First, let me say that it's pretty amazing to see the defense as #2 in the ACC in scoring defense. That's really strong, and an amazing improvement over the past years. I can't say that I'm surprised that we're improved, but I will say that I'm surprised at being #2.
Because I'm a believer in FEI as a measure of performance over raw stats, especially rank comparisons like "2nd in ACC in Scoring Defense", I also took a look to see how we are progressing this year. Here's a comparison between last year (end of year) and this year (to date).
[Metric]: [2023] vs. [2024]
FEI: 50 vs. 44
Offensive FEI: 31 vs. 29
Defensive FEI: 77 vs. 51
Special Teams FEI: 64 vs. 112
The other thing that the bcftoys.com website does is break down the unadjusted metric and the opponent adjusted for each of the areas. For instance:
[Year] [Metric]: [Raw Score] vs. [Adjusted Score]
2024 OFEI: 35 vs. 29 (5th in the ACC)
2023 OFEI: 43 vs. 31 (4th in the ACC)
2024 DFEI: 81 vs. 51 (22nd hardest competition - 7th in the ACC)
2023 DFEI: 109 vs. 77 (24th hardest competition - 15th in the ACC)
The other thing that's interesting, if you're trying to quantify the impact of King being out, is the offense game ratings:
https://www.bcftoys.com/2024-ogr#georgia-tech
The OGR metric is the opponent-adjusted game rating, and the Pct after it is the specific game's percentile rank against all others. You can see that our percentile rank was above 80% in most games before King's injury (except Louisville - ugh). Then we went down to .619 against ND and .224 against VT. Back up to .804 against Miami.
Lots to absorb in the numbers, but it looks like our offense is performing about the same as last year with an improvement in defense. To be a Top 25 team we really need both of those components to be below 30, or to have a Top 10 offense or defense. For instance, Indiana is #9 with the 3rd ranked offense and the 30th ranked defense. Miami is #12 with the 1st ranked offense and the 63rd ranked defense. As one gets better the other can get worse.