad news indeed.
September 6th, 2021 at 6:45 PM ^
Henne had the strongest arm of any M QB ever. That TV show called something like QB challenge where one event was distance. Vince Young took a big run up and absolutely hucked the ball in a very non football manner and threw 80 yds. Henne was next and threw it like an actual pass and went 72. The other QBs watching could be heard commenting how THAT was a strong arm.
September 6th, 2021 at 7:46 PM ^
For throwing the ball hard, Joe Milton had a cannon for an arm. As for throwing the ball accurately, well, Joe Milton can throw the ball hard.
September 6th, 2021 at 10:06 PM ^
And oddly followed by being a Charlie Checkdown in the pros
September 6th, 2021 at 7:20 PM ^
Speaking of Henson, those video clips of McCarthy throwing those back over his body bombs before going out of bounds looked a lot like Henson's TD pass to David Terrell that beat Wisconsin in 2000.
And Gary Danielson's replay description of Henne to Terrell was, "Don't do this, don't do this!!," which was exactly Orlavsky's description of this play.
September 6th, 2021 at 8:51 PM ^
I remember that throw like it was yesterday, man those were good times.
September 6th, 2021 at 10:09 PM ^
100%. Thought of that play immediately. That and Gardner’s heave to Dileo against Minnesota. All fit into the “no, no, no . . . YES!!!!” bucket.
September 6th, 2021 at 3:48 PM ^
Henne for sure.
Didn’t Denard hit Gallon on a similar play in the UTL game?
September 7th, 2021 at 11:31 AM ^
I thought Gallon was wide open on that one though?
September 6th, 2021 at 4:01 PM ^
No lie, way too "cool story bro," but the night before the '97 Penn State game I was in an establishment with Fred Jackson and he flat out said, and I quote, "Griese doesn't have the arm strength to play in the NFL."
I was glad he was wrong, not the Brian Griese was an NFL star. Long story short, the answer to the OP question is not "Brian Griese." Probably also not Chris Zurbrugg, fine gentleman though he was.
I have eliminated two from contention. Feel free to continue the aforementioned discussion...
September 6th, 2021 at 4:33 PM ^
Fred was right, and Griese knew it. I was shocked myself when in the NFL he was throwing harder than he ever had at Michigan.
Turns out he was basically throwing harder than his anatomy would allow and eventually led to problems with his rotator cuff and other shoulder parts.
Today we know how to train for velo and Griese would have benefitted immensely.
September 6th, 2021 at 11:58 PM ^
Griese didn’t have the strongest arm but his game management, decision making, leadership and coolness under pressure went a hellof a long way. Don’t forget that run for a 1st down on MNF where he dislocated his throwing shoulder, so yeah that caught up with him for sure…
September 6th, 2021 at 4:06 PM ^
Joe Milton has the arm strength, but his robotic programming was faulty, so the ball would have missed the target by 10 yards.
September 6th, 2021 at 6:20 PM ^
Milton's throw would have gone 70 yards and ended up in the stands.
September 6th, 2021 at 5:25 PM ^
He didn’t do it as many times as we would have liked due to the sieve-like OL in front of him, but Devin Gardner could
September 6th, 2021 at 6:20 PM ^
I mean, Michigan's had quite a few cannon armed QBs recently. Gardner, Morris, Peters, Patterson, and definitely Milton all were capable of this throw. Yes, none of them did it accurately with any regularity, but at the same time, this is also just one throw for McCarthy.
September 6th, 2021 at 8:13 PM ^
Cannon arms I'd say Milton, Morris, and Mallett. Maybe McCarthy makes sense. Any other M names quarterbacks?
September 6th, 2021 at 7:05 PM ^
Henson.
September 6th, 2021 at 8:00 PM ^
It was a great throw by McCarthy but, I mean, McNamara threw the ball from his 16 yard line to the WMU 40 yard line and hit Bell in stride (with good coverage on him) while getting a lineman pushed into his face. That's 44 yards vertically down the field, plus we're talking about inside the hash to outside, so the distance in the air was probably pretty close.
I don't quite get the idea that McNamara has a pop-gun arm that's permeated this place, but it's nice that UM has two QBs who seem to have pretty accurate, solid-to-very-strong arms.
September 6th, 2021 at 10:11 PM ^
McNamara’s throw and McCarthy’s did not have the same trajectory. If McCarthy threw his like McNamara it would have been unsuccessful. McNamara might have enough and enough other things to be good but the two should not be compared
September 6th, 2021 at 10:37 PM ^
McNamara is so sneakily good, he makes QB'ing look so easy that I think we're take his talents for granted. It hasn't been talked about enough, but 9 of 11 where the only 2 incompletions were balls batted down and none of those throws were bad ideas or lucky ones that barely made it past the defense or would be picked off against better defenses. If he has another solid game vs Washington, it might be time to admit that we finally have a bonafide gamechanger at QB (given he was also steady and solid last year vs Wisky, Rutgers, and Penn State before the injury)
September 6th, 2021 at 10:46 PM ^
Uhhhh.....Harbs?
September 6th, 2021 at 3:38 PM ^
Good, fun post. Thank you.
September 6th, 2021 at 3:48 PM ^
I was glad to see him put a little air under the throw. Until then everything was a fastball. Reminded me of the early Brett Favre era.
September 6th, 2021 at 6:01 PM ^
Wish I was High on potenuse.
September 6th, 2021 at 3:45 PM ^
Did you steal this from Ace?
Pretty sure I saw an email from the bucket problem that was a lot like this post.
Did not include your awesome mspaint
September 6th, 2021 at 3:47 PM ^
No, I didn't see that. Got a link?
September 6th, 2021 at 5:00 PM ^
You ripped off Pythagoras don't run from the truth
September 6th, 2021 at 3:53 PM ^
Yeah, just looked it up. That is very similar. I pinky swear that I did not see that before creating this.
September 6th, 2021 at 5:27 PM ^
It’s okay, no one is following Ace’s drivel anyway
September 6th, 2021 at 6:08 PM ^
Jesus don't want me for a sunbeam
September 6th, 2021 at 5:38 PM ^
You mean Ace, from Ace and Gary? Didn’t know that was still out.
September 6th, 2021 at 3:45 PM ^
Hey! Nobody said there would be math here.
September 6th, 2021 at 4:35 PM ^
Whether it's a fraction, or a decimal, it's still fun.
September 6th, 2021 at 3:54 PM ^
This just made me realize that apart from that, and a TD to a WR we won't have for the rest of the season, we were 11 of 15 for 71yd through the air against a MAC team. Now I has the sad.
September 6th, 2021 at 3:59 PM ^
Part of that comes from the fact that the run game was that dominant. Very “old school manball” like people clamored for after the RichRod experiment.
September 6th, 2021 at 4:06 PM ^
I'm now picturing you coaching the team on Saturday and running down the sideline, stride-for-stride with Ronnie and Dylan, yelling "RUN OUT OF BOUNDS! RUN OUT OF BOUNDS! WE NEED MORE COMPLETIONS IN THE BOX SCORE!!!"
September 6th, 2021 at 4:09 PM ^
You're sad because we didn't air it out more in a 47-14 win?
September 6th, 2021 at 4:19 PM ^
I am thinking maybe Michigan wanted to hone the run game because it needed more honing than the passing game. Thence, lots of run plays. Right?
September 6th, 2021 at 5:26 PM ^
I’m going to guess you’re a MSU troll, so MSU had 326 yards of rushing, take away the 264 yards by one guy and they had… oh fuck it, forget it, it’s not worth trying to talk rationally with a lot of fans.
Why can’t people just be fucking happy, every game is different, who knows next week we may throw for 400 and run for 100 and people will be pissed because we only averaged 3 yards per rush.
September 6th, 2021 at 6:17 PM ^
I know we were establishing the run, and I love that. With Devin Gardner, I think there were several RPO where we could have passed, but were probably focusing on establishing the RBs. You can go see my summary in the Monday Morning QB thread and click through to the appropriate times to see Devin talking about it.
Mostly just sad b/c we lost Ronnie Bell.
It was nice to see JJ hit a wow play, but it would also have been helpful to get some more mid-level, in-game passing work in, and the stats show it. FWIW, Devin liked the 11 yd completion to AJ Henning better b/c of what it took for the two of them to turn a dig into a curl on that play. On the whole, I'd say the ymrmfspa comp for g1 Cade was Wilton Speight, and for g1 JJ was Drew Henson.
I'd been much encouraged about the team since Saturday, but a little bit of math in this OP tempered it a bit. Not sure what's wrong with that. Some of you are downvote and name-calling trigger happy. That's fine. Happy Labor Day!
September 6th, 2021 at 6:17 PM ^
Yes, it turns out that when you throw out our biggest plays, it reduces the average gain on our plays.
September 6th, 2021 at 6:28 PM ^
Official stats also toss out Bell's one hander because of the nonsense PI call.
September 6th, 2021 at 7:01 PM ^
…and Stroud was 9/18 for 69 yards outside the 4 touchdown passes.