PARKER, Colo. - RII Sports Technology announced its annual Graphite Award winners on Friday, recognizing the most efficient offensive and defensive play callers in each Division I college football conference.
Recently hired defensive coordinator Nick Benedetto was named the Mid-American Conference Defensive Play Caller of the Year. Benedetto had the nation's highest play call efficiency rating at 87.52 percent while at Northern Illinois. The NIU defense ranked fourth in the FBS in total defense.
2024 Fresno State football defensive coordinator Kevin Coyle was named the Defensive Play Caller of the Year for the Mountain West with a 77.65 percent play call efficiency rating last season.
Each year RII Sports Technology analyzes play-by-play data for all Division I FBS football programs and assesses the degree to which offensive and defensive play callers make decisions that best align their team's strengths with their opponent's weaknesses. This assessment is quantified in a Play Calling Efficiency Ratio (PCER) – a measure of how frequently a play caller put their team in advantageous strength-on-weakness positions while minimizing the number of times they operated from a disadvantage.
More information on the award can be found here.