Moore versus Murray

When putting up Moore's college numbers versus Murray's there is not really area that Moore doesn't win. Touchdown to interception ratio, wins, total yards, completion percentage, and every other number you can look at all favor Moore. He has three years experience to Murray's one as a starter. There is one area where Murray can hold his own. Last year Moore faced 3 defenses in the top 31 (Utah 31, Virginia Tech 26, and Utah 24). Murray also faced 3 top 30 defenses (UCF 8, Miss. State 21, and Florida 29). Slightly harder for Murray but not a ton of difference.

After that the difficulty level for Murray was much harder than what Moore faced. I threw out the worst defense each team faced because UGA played a 1-AA team so they were not in the defensive (points per game allowed) rankings and so to be fair I threw out the lowest ranked defense (115) that Boise faced. After the top 3 defenses Boise faced only one other team in the top half of defenses in the country, Hawaii at 58. Georgia faced 5 more teams with defenses in the top half of the country. That means that 8 out of Murray's 13 games as a starter were against quality defenses. Moore faced only 4 top 50% of the nation defense all year.

This doesn't mean that Moore would not have performed well had he played Georgia's schedule. It is not unreasonable to think that Murray's numbers, 3049 yards passing, 24 tds and 8 ints would have been better had he played against 10 defenses ranked 58th or lower as opposed to only 5. This is no knock on Moore and his great numbers from last year, 3845 yards passing, 36 tds and only 6 ints, but instead a basis for comparison of the two quarterbacks.

Almost every game Boise has gone into the last few years they have had a clear advantage at quarterback. In Moore’s three years as a starter Boise has faced at best seven teams with quarterbacks that could come close to matching up with Moore; Dalton from TCU twice (1-1), Massoli from Oregon (0-2), Kaepernick from Nevada (1-2) and Taylor from Virginia Tech (0-1). Moore was an impressive 6-2 in those games but those two losses where Boise’s only two losses in the last three years and none of those games were blowouts for Boise. For only the 9th time in Moore’s college career will he be lining up against a quarterback that that can match him. That gives UGA as good a chance as any team to give Moore his 3rd college loss.