Did we improve on anything other than offense this year? According to rankings:
Total Offense: 127th to 72nd (Good improvement)
Scoring offense: 124th to 94th (Decent improvement)
Total Defense: 89th to 111th (Regressed)
Scoring Defense: 103rd to 110th (Regressed)
Turnover Margin: 93rd to 110th (Regressed)
Penalties: 15th to 116th (Horrible regression)
Field Goals: 130th to 123rd (same percentage made, only made 3 each year)
Wins: 3 to 3 ( although I guess its a better percentage ).
Looking at rankings is somewhat misleading this year due to the high variance in teams and schedules compared to normal. Otherwise, last year we had two games against Citadel and Temple that we didn't really have comparable games this year due to covid.
Offensively we improved by a good bit. That is just plain to see so there really isn't much point in talking about it.
Defensively. We went from averaging giving up 32.4 ppg last year to 36.8 ppg this year. Without the two games against USF and Citadel though (since there really were no comparable games this year) that number is 35.2 which at that level basically comes down to how bad a mood Dabo is on the day we have to play them. Another factor to consider here, although I don't have the numbers so I can't say for certain, is that we might have had more drives this year due to pace of play by our offense. More drives leads to more scoring opportunity, so we would have to look at things like ppd to get a feel of that. Overall we still weren't by any means good or even average, but I'm not sure we really got a whole lot worse this year in that regard.
For total defense, we basically remained the exact same in yards per play (.03 difference). We just had more plays, likely because we were pushing the tempo more on offense. That affects the overall defense, and it wouldn't surprise me if we took out the two OOC "easy" (yes I know) games, it wouldn't surprise me if we saw a decent upgrade in that area. We were significantly worse in big plays allowed allowing basically an extra 20 yard play every game. However, that combined with the increased TO numbers we saw paints this year as being more of a boom or bust defense than last year. That is backed by an almost equal increase in tfl this year.
Defensively, I don't really think we really regressed.
For turnovers we gained 1.8 per game this year compared to 1.33 per game last year so we saw an uptick there. We lost 2.5 per game this year compared to 1.67 per game last year. Probably both of those changes are effected by the effects of Covid on team preparation making turnovers more likely. What is interesting is in the last 7 games we had just 13 turnovers so that rate would be 1.86. Obviously that is a bit of a cherry pick but it isn't really excluding any overly good turnover teams I don't think. Keep in mind, we had about 10 more plays per game this year than last year which would basically account for the .2 difference between last year and the last 7 games. I'd say we got worse to start the year but by the end we were pretty similar on turnovers as last year.
Special teams were special both years. With coverage teams okay, kicking bad, and Harvin being Harvin.
I'd say we made significant improvements on O with minor changes if any to defense and special teams, although I think defense changed a good bit it was more of a side grade than anything else.
reaction when you need it?
I'm just explaining things for perspective. Nobody else in the ACC played 2 of the top 6 scoring offenses in the country, and I don't think anybody else in the country did either. 5 ACC teams didn't play Clemson. 0 other teams played UCF. It just adds some context as a 'well how did we rank if not for X'.
