May 18, 2013

Final College Football Defensive Efficiency Ratings

January 22, 2013 by Leave a Comment
inbrowns-saban.jpg

Below are our defensive ratings for the 2012 season. There is some interesting information here, some affirmations (Alabama #1 defense), some surprises (Clemson middle of the pack?) and some hilarity (Louisiana Tech was #1 in our offensive ratings, but comes in dead last in the defensive ratings).

These ratings are the reverse mirror image of the offensive ratings, meaning that offensive ratings depend on more plays and more yards per play, the defensive ratings are based on fewer plays run (3 and outs) and less yards per play. On offense the higher the rating the better, while on defense the lower the rating the better.

Similar to the offensive ratings these numbers do not include a strength of schedule component which I believe is an issue and which I intend to correct in 2013. For example, in the ratings below South Carolina and Boise State are exactly tied at #11. But, you would be hard pressed to make me believe that South Carolina, who played Clemson, Georgia and Arkansas didn’t play a tougher schedule (offensively speaking) than Boise.

Some observations from these numbers:

·Three highly rated offensive teams – Arizona, Baylor and Louisiana Tech, pull up the rear in the defensive rankings lending credence to the theory that hurry up, no huddle offenses cause defensive issues for a team.

·On the flip side of that argument, Oregon comes in at 46th, while Texas A&M, Clemson and Oklahoma come in as “average” on defense. Again, I have some work to do on strength of schedule (SoS) to make these ratings a more apples to apples comparison.

·The offensive ratings suggested Clemson faced some bad offenses in 2012, with Auburn, Maryland and Wake among the worst offenses. These numbers also suggest Clemson faced some bad defenses – Duke (108), Ball State (102) and Boston College (101) all ranked in the bottom 20 in defense.

·On the other hand, Clemson also faced 5 top 20 defensive teams – Florida State (2), LSU (8), South Carolina (t-11th), Virginia Tech (18) and Maryland (20).

·Clemson’s defensive rating was very slightly above “average” (average is 100.00). The Tigers gave up a slightly below average number of plays per game (a good thing) and a slightly above average gain per play (not so good).

·Clemson averaged 11.54 more plays per game than its opponents.

·Florida State was the only defense to give up less than 4 yards per play.

·Alabama was #1 in least plays per game allowed and #2 in yards per play given up.

These rankings closely mirror the NCAA’s “Total Defense” rankings – not necessarily a good thing – and my instincts lead me to believe that adding a Strength of Schedule component, as planned, would provide a more realistic picture on both sides of the ball.


dTempo 2012 –

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College Football Turnover Trends

January 18, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Ron Cherry

Below are the turnover reports for 2012, 2011 and a report combining the two years. The graphs pictorially reinforce our earlier hypothesis: Turnovers were much more important to winning and losing in 2012 than they were in 2011.

Working left to right the 2012 graph shows almost a straight downward trend – the more turnovers the smaller the chance of winning.

The 2011 graph shows the same thing – more turnovers equals less chance of winning – but the graph is flatter and even rounded at the end (albeit with a small sample size).

I included the graph combining the two years for historical purposes as the ultimate goal is to look at long term trends rather than one year blips.


Turnover Report _Combo_ Final 2012 –

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2012 College Football Statistical Summary

January 14, 2013 by Leave a Comment
2012 Final

The 2012 season closely mirrored 2011 in terms of winning percentages of the categories we track. As you can see in the graph below many of the categories are very similar and some even overlap the other to the extent that it’s impossible to distinguish the two.

- 2012 Final

There are, however, a couple of categories where 2012 was vastly different than 2011: Turnovers and Penalty Yards.

In 2011 teams with fewer turnovers won 56.80% of their games. By definition this does not include games where the turnover battle was even, these games were not included on either side of the equation. In 2012 the team with fewer turnovers won 75.40% of their games – a whopping increase of 18.60% – a remarkable change in one year. The question moving forward is which year was an aberration, 2011 or 2012? On the flip side of that are penalty yards.

In 2011 winning teams had less penalty yards 52.16% of the time. Amazingly, in 2012 winning teams had less penalty yards only 43.37% of the time and winning teams actually averaged more penalty yards per game than losing teams. Not only that, but in perhaps my all-time favorite stat teams with 100+ yards in penalties were 55-33 in 2012 a winning % of 62.5% – higher than several of the categories we track.

In the big scheme of things two years is not a lot of history on which to base conclusions or identify trends. Still, we have 1,404 games currently in our database, which is not an insignificant number. The ultimate goal is to identify which stats are a signal and which are noise.


2012 Summary Final

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Final 2012 Offensive Efficiency Rankings for College Football

January 10, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Sonny-Dykes

Below are our final offensive efficiency ratings for Division I College Football. Clemson ended up ninth and if you look at the teams above them it’s really hard to argue, with perhaps one exception (more on that in a minute).

The rankings are pretty self-explanatory and consist of two equally weighted factors. First, the number of plays run (tempo). The adjusted tempo is how your team compares to the “average” team. For example, Clemson’s adjusted tempo is 114.33. This means when the average team runs 100 plays Clemson runs 114.33. Another way to look at it is Clemson’s tempo is 114.33% of the average team.

The second factor is efficiency and equates to yards per play. Similarly to adjusted tempo, adjusted efficiency is how your team compares to the “average” team. In this ranking Clemson averages 109.60% of the average team in terms of yards per play.


eTempo 2012 Final2 –

We mentioned above that one team above Clemson is questionable and that team is Marshall. Marshall was first in adjusted tempo and 45th in efficiency, but that was good enough for the overall number 5 ranking. The disparity between those rankings makes me consider the possibility that some adjustment is needed.

I think we all know that the ACC is not currently a premier conference, but you have to wonder if strength of schedule was factored into this equation would Marshall, as a Conference USA member, fall and/or Clemson rise?

We are endeavoring to fix this issue in time for the 2013 season by incorporating strength of schedule into the algorithm.

That said, the current state of the ACC is not one that is going to generally improve a teams strength of schedule ratings no matter what metric you are measuring (offense, defense or special teams), so it remains to be seen if adding a strength of schedule component will help or hurt Clemson in this case.

Looking at the larger picture however, adding a strength of schedule will allow us to move towards a more level playing field, similar to what we have done with the tempo and efficiency rankings.

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Turnover Report

December 13, 2012 by Leave a Comment
fumble50

I’m not splitting the atom when I tell you that the more turnovers a team has the more that team’s odds of winning decrease. Still, it’s instructive to look at the numbers for many reasons, such as finding the tipping point where the number of turnovers increases the odds of losing to greater than 50%. That appears to be 2 for 2012.

The fact is that the vast majority of teams (80.64%) are going to have at least 1 turnover in a given game. The key is not getting to two. When you get to 2 turnovers your odds of winning are less than 50% and they drop steadily and precipitously for each additional turnover .


Turnover Report15 –

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College Football By The Numbers

December 12, 2012 by Leave a Comment
20121211200620

As much of college football fandom has noticed scoring is up in 2012, but not as much as you’d think and most likely not where you’d think.

Winning teams are averaging 2.7% more points per game over 2011, while losing teams have upped their total by an average of 7.2%. Combined, that’s an increase of about 4.3% per game.

Incredibly, the average losing team is averaging just over 20 points per game. It seems like not to long ago that 24 or so points seemed to be the point where you had a very good chance of winning. Score 20 now and you are typically just an “average” loser.

Yards per pass is the best indicator of success in 2012 and there is a huge difference between what winners average and what losers average – 8.18 to 6.40. Winning teams average 28% more yards per pass than losers.

The key to offense is efficiency, not the number of plays run. The difference between winners and losers is only 1.59 plays per team, but winners average 94.50 more yards per game and 6.24 yards per play compared to 5.04 for losers. Think about that for a minute. Winners average 1.59 more plays per game, but 94.50 yards more. Efficiency.


2012 Summary15 –

The winning percentage for home teams dipped to 57.03% in 2012 and my gut tells me it’s around 50% or less in conference games. Early in the season home teams win at a higher rate, not because of a home field advantage, but because in large part the matchups are mismatches. For every Alabama – Michigan matchup there are 10 Clemson/Ball State type clashes. In the coming weeks I’ll be doing more research on this topic.

If there was any doubt, one look at these numbers tells you Vegas knows what they are doing. The favored team wins outright almost 76% of the time and the winning team covered over 74% of the time.

Penalty yardage is one area where coaches and fans are simply wrong, at least in 2012. Almost 57% of the time the winning team is penalized more (in yardage) than losers (54.16 to 48.89 on average).

One other note on penalties, almost inexplicably teams with 100 or more yards of penalties are 54-32 in 2012, a winning percentage of 62.8%.

Finally, the biggest change this year was turnovers. After years of coach speak about the importance of turnovers in winning and losing with dubious data to back that up, this year over 75% of the time winners had less turnovers than the losers and the winning team averaged almost a full turnover less than losers.

The graph below compares these figures for 2011 and 2012 and for the most part the numbers are fairly close and sometimes almost identical. However, there are two close to the right edge – penalty yards and turnovers – that changed dramatically this season as noted above.


We still have 35 bowl games to go before we can wrap up the 2012 season. At that point we’ll have a little over 1,400 games in our database.

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Updated Offensive Tempo Stats

December 4, 2012 by Leave a Comment
NCAA FOOTBALL: OCT 30 Baylor at Texas

Baylor edges out Louisiana Tech for the top spot, while Clemson drops to number 9. Also, is there any wonder Auburn may be interested in Chad Morris? They come in at #116 (of 120) in our rankings. Yikes.


eTempo14 –

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Updated Offensive Tempo Stats

November 27, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Sonny-Dykes


eTempo 13 –

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Updated Offensive Tempo Stats

November 20, 2012 by 4 Comments
Tajh Boyd (orangeandwhite.com)

Clemson makes a move, which is not surprising considering 102 plays and 754 yards gained against North Carolina State.  The bigger question for me is what happens this week and will Clemson be closer to 70 plays or 90?  It could make the difference in the game on Saturday.


Offensive Tempo Week 12 –

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Turnover Report

November 17, 2012 by Leave a Comment

What you see below is not really surprising. The more turnovers the less chance you have of winning. There are some instructive items here though. Moving from 1 to 2 turnovers means your chance of winning goes under 50%. And the fact that Clemson blasted both Duke and Maryland with 4 and 3 turnovers respectively speaks to the efficiency of the Clemson offense when they don’t turn the ball over.


Turnover Report12 –

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