Stats models and rankings

slugboy

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Iowa scored a TD. Time to lock in the over!

Edit: 5 minutes left and the under is still in play. Yeesh these OCs…

Edit 2: 1 minute left and no one can score. And…an interception. Overtime looks likely.

Edit 3: 16 seconds left and another int. Iowa in FG range with 7 seconds left. Virtually XP range. This game is drunk.

Edit 4: 13-10, FG as time expires Iowa wins, and Nebraska is 5-7 and short of bowl eligibility. The under hits.

Willy Wonka Suspense GIF
It was a long slow-motion car crash of a game.
This sums it up
IMG_2442.jpeg
 

takethepoints

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But, but … we all know that D can't win football games in today's game!! What does Iowa think it is doing out there upsetting the conventional wisdom applecart? It's … sort of like saying that the spread option can work in P5 football!!

Well, yes, D can win games even in the pass-happy 2020's. Tech needs to find out what the Hawks are doing out there in the plains and import it to Atlanta. Now.,
 

ibeattetris

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But, but … we all know that D can't win football games in today's game!! What does Iowa think it is doing out there upsetting the conventional wisdom applecart? It's … sort of like saying that the spread option can work in P5 football!!

Well, yes, D can win games even in the pass-happy 2020's. Tech needs to find out what the Hawks are doing out there in the plains and import it to Atlanta. Now.,
It also helps when your strength of schedule is legit garbage. Iowa’s defense didn’t look very good against PSU, and I have a feeling OSU and Mich won’t struggle either. I have enjoyed watching them play this year, but more from sick fascination than anything.
 

slugboy

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Sometimes you’ll see “Excitement Index”. There are several different definitions. Here’s one that’s “for how many plays out of the total was the game close? (pretty much)” https://sports.sites.yale.edu/game-excitement-index-part-ii
For the GT-UGA game, the index was 5.11, which is a pretty watchable game.
game-wp-401520430.jpg.png

Until the 4th quarter (by that chart) we kept slugging it out.

We can look at all the rivalry games (and someone did!) to see which ones are the most fun for a bystander to look at
IMG_0347.jpeg


The original post is at
 

RamblinRed

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This Iowa team is one of the biggest anamolies in CFB history. It won 10 games with a team that avg less than 250 ypg of offense. The previous high for a team with less than 250 ypg of offense was 4 wins.

But when you only give up more than 16 points once all season (31-0 loss to Penn St) you are going to find a way to win some games.
 

slugboy

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Here are some end of the regular season advanced stats. We may be missing some data from our first couple of games because of the ESPN data feed.

Before we get into much detail--if SP+ by Bill Connelly wasn't paywalled, I'd be using it a lot. It has easy explanations of why you succeeded or didn't. There are a lot of other stats that are great too--FEI isn't paywalled, and it's fairly open about what it's doing. Others are similar. I'll use some of the stats from GameOnPaper because they're freely available. One drawback is that they're not adjusted based on strength of schedule, so we look a little worse because we played a tougher schedule than normal.

We had some questions about defense, so let's start there. Here are our defensive points per drive, and we gave up a lot. It's not opponent-adjusted, and we faced a few top-25 offenses--UGA, North Carolina, Ole Miss, UNC, Louisville.


DPD
Rk
DLD
Rk
DMD
Rk
DSD
Rk
2.75​
115​
2.06​
97​
2.48​
101​
4.38​
112​
These numbers aren't opponent-adjusted, but they're horrible. The points per drive are in the bottom 25 in FBS.
DPD = Defensive Points per drive
DLD = DPD for Long Drives (drives that start inside the offense's 20)
DSD = DPD for Short Drives (that start within 60 yards of the end zone)
DMD = DPD for the rest of the drives
None of them are good.

Defensive
Plays702
Plays/Game70 #114
Total EPA36.05 #83
EPA/Play0.05 #90
EPA/Game3.60 #91
Success Rate44.7% #121
Starting FPOwn 32 #112

Plays per game can have a lot of sources--if your offense throws a lot of picks and goes 3-and-out a lot, you'll be on the field more. Also, if you don't force the opponent to punt a lot on their side of the field, you'll be on the field a lot. It's not the worst thing in the world, though--if you bend but don't break, you'll be higher in this stat. (Defenses are some mix of bend vs break, unless you give up 0 points and negative yardage). It's a reinforcing cycle, though--we were on the field a lot, so we got tired, so we stayed on the field more.
All the numbers are going to be towards the bottom of P5. Field position hurt us--interceptions, kickoff returns, etc.

Our pass defense shows up as good.
Against the Pass
Plays300
Plays/Game30 T-#32
Total EPA-12.36 #43
EPA/Play-0.04 #40
EPA/Game-1.24 #41
Success Rate44.3% #104

Our run defense is terrible
Against the Run
Plays402
Plays/Game40 #130
Total EPA48.40 #115
EPA/Play0.12 #113
EPA/Game4.84 #122
Success Rate45.0% #115

If the opposing offense can run well and pass well, they'll take advantage of your weakness. That could bias the stats to make run defense look even worse and hide that pass defense isn't very good. However, I think the pass defense probably was pretty good for a couple of reasons: Miami, UNC, and UVA. For UNC, they rely on their passing game, so the contest was their offensive strength against our defensive strength. UVA tried to swap to a passing game with Coladrea, and we held them to 17 points and he had a eQBR of about 48. Van Dyke had good stats at Miami until our game, and they kept passing--the missing kneel down might just be a symptom of not knowing how to take what the opponent gives you--they were dumb.

The offenses that rushed did well against us. I wonder if we had approached Bowling Green and Boston College the same way that we did Syracuse if we might not be 8-4 now--BG did pass it, but they weren't going deep. That was a game of horrible tackling. If our defense had shown up the same way and tackled the same way against BC and BG, maybe the outcome of those two games is different (and I think BG might have folded if we'd stopped them in the first half)
 

stinger78

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Good stuff. I wondered at the time why we weren't playing more at the LOS against BGSU. Put an extra LB in and run the hybrid 4-3 and go man on their WR. Didn't see the game, so maybe we did and just couldn't tackle? We struggled badly with tackling early in the season.
 

4shotB

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Here are some end of the regular season advanced stats. We may be missing some data from our first couple of games because of the ESPN data feed.

Before we get into much detail--if SP+ by Bill Connelly wasn't paywalled, I'd be using it a lot.
dude, I know that you are managing costs (and everything else) closely as Q4 comes to an end and you and the management guys are jockeying for pecking order in the annual Swarm bonus plan but good grief - get that data and put it in on your expense report. @CuseJacket and @John aren't going to notice. You are about the only person on here who actually puts any thought or work into your posts before hitting the post button and we aren't going to let a few $ get in your way now are we?
 

GetYourBuzzOn

Georgia Tech Fan
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I fully intended to be more active on this thread the entire season, but life / moving back to ATL got in the way...at any rate, attached are the Post Week 13 SP+ ratings.

@slugboy - I'm sure you know about this site, but you can pull SP+ and a bunch of other interesting advanced stats: https://collegefootballdata.com/exporter

I believe their SP+ ratings update a day or two after ESPN posts.
 

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slugboy

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I fully intended to be more active on this thread the entire season, but life / moving back to ATL got in the way...at any rate, attached are the Post Week 13 SP+ ratings.

@slugboy - I'm sure you know about this site, but you can pull SP+ and a bunch of other interesting advanced stats: https://collegefootballdata.com/exporter

I believe their SP+ ratings update a day or two after ESPN posts.
I knew above that site. The SP+ numbers got cut drastically after the paywall in 2019
 

roadkill

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I fully intended to be more active on this thread the entire season, but life / moving back to ATL got in the way...at any rate, attached are the Post Week 13 SP+ ratings.

@slugboy - I'm sure you know about this site, but you can pull SP+ and a bunch of other interesting advanced stats: https://collegefootballdata.com/exporter

I believe their SP+ ratings update a day or two after ESPN posts.
Thanks. A little surprised SP+ ranks our offense as low as 45th, or just above average. We're 34th in total offense and 33 in OFEI, which "feels" about where we should be.
 

stinger78

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Thanks. A little surprised SP+ ranks our offense as low as 45th, or just above average. We're 34th in total offense and 33 in OFEI, which "feels" about where we should be.
We've had 3-4 not so good offensive games this season, mostly while we were trying to catch up and out of our normal offensive rhythm. All that averages out to less than we are when things are clicking.
 

GetYourBuzzOn

Georgia Tech Fan
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Thanks. A little surprised SP+ ranks our offense as low as 45th, or just above average. We're 34th in total offense and 33 in OFEI, which "feels" about where we should be.
Success Rate is weighed heavily by SP+. I believe our offensive success rate was around 44% this year, which is mid to high 40's.
 

slugboy

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Thanks. A little surprised SP+ ranks our offense as low as 45th, or just above average. We're 34th in total offense and 33 in OFEI, which "feels" about where we should be.
It values different things. Here’s what SP+ cares about (from Footballstudyhall.com)

FIVE FACTORS​

Explosiveness

Current Ways to Measure:
* Yards per play
* PPP
* PPP+

Efficiency

Current Ways to Measure:
* Success Rate
* Third-down conversions

Field Position

Current Ways to Measure:
* Average starting field position
* FPA

Finishing Drives

Current Ways to Measure:
* Points per Trip inside the 40
* Red zone scoring
* Red zone S&P+

Turnovers

Current Ways to Measure:
* Turnover margin
* Adj. Turnover margin
* Turnovers luck


For Turnovers, Finishing Drives, and Efficiency, we weren’t great.

Success Rate, we’re #49.
Field position, we’re #72
Touchdown rate, we’re #44
Turnover rate, we’re #103


It was strange Saturday to hear about our powerful rushing attack. When we started the season, this board was convinced we couldn’t run
 

stinger78

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It was strange Saturday to hear about our powerful rushing attack. When we started the season, this board was convinced we couldn’t run
The first 5 games we were playing an RB who ran more E-W than N-S. It is amazing when #4 started playing how much better the OL suddenly became. He was hitting those small cracks in the DL hard and fast and making yards off it. When you can do that consistently, it makes your ability to seal of the edge easier and opens up the wide game. You know and I know that it all works together - it is an offensive system. You also cannot downplay the development of the OL as the season progressed. All in all, and for various reasons, we were a much better running team at the end of the season than at the beginning.
 
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