A MONEYBALL MOVE COMPLETES KENNESAW'S QB ROOM
"He throws downfield" is the new "he gets on base" for Jerry Mack and Mitch Militello.
Tommy Ulatowski is a real sicko. That’s a compliment, I promise. Nobody can ever question his love of the game after making the move from Kent State, where he took a beating during during the last few months of a 20-game losing streak, over to Jerry Mack’s total teardown in Kennesaw.
Following an on-campus visit last week, the incoming transfer QB announced his commitment on Saturday and will have two years of eligibility remaining when he officially signs with the Owls.
Ulatowski’s appearances through three seasons with the Golden Flashes will make him the most experienced QB on the roster when he arrives in Kennesaw this summer. His results since beginning his Kent State career as a preferred walk-on:
2022: 6/11 (54.5%), 102 yards, 1 TD, 116.5 NFL passer rating
2023: 60/121 (49.6%), 737 yards, 7 TD, 2 INT, 79.9 passer rating
2024: 81/175 (46.3%), 1,353 yards, 15 TD, 8 INT, 82.1 passer rating
I can understand a collective shrug at some of the numbers, which are less than inspiring out of context. Focusing on top-line stats like basic completion percentage or passer rating, however, downplays the grim reality at Kent State and also what might've caught the Owls’ attention. To me, bringing in Ulatowski for the rebuild is a far more interesting — and important — addition than it appears on paper.
If you look closer, Ulatowski is the first true Moneyball signing of the offseason.
Mack and his OC Mitch Militello, while adding flourishes of their own, are basically doing a wholesale install of Josh Heupel’s version of the Veer and Shoot offense that originated under Art Briles. To understand the early QB moves under the new regime, think about the lineage of QBs under Heupel: Drew Lock at Missouri; McKenzie Milton and Dillon Gabriel at UCF; Hendon Hooker, Joe Milton and Nico Iamaleava in Knoxville. All players who put up big numbers under Heupel’s guidance — and Militello’s assistance — with wildly different styles, body types, and pro prospects.
If anything, the recent Nico parable tells us an optimistic story about positional value at QB as the Owls try to stretch the budget. Heupel and his staff listened to the NIL ask from a highly-rated returning starter and didn’t blink. Tennessee was comfortable handing the reins to an inexperienced freshman or bringing in someone else at a last-minute discount, without the need for spring practice. Heupel chose the latter, essentially trading Nico to UCLA for Joey Aguilar and cash considerations.
Kennesaw’s situation is much different, obviously, yet that move gave me some slight comfort based on how the Vols think about quarterbacks. This is still the most important position on the field, but there are pathways to success in this offense no matter the pedigree, natural talent, or paycheck of your QB1.
What do the Owls want and need in a quarterback, then? Above all else, the ability to process the RPO reads and command the high-tempo, controlled chaos offense. Certain guys can make this system look easy. Executing plays like the glance RPO below seem simple and aren’t going to hit SportsCenter, yet they’re much more important than any of the entertaining deep balls on Ulatowski’s portal highlight tape. When Kennesaw reaches a point where concepts like this look routine, then we’re finally cooking on offense.
Just like the Moneyball-era A’s, Kennesaw will need to “find the value of players that nobody else can can see” while operating on limited resources. (It’d help to find our CFB version of Tim Hudson and Barry Zito, too.) Digging through some of Ulatowski’s 2024 numbers on PFF and Game on Paper after his commitment reminds me of the scene where Brad Pitt’s Billy Beane stresses the importance of on-base percentage, rather than the old-school data points or eye test.
“Why do you like him?”
“Because he gets on base throws downfield.”
As much as you want to make those layups, the willingness and ability to throw the deep ball are clear non-negotiables. An offense built on power running and vertical passing requires that home-run threat to reach the full potential. That’s the common trait connecting Dexter Williams II (the presumed leader in the clubhouse), Ulatowksi, and Amari Odom from Wofford in Militello’s first QB room.
Check out the average depth of target in CUSA last season, with KSU’s three D1 transfers added to the mix:
Ulatowski (Kent State) — 13.3 yards
DWII (GA Southern) — 12.2
Kaidon Salter (Liberty) — 11.9
Odom (Wofford) — 11.8
Parker Awad (NMSU) — 11.1
Tyler Huff (JSU) / Keyone Jenkins (FIU) — 10.6
…
Davis Bryson — 7.3
Jase Bauer (Sam Houston) — 7.2
TJ Finley (WKU) — 7.0
Combining all the G5 leagues, Ulatowski’s ADOT was highest of any QB with 100+ drop-backs. Sure, the T is pretty loaded in that acronym — “target” says nothing about whether or not the throw was successful. Just that the QB tried. How’d those attempts go for Ulatowski?
Across the board, Kent State was an absolutely terrible football team last season, to a historic extreme of 0-12. We can say that lovingly because the Owls battled the Golden Flashes all season in a Sosa/McGwire home run race to avoid being the #134 ranked team in America. One of the few bright spots was generating explosive plays through the air, running a lot of similar concepts that we’ll see from the Owls this fall.
Thanks to CFBNumbers, a great follow on Twitter and here on Substack, for this tool that will spit out radar charts for FBS quarterback play. That helps us separate Ulatowski’s results from the full Kent State season, which removes the ritual humiliation of the Golden Flashes’ buy-game slate and focuses on the MAC schedule.
Ulatowski finished the season with an expected points added (basically yards with context) per drop-back of 0.09, which would’ve slotted him right into the mid-50s nationally, tied with Huff at Jacksonville State and App State’s Joey Aguilar. He took over the full-time job after two season-ending injuries to other QBs, blowouts at Pitt, Tennessee, and Penn State, and an FCS loss thrown in for good measure. Very relatable, tbh.
There aren’t many — if any — quarterbacks in the country with a wider gap between success rate and EPA/play. Comparing Kent State’s 131st-ranked passing success rate with Ulatowski’s above-average EPA/play tells you that the highs are extremely high and can rack up yardage in a hurry. They just didn’t happen that often. I’m also intrigued by Ulatowski’s early down numbers, especially when looking at Kennesaw’s own offensive failings on those downs last year.
If you’re not impressed by Ulatowski’s overall completion percentage (74th of 77 QBs with 100+ drop-backs), take solace in the fact that his accuracy on 20+ yard throws actually ranked fifth in the G5. Here’s how Ulatowski stacked up compared to last year’s deep-ball performances in CUSA:
Ulatowski threw deep more often (22% of the time) and completed those attempts at a higher rate than anyone in CUSA except UTEP’s Skyler Locklear. For a couple other incoming CUSA transfers: Ethan Vasko, who’s moving from Coastal to Liberty, finished at 41.5% on 20+ yard throws last season. WKU’s Maverick McIvor completed them 29.2% of the time at Abilene Christian last year.
His Big-Time Throw rate of 8% would’ve been CUSA’s best last season and ranked fourth among G5 quarterbacks with 100+ attempts. As always, your mileage may vary on PFF’s “signature” (read: subjective) stats. Let them explain: “A big-time throw is a high-difficulty, high-value pass. They are characterized by excellent ball placement and timing, typically on deeper passes or into tight windows.”
Ulatowski spent most of the 2024 season at Kent State running for his life. He was pressured on 46.6% of drop-backs, compared to 27.8% for Bryson behind Kennesaw’s widely-criticized OL. Think about that for a second. There’s some scheme stuff at play — hard to get home on pressures when the Owls spam slants and Qua Ashley swing routes — but Ulatowski’s pressure-to-sack ratio of 25.5% was in the bottom five of qualifying G5 quarterbacks. That number and some of the ugly misses/YOLO tossups are not perfect, to say the least, and suggest he was seeing ghosts at times during the 0-12 season.
Kent State didn’t use the 185-pounder much in the designed run game last year, which is likely a byproduct of losing two other QBs for the season before Ulatowski took over the full-time job in Week 5. Across his Kent State career, he carried 53 times for 3.1 yards per carry on called runs, compared to 5 YPC and some promising after-contact numbers for Williams in limited duty at Indiana and Georgia Southern. To round out the trio of transfers, Odom finished his time at Wofford with 5 total yards on designed runs, according to PFF. (That seems insanely low for a 6’5”, 205-pound QB at the FCS level.)
OK, that’s enough stats for today. Let’s revisit this episode of SVP’s Bad Beats from last season for the full ULATOWSKI! experience.
Assuming Ulatowksi’s commitment shuts down KSU’s involvement in the QB market, Mack enters his first season with a much better idea of what to expect from the position than his predecessor. Compare this year’s returning D1 snap counts at QB to the experience level during the other two post-Flexbone seasons:
2023: 321 snaps
2024: 12 snaps
2025: 1,441 snaps
Neither the added experience nor scheme change promise that Williams, Ulatowski, or any of Kennesaw’s QBs will play well, or that the Owls will have a good offense this year. This is all really just to say I’m viewing the Ulatowski pickup like an MLB team grabbing a power hitter with some fascinating peripheral numbers and concerning strikeout rates. We’re looking at a transfer acquisition where both sides are thinking “I can fix them.”
As little as we really know, it’s still a safe bet that DWII starts this fall, especially with 15 practices and a spring semester under his belt to learn the offense. Mack’s staff jumped on Williams early during the winter portal, and reportedly spent some money to sign him. I’d love to get Militello on a polygraph to ask about the Ulatowski timing, too. He was on the market December 9th and didn’t get a Kennesaw offer until last week, two-plus weeks after the spring game.
The good news: Even if Williams doesn’t end up as QB1, you can project what you’re getting with Ulatowski running a G5 offense. There’s a ton of volatility on a down-to-down basis, with a high ceiling and a sometimes-catastrophic floor. Over the course of the season, though, you can look at his body of work in some brutal circumstances and feel OK about competing in CUSA games with Ulatowski as the downside guarantee at QB. If Williams holds on to the job — or someone else takes it during camp — we now have some on-field context to show that somebody actually won the QB battle this time around.
Then again, I wrote the following sentence about the Owls’ quarterbacks before last season:
If you adjust expectations to account for what the Owls want to do on offense, a position group that many list as a weakness could actually be in the best shape it’s been for years.
Oops. Should I retire from Owls takes? Yeah, probably. Accountability is very important. You should maybe talk to your financial advisor and short $OWLS now that I’ve confessed my optimism.