ECU’s Harrell named 2024 Graphite Award winner for defensive play calling

by | Jan 24, 2025

By ECUPirates.com

PARKER, Colo. – RII Sports Technology announced its annual 2024 Graphite Award winners recognizing the most efficient offensive and defensive play callers in each Division I football conference. East Carolina’s head coach/defensive coordinator Blake Harrell has been named the winner of the American Athletic Conference.

In his fourth year as the defensive coordinator, his Play Calling Efficiency Rating (PCER) was 82.9 percent during the 2024 campaign leading ranking first in The American Athletic Conference and 12th nationally among all FBS programs. His defensive group stood among the FBS Leaders (Top 30) in six statistical categories: defensive touchdowns (12th/3 scores), red zone defense (13th/0.745), team tackles for loss (14th/7.2 per game), passes intercepted (27th/14 interceptions), turnovers gained (27th/22 total) and 4th down conversion percentage defense (29th/0.457).

Harrell, who served as the interim head coach and then named head coach on Nov. 27, guided to the Pirates to a 5-1 record as the program leader that included a 26-21 victory over NC State in the 2024 Go Bowling Military Bowl capping an 8-5 overall record. He mentored three AAC All-Conference players in Zakye Barker (second team), Omar Rogers (third team) and J.D. Lampley (honorable mention), while Shavon Revel Jr. (East-West Shrine Bowl) and Rogers (Tropical Bowl) were postseason bowl invitees.

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.

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