Geoff Collins as a HC - Full Season Data

CuseJacket

CuseJacket

Administrator
Staff member
Messages
19,059
For those unfamiliar, Football Outsiders (FO) publishes a popular efficiency ranking that many have referenced in posts throughout the years. FO adjusts for strength of opponent and also removes garbage time, among other things, in determining each team's relative strength against another. In other words, the premise is this get team comparisons as close to "apples to apples" as possible.

I decided to revisit the rankings for Collins' two years at Temple, to put his Head Coach track record into greater context than 3 games at GT. This has been posted before in various capacities, however I thought it useful during a bye week, particularly in the lead-up to the game @ Temple.

Temple

1st year - 2017
  • Regular season
    • 7-6 overall (includes bowl win)
    • 4-4 in conference
  • Football Outsiders Rank
    • Overall - 61
    • OFEI - 94
    • DFEI - 36
    • SFEI - 39

2nd year - 2018
  • Regular season
    • 8-5 overall (includes bowl loss)
    • 7-1 in conference
  • Football Outsiders Rank
    • Overall - 45
    • OFEI - 58
    • DFEI - 42
    • SFEI - 54

Note: Football Outsiders excludes games against FCS opponents in their rankings. In 2018, Temple lost to FCS Villanova by a final score of 19-17 in the first week of the season.

Link to FEI: https://www.footballoutsiders.com/stats/fei/2018
Link to Temple box scores: https://www.espn.com/college-football/team/schedule/_/id/218/season/2018

How do you interpret this data? How much weight should we put on it?

Certainly there is additional context pre- and post-Collins, and also relative comparisons to GT, but I didn't want to get too detailed in the OP.
 
ibeattetris

ibeattetris

Helluva Engineer
Messages
3,580
Thanks for consolidating. Hard to gauge since he was a first time HC and didn’t get a chance to do a full recruiting cycle. Also tough because I don’t know if those numbers are “good” for temple historically. When I get home I will look up historical data to try to compare.
 
ibeattetris

ibeattetris

Helluva Engineer
Messages
3,580
White_Gold said:
End of last year, ranked 63. Currently at 73. Current OFEI 36


2008 team- OFEI rank #49
2009 team- OFEI rank #3
2014 team- OFEI rank #3


3 win season FEI 71 OFEI rank #87
Click to expand...
Current ofei and definitely uses an aggregate of the previous 5 years + this year. The data won’t reflect only this year until week 6 I believe. So take 2019 ofei with a grain of salt. Our O will be worse and D much better taking into account just this year’s data would be my guess.

Edit: interesting note about 2014. We did so well they retroactively changed the formula because we broke their scale. It was a crazy year.
 

White_Gold

GT Athlete
Messages
314
Location
Dahlonega
So excel took all the win loss records and turn them into dates. I've gotta get to bed though so you can figure it out.

The official description FO gives:

The Fremeau Efficiency Index (FEI) is a college football rating system based on opponent-adjusted possession efficiency, representing the per possession scoring advantage a team would be expected to have on a neutral field against an average opponent. Unadjusted possession efficiency (PE) is calculated as a function of offensive, defensive, and special teams game splits. Schedule strength is represented by each team's average per possession opponent adjustment (OA). Opponent-adjusted offense ratings (OFEI), opponent-adjusted defense ratings (DFEI), and opponent-adjusted special teams ratings (SFEI) are calculated in a similar manner as overall FEI ratings. Team records against all FBS opponents (W-L) and against opponents ranked in the FEI top 10 (v10), top 20 (v20), top 30 (v30), top 40 (v40), and top 50 (v50) are also provided.

Ratings and supporting data are calculated from the results of non-garbage possessions in FBS vs. FBS games.


upload_2019-9-18_23-3-46.png
 

White_Gold

GT Athlete
Messages
314
Location
Dahlonega
[QUOTE="ibeattetris, post: 631647, member: 1175"

Edit: interesting note about 2014. We did so well they retroactively changed the formula because we broke their scale. It was a crazy year.[/QUOTE]

Where do you see that?

A little side tangent, 2009 and 2014 were very, very similar when I looked at the stats a couple years back. 2014 having more and better rankings in most of the categories but 2009 being very close. Kinda eery.
 
ibeattetris

ibeattetris

Helluva Engineer
Messages
3,580
White_Gold said:
Edit: interesting note about 2014. We did so well they retroactively changed the formula because we broke their scale. It was a crazy year.
Click to expand...

Where do you see that?

A little side tangent, 2009 and 2014 were very, very similar when I looked at the stats a couple years back. 2014 having more and better rankings in most of the categories but 2009 being very close. Kinda eery.
Click to expand...
This is the personal website for the guy that does FEI https://www.bcftoys.com/2019-fei

In the description there it says
Ratings this week are mostly (57 percent) based on weighted five-year FEI ratings.
Click to expand...
Not sure if football outsiders calls that out or not.
 
ibeattetris

ibeattetris

Helluva Engineer
Messages
3,580
White_Gold said:
ibeattetris said:
Edit: interesting note about 2014. We did so well they retroactively changed the formula because we broke their scale. It was a crazy year.
Click to expand...

Where do you see that?

A little side tangent, 2009 and 2014 were very, very similar when I looked at the stats a couple years back. 2014 having more and better rankings in most of the categories but 2009 being very close. Kinda eery.
Click to expand...

I have been trying to find it still. Here is a fromtherumbleseat blog post regarding our FEI in December of 2014:
https://www.fromtherumbleseat.com/2...on-course-to-break-ncaa-efficiency-rating-fei
Georgia Tech is not only leading the offensive rankings here, they are currently on pace to SMASH the previously held record by RGIII's 2011 Baylor team. GT's current score of ".968" is over a tenth higher than the previous record of ".865" In fact, since 2007, when the rating system started, GT is only the 10th team to break ".700" and only 5th to break ".800"
Click to expand...
So at that point, no team had ever scored above a 1.0, and if we look back, there are tons of team over 1.0 since they changed the formula.

Funny enough, I can't find a blog post that marks what we ended at, but I did find one of my GTSwarm posts from 2015 ;)
https://gtswarm.com/threads/how-efficient-is-cpjs-offense.5608/page-2#post-119785
ibeattetris said:
In the final rankings FEI had us at .999, destroying the previous highest rated offense.
Click to expand...

Remember, prior to that season, no one had even broken .9 and we almost broke into the 1.o range.

I can't find, but I think I remember in the comment sections on football outsiders Georgia Tech was specifically mentioned regarding one of the reasons the formula needed to be looked at again.

Edit: Shout out to @Whiskey_Clear for calling it too:
Whiskey_Clear said:
When you destroy the ranking that bad...they usually redefine the metrics
Click to expand...

Super edit: Here is wayback machine for FEI with us at .999
https://web.archive.org/web/20150109083058/http://www.footballoutsiders.com/stats/feioff
 
Last edited:
ibeattetris

ibeattetris

Helluva Engineer
Messages
3,580
Temple OFEI
Year - Rank
2012 - 78
2013 - 68
2014 - 126
2015 - 76
2016 - 43
2017 - 94
2018 - 58

Temple DFEI
2012 - 94
2013 - 100
2014 - 15
2015 - 27
2016 - 35
2017 - 36
2018 -42

Temple 247 Recruit Rankings
2012 - 74
2013 - 77
2014 - 69
2015 - 80
2016 - 59
2017 - 119
2018 - 82
2019 - 105

I included recruit rankings for those that like that sort of thing. If someone knows a better site to use feel free to add on, as it's not something I follow much.

Based on this data I would say Collins was fine as the HC at Temple. Things really didn't get worse. The offense and defense varied within previous Temple years. The 2017 recruiting class doesn't look great, but I know nothing about the coaching transition and certainly won't put that on him. Given that there was no giant shift in any direction either way, I don't really think there is anything to judge. Coaches at the end of the day are going to be judged by wins and losses, but the variance is so high in football that I give way more benefit of the doubt than others. GT has taught me that the difference between 10-3 and 7-6 can be 4-5 plays.
 
Vespidae

Vespidae

Helluva Engineer
Messages
5,058
Location
Auburn, AL
I’ve toyed with these metrics over the past few years and found they are too generic, although I love the concept.

What I’m looking for is a better way to answer how the team is performing. I don’t think these metrics reflect game strategy.

For example, in golf, the PGA Tour publishes all sorts of stats on total driving, shots under 150, shots 150-200, 200+, putting, etc.

And yet, one statistician said to forget all that. One stat, Greens in Regulation, is the single best predictor of score.

The search continues ...
 

jandrews

Jolly Good Fellow
Messages
275
Thanks for the info! I think you would need to understand strength of schedule over the years as well and what players did not return his first year. If we are just looking at overall wins and loses I would rather have UVAs schedule than what we get annually with Clemson and UGA.
 
gtrower

gtrower

Helluva Engineer
Messages
2,648
2014 must have broke their scale because it was ranked as the beast offense in modern (that website retroactively applying their model) history at the time. And I’m not sure they should have changed it. If you extrapolated our stats to the number of possessions OU/Oregon/Auburn were getting at the time JT5 would have been in the Heisman discussion.

The snapshot I’ll always remember of 2014 is a Laskey run in the 3Q against UGA where he’s breaking through the LOS and their MLB is already turned and retreating. Back then I had taken that pic and superimposed the recruiting rankings of all players in the shot. Have to try to dig that up sometime.
 
Top