AE 87
Helluva Engineer
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Okay, after 6, 7 games, we have enough data to start drawing some conclusions. I'm a fan of footballoutsiders.com. Their stats are opponent adjusted, rather than simply raw stats like yards/game. They have two main ways of ranking teams, S&P+ and FEI. They combine these into an F/+ which they use as their final team ranking.
S&P+ = play-by-play success rate based on down and distance and a points per play normalized to expectation given yard line plus a drive efficiency factor.
FEI = Fremeau Efficiency Index, drive success rate normalized to expectation given opponent.
In my opinion, they bias their F/+ too much toward the FEI, but I'm philosophically attracted to their methodology. I like S&P+ to tell how well the offenses and defenses are playing, but I wouldn't be surprised if FEI and F/+ handle the intangibles better for predicting outcomes.
That being said, after Syracuse, GT's F/+ ranking is 32. UVA is 62 and Pitt is 56. CU is 27 and U[sic]Ga is 17. From this perspective, we should handle our next two games fairly easily, and should be pretty competitive with CU.
Now if we look at the S&P+ ranks, I think we have reason to be even a bit more optimistic. We're 16th in offense. U[sic]Ga is 12 and CU is 33. On Defense S&P+, we're 48, georgie is 31, and CU is 19. If we continue to play more consistently, I think we will be fairly competitive against these teams.
UVA's offense has been bad, real bad, 100th in S&P+. We could very well shut them out too.
Of course, it's always possible that we lose focus again, but I'm now confident about the next two and optimistic about at least one of the big guys.
S&P+ = play-by-play success rate based on down and distance and a points per play normalized to expectation given yard line plus a drive efficiency factor.
FEI = Fremeau Efficiency Index, drive success rate normalized to expectation given opponent.
In my opinion, they bias their F/+ too much toward the FEI, but I'm philosophically attracted to their methodology. I like S&P+ to tell how well the offenses and defenses are playing, but I wouldn't be surprised if FEI and F/+ handle the intangibles better for predicting outcomes.
That being said, after Syracuse, GT's F/+ ranking is 32. UVA is 62 and Pitt is 56. CU is 27 and U[sic]Ga is 17. From this perspective, we should handle our next two games fairly easily, and should be pretty competitive with CU.
Now if we look at the S&P+ ranks, I think we have reason to be even a bit more optimistic. We're 16th in offense. U[sic]Ga is 12 and CU is 33. On Defense S&P+, we're 48, georgie is 31, and CU is 19. If we continue to play more consistently, I think we will be fairly competitive against these teams.
UVA's offense has been bad, real bad, 100th in S&P+. We could very well shut them out too.
Of course, it's always possible that we lose focus again, but I'm now confident about the next two and optimistic about at least one of the big guys.
