Ian Strong vs. Junior Sherrill: 2026 stats compared
California vs. 
Vanderbilt
Junior Sherrill is ahead on 4 of 6 stats, including receiving yards, catches and receiving TDs. Ian Strong has the edge on yards per catch. Both are wide receivers: Ian Strong for California and Junior Sherrill for Vanderbilt, 2026 season through Oct 24, 2026.
Ian Strong vs. Junior Sherrill, stat by stat
| Stat | Ian Strong | Junior Sherrill |
|---|---|---|
| Receiving yards | 506 56th | 706 14th |
| Catches | 33 84th | 49 15th |
| Yards per catch | 15.3 155th | 14.4 210th |
| Receiving TDs | 1 318th | 4 85th |
| Explosive catches (16+ yards) | 14 24th | 14 29th |
| EPA per play | 0.26 184th | 0.82 40th |
The better number on each row is marked. National ranks are among every FBS receivers and tight end with the stat; rates need a minimum sample (50 dropbacks, 20 carries, 8 catches). From the play-by-play, games through Oct 24, 2026.
Where do Ian Strong and Junior Sherrill rank nationally?
Each row is one stat. The dots show where Ian Strong and Junior Sherrill rank among FBS receivers and tight ends with enough snaps to qualify, with each player's rank printed by his dot: further left is better. Hover or tap a dot for the number behind it.
Ian Strong and Junior Sherrill, in charts
Ian Strong and Junior Sherrill: career stats
Ian Strong
| Season | Team | Catches | Rec yds | Yds/catch | Rec TD | Rush yds |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | Rutgers | 16 | 230 | 14.4 | 2 | — |
| 2024 | Rutgers | 42 | 668 | 15.9 | 5 | — |
| 2025 | Rutgers | 52 | 762 | 14.7 | 5 | — |
| 2026 | California | 33 | 506 | 15.3 | 1 | 0 |
| Career | 143 | 2,166 | 15.1 | 13 | 0 |
Junior Sherrill
| Season | Team | Catches | Rec yds | Yds/catch | Rec TD | Rush yds |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | Vanderbilt | 20 | 293 | 14.7 | 3 | 29 |
| 2024 | Vanderbilt | 29 | 411 | 14.2 | 3 | 16 |
| 2025 | Vanderbilt | 54 | 784 | 14.5 | 7 | 16 |
| 2026 | Vanderbilt | 49 | 706 | 14.4 | 4 | 5 |
| Career | 152 | 2,194 | 14.4 | 17 | 66 |
Seasons since 2022 from CollegeFootballData.com (FBS games), plus this season from the play-by-play.
Their seasons, game by game
Ian Strong
WR, California (3–5). Senior. 6-4, 210 pounds. Coram, NY
| Week | Opponent | Receiving yards | Catches | Receiving TDs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | UCLA | 102 | 5 | 0 |
| 2 | Syracuse | 64 | 3 | 0 |
| 3 | Wagner | 54 | 6 | 0 |
| 4 | Clemson | 44 | 3 | 0 |
| 5 | UNLV | 74 | 6 | 1 |
| 6 | Virginia Tech | 97 | 5 | 0 |
| 8 | SMU | 71 | 5 | 0 |
Junior Sherrill
WR, Vanderbilt (3–5). Senior. 5-11, 200 pounds. Nashville, TN
| Week | Opponent | Receiving yards | Catches | Receiving TDs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Austin Peay | 70 | 4 | 0 |
| 2 | Vanderbilt | 94 | 5 | 0 |
| 3 | NC State | 108 | 6 | 2 |
| 4 | Auburn | 95 | 6 | 0 |
| 5 | Vanderbilt | 107 | 7 | 1 |
| 6 | Ole Miss | 55 | 5 | 0 |
| 7 | Arkansas | 99 | 8 | 1 |
| 8 | Kentucky | 78 | 8 | 0 |
Questions about Ian Strong vs. Junior Sherrill
Who's better, Ian Strong or Junior Sherrill?
Junior Sherrill is ahead on 4 of 6 stats, including receiving yards, catches and receiving TDs. Ian Strong has the edge on yards per catch. Both are wide receivers: Ian Strong for California and Junior Sherrill for Vanderbilt, 2026 season through Oct 24, 2026.
Who has more receiving yards, Ian Strong or Junior Sherrill?
Junior Sherrill: 706 receiving yards to Ian Strong's 506, 14th among FBS receivers and tight ends.
Who has more catches, Ian Strong or Junior Sherrill?
Junior Sherrill: 49 catches to Ian Strong's 33, 15th among FBS receivers and tight ends.
Who has more explosive catches, Ian Strong or Junior Sherrill?
They're even at 14 explosive catches (16+ yards).
Who has more career receiving yards, Ian Strong or Junior Sherrill?
Junior Sherrill: 2,194 to Ian Strong's 2,166, counting FBS seasons since 2022.
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Everything on this site starts with someone else's data, and we credit all of it. The projections, picks, rankings and tiers are our own math on top.
Where the data comes from
| Source | What we use | How often |
|---|---|---|
| CollegeFootballData.com, via the public cfbfastR files | Schedules, final scores, pregame Elo, play-by-play and box score stats, rosters | Usually posted Sunday or Monday morning after games |
| DraftKings lines (via The Odds API and CollegeFootballData.com) | The line and total on each game, and where each opened | Every morning, and before kickoffs Thursday to Saturday |
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| us-atlas (U.S. Census Bureau boundaries) | State shapes for the map | Once |
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- The three ratings. SP+ is built from every play this season. PRIME is a possession-efficiency rating. Elo uses only final scores and carries over from year to year, with 55 Elo points of home edge.
- Big Al's pick. The team at least two of the three ratings favor, with our confidence the average of their three win chances for that team. On the game cards, a pick is a lock when all three favor the same team and the average win chance is 80% or more, a coin flip when it's under 55%, and a lean otherwise. Injuries can drop the tier: each key player out counts by what he does for his team (a starting quarterback is 2 points, the feature back or top receiver half a point, doubtful counts half), the other side's injuries offset, and 1 point drops a tier, 2 points two. The game page shows it as an injury alert. On the Top 25 games, the game of the week and every coin flip, Big Al makes the call himself, sometimes against the numbers, and says why.
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- Missing data. When a team's play-by-play is clearly incomplete (fewer than 45 offensive plays a game), we hide its offense stats instead of showing bad numbers.
Rushing yards here exclude sacks, so they run higher than official totals. Ranks are out of the 138 FBS teams.
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- A rating built possession by possession: how well a team turns drives into points and keeps opponents from doing the same, adjusted for opponents. Zero is an average FBS team.
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- A results-only rating. Every team has a number, 1500 is average, and the winner takes points from the loser after every game. Beat a great team and you take a lot. Beat a bad one and you take a few. It carries part of last season over, so it's slow to catch a team that changed.
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- Corrected for who a team played. Hanging 50 on an FCS team counts for less than hanging 30 on Georgia.
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- Where a team's wins came from. Every team starts as a .500 team. The record above or below .500 gets split four ways that add up to the real record: schedule (what an average team would win against that schedule), roster (the wins its talent and returning starters are worth on paper), coach (wins from playing better or worse than that roster) and luck (actual wins against the wins its SP+ says it should have). On team pages and in two charts.
- Schedule, Roster, Coach and Luck BAWA
- The four parts of BAWA. Schedule: what an average team would win against that schedule, minus .500. Roster: the extra wins from a roster this good on paper (247Sports talent and returning production). Coach: wins from playing better or worse than that roster should. Luck: actual wins against the wins SP+ expects. Recruiting rankings undersell the service academies, so their coaches get extra credit.
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About Big Al's CFB Lab
Big Al's CFB Lab is a college football stats site: a pick for every FBS game, head to heads across 75+ stats, the playoff picture, and charts you can bend to support any narrative (except Big 12 supremacy).
What's here
Every FBS team, player and game gets its own page, with national ranks, the ratings people argue about (SP+, PRIME and Elo) and charts you can share. The rivalry pages carry the series history. The tools let you build your own Top 25, your own 12-team playoff field and your own charts.
Who's Big Al
A college football fan who got tired of arguing without numbers. Big Al calls the Top 25 games, the Game of the week and every coin flip himself, and sometimes goes against the data. The rest of the picks are the ratings' call.
Where the numbers come from
We don't make the ratings; we put them side by side. SP+ is Bill Connelly's. SUPLEX is Nate Tice's. The play-by-play comes from CollegeFootballData.com and cfbfastR. The full list, and how we turn it into picks, is on Sources and methods.
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- 12 teams, under the 2026-27 rules. Automatic bids go to the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12 and SEC champions, and to the highest-ranked team from the American, Conference USA, MAC, Mountain West, Pac-12 or Sun Belt. Until the title games, each conference's current leader stands in as its champion.
- Notre Dame is in if you rank it in your top 12. Everyone else is at-large.
- Seeds go straight by your order. Seeds 1 to 4 get first-round byes; 5 to 12 play first-round games at the higher seed.
- The builder won't let you remove a Power 4 champion or your last team from outside the Power 4.
Drag a team by its handle (⋮⋮) to reseed it; with a keyboard, focus the handle and use the up and down arrow keys. Pick a different team from a row's menu to swap it in. Your field is saved in this browser.
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Projected scores come from SP+ offense, defense and special teams, plus 2.5 points for the home team. Cards also show DraftKings' line and total as facts: we pick winners, not bets. Open Details for the full read, or Head to head for every stat.
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Final scores against what we said before kickoff. Big Al's pick is the team at least two of SP+, PRIME and Elo favored, unless he made the call himself on a toss-up or one of the week's biggest games. Ranked means in that week's AP poll. Open a game for the full preview as it stood going into the week.
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What this shows
SP+ vs. payroll is the average, across a conference's teams with an NIL valuation (positive means its teams play better than their payrolls predict). Blue-chip ratio is the share of all its rostered players who were 4- or 5-star recruits.
Ranks are national, out of 138 FBS teams. A top-10 team also counts toward the top 25 and top 40, and everyone outside the last cutoff counts as weak. Open a conference to see its teams.
Conference depth
Projected bracket
Seeds 1–4 get first-round byes. Seeds 5–8 host the first round.
The field and the bubble
The columns on the right show where each team would be seeded under the other ratings. A dash means out.
How the field is built
- 12 teams. Five get in automatically: the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12 and SEC champions, plus the highest-ranked team from the American, Conference USA, MAC, Mountain West, Pac-12 or Sun Belt (champion or not).
- Notre Dame is in if it ranks in the top 12.
- At-large. The remaining spots go to the highest-ranked teams left. If an automatic qualifier ranks outside the top 12, it takes the last at-large spot.
- Seeding follows the ranking, as it has since 2025. A conference champion isn't guaranteed a bye.
- Champions mid-season. "Current conference leader" uses the best conference record so far, with ties broken by the chosen rating. "Highest-rated team" picks the best-rated team in each conference instead.
- Composite averages SP+, PRIME and strength of record after putting each on a common scale.
- This is a projection from today's numbers. The real field is chosen by a committee on Dec. 6, after conference title games.
How we picked it
How we picked it
Three ratings look at a team in three different ways. The numbers' pick is the team at least two of them favor. On the toss-ups and the biggest games, Big Al makes the call himself and says why.
Where the game is won
Where the game is won
Each row puts one team's unit against the unit it faces, by national rank out of all FBS teams. An edge is a gap of 25 spots or more.
Injuries and availability
Statuses come from the conference availability reports and team news, as of the date shown. "Hasn't played" means a regular (the main passer, a quarter of the carries or 15% of the catches) with no pass, carry or catch in his team's last two games, from the play-by-play. That can be an injury, a benching or a suspension. Linemen and defenders don't show up in that check.
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Ratings: SP+ via CFB Update; PRIME via primecfb.com. Box and play stats computed from CollegeFootballData.com play data (via the public cfbfastR files), FBS games only for scoring. Rushing yards here exclude sacks, so they run higher than official totals. Ranks are out of 138 FBS teams.