Sports Staturday November 15, 2025: Sip Some Coffee And Recap The Last Week In Sports With Some Wild And Irreverent Stats
The games won't start for a couple hours. You know that. That's why you're here, killing some time while the coffee pot is gurgling and the cool fall air wakes up the hairs on your arms. Take a moment to enjoy the silence to yourself on this fine morning. Whatever your situation is. Maybe you're like me - enjoying a priceless few moments of silence before tax write off of four years wakes up triggering the same for tax write off of two. Or perhaps the tequila shots at 3:13am woke you up to remind you what an idiot you are; a mistake that you'll certainly never make again.
Maybe it's both. I'm not here to judge. Whatever events preceded you having your phone in your face right here, right now, I want to offer a fun little flow through the past week in sports through the lens of obscure, wild, or otherwise plain stupid stats. I offer you zero fresh stories or breaking news. Only a different perspective on those you've probably heard this past week across whatever range of sports I see fit. This should be entertaining even if you don't like the sports being discussed. Because it's not about that anyway. The game is just the canvas. The paint is the assortment of dumb stats we throw on top of it.
This is Sports Staturday.
College Football
Who's the best quarterback in college football? I'm having fun oscillating between Ohio State's Julian Sayin and Indiana's Fernando Mendoza and fully aware this might just be a completely uninformed take since I haven't really watched Ty Simpson all that much. College football casual. Guilty. I know Sayin has a huge handicap in Jeremiah Smith, but he's still mechanically sound throwing on the run and puts the ball right where it needs to be. I was sure he was the best watching him up through last week until about - I don't know, what was it - a half-hour later when Mendoza threw a slew of elite, clutch passes in a comeback victory for the ages. And a call of the ages from Gus Johnson. I haven't heard a voice go out like that since Ariel got legs.
But I'm not here to argue about any of that. We have much less important topics to discuss. Namely - Wisconsin finally breaking through with a big win. The program was in shambles, but it appears they turned the ship around and gave fans something to be excited about on offense. Let's hit this off with a full highlights breakdown of their game high passer from last week.
This is exactly what it looks like. Wisconsin won a game where their punter threw for the most yards on the team (exactly 50%). And I mean an actual punter. Not a quarterback in disguise like the USC shenanigans. Sean West threw one pass for 24 yards, and Wisconsin as a team throw for 48. In a victory. I should at least say this was a sloppy rainy ass game to be fair.
Let me answer the meaningless question you're probably wondering. No - this isn't the biggest percentage of team passing yards for a punter in a single game. I found a game in 1995 when Rice punter Tucker Phillips accounted for 86.5 percent of Rice's passing yards as he went 2/2 for 64 yards and a touchdown. Rice totaled 74. But here's the real kicker, he led his team in passing attempts. Ummm. What??? Does anyone remember this game? Was it played in a literal hurricane? I need answers.
Rice also lost the game. Because, of course they lost the game. When you're left attempting multiple fake punts to get first downs from what will be your team's leading pass attempter, it's not usually because you're the better team. So when you do it twice... yeah. Not a great sign. But Wisconsin did win on Saturday. So, let me answer a second meaningless question that might jump to mind. Is this the largest percentage of passing yards for a punter on winning team?
I think the answer is yes. But I'm not certain yet as I have some work to do in compiling some 135k college football game/box score pages on record.
But I was able to run a list of most yards thrown for punters on record and manually glanced down at those few examples on winning teams. Pretty much all had a lot of passing yards and decided to fake punt just to fuck around. Brian Buschini of Nebraska had 30/164 passing yards in a game last year, but that's still just 20 percent. Nothing really looks like it comes close to Sean West.
Things must already be turning around in Madison.
NBA
We're starting to see the cream rise to the top in each conference now that the NBA has caught up and even surpassed the NFL in the standings sample size department. We've even had enough time to complete the circle of all teams beating teams that beat another team:
While everyone is raving on the red hot 11-1 (at the time of this writing) Thunder and their league high +15.5 PPG differential, don't discount the league's second highest +13.3 differential Denver Nuggets. Jokic is on fire and with the Warriors kind of fizzling out, I'm pretty much ready for the Western Conference Finals already.
In the East we have the Pistons on top now that the Bulls had some time to fall back to earth. The conference is ravaged with top-talent injury, but it's nice to see a team that was the ultimate basement dweller a couple years ago now rising up and becoming a fun team to watch.
But Cade Cunningham had an interesting night the other day. He shot 45 times in a single basketball game and made just 14 of them. I went ahead and ran where that puts him on the official all time "lowest percentage on 45 or more field goal attempts" list and found this puts him in the bottom-five.
This is the part where I tell you I'm not here to talk about Cade Cunningham. I might have a new favorite player I've never heard of.
Joe Fulks
NBA Photos. Getty Images.Look, you miss 100 percent of the shots you don't take. And sometimes pretty much all the ones you do take. Batting .174 is good in baseball at least. For a pitcher, anyway.
Imagine watching this guy shoot bricks with those shiny fake leather short shorts held up by a gym class flag football belt. This is probably why they didn't televise basketball yet in the 40s. Elvis hadn't yet broken the cultural male hip movement barrier. Can't have kids seeing that.
Moving on. I get a chuckle when I see things like this. I guess we can call them boxagamis.
You could do this several ways, but let's stick with points, rebounds, assists, and steals as done above. Just in the first ten days of November, there were 23 boxagamis and 46 total on the season. Cade Cunningham, James Harden, Grayson Allen, Marcus Smart, and Kel'el Ware all did so on November 10th alone.
Let's do a little Nico night cap on the NBA. He's out now so just to put everything in perspective I ran some stats starting at the beginning of last year through now pre/post Luka trade. 50 games pre. 45 post. 26-24 with Luka and 17-28 without. Obviously, the AD injury and literally every other big on their team hurt. Who could have seen that coming though?
Oh, everyone?
"Defense wins championships". I agree with Nico here, but having defenders being available to play is kind of important too. Luka's defense is abysmal. But when you trade him for salvaged glass, I guess this is what happens. Since the start of the 2024-25 season, the Mavericks went from allowing 113 points per game with Luka to 117 without while scoring less (115 with Luka, 111 without).
Again, the injuries confound things. But not even having his 1% chance of happening "vision" in getting Cooper Flagg saved him.
NFL
Let's talk a little NFL. It's year three for Bryce Young. #1 overall draft pick. They say you can't judge a pick until after three years, so I guess he has a couple months to make up for things. Not looking great though if you ask me.
Translation - this is absolutely a knock on Bryce Young.
Bryce has 39 games under his belt now. Looking back at the 20 quarterbacks taken #1 overall that lasted long enough to play at least 39 career games, only Alex Smith and Michael Vick have fewer 200-yard passing games. Young has 12. Smith 11. Vick 10. Obviously, Vick's is more understandable with the wheels he had to at his disposal.
Tim Couch had 15. That's not a guy you want ahead of you in any stat. But it's also kind of wild that he was given a 39-game leash too. If you're not a Browns fan, anyway. Flame outs like Jamarcus Russell or Ryan Leaf didn't make the 39-game cut, for example. The problem with Carolina here is they really have no other option other than to hope for another late-season resurgence. The sad part is even if that happens it'll probably be just as fake as it was last year. Young is getting a longer leash due to the massive trade that netted him in Carolina and that's just how sunken cost effect works.
Catch up on last week's Sports Staturday: