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 | |
|---|
| Plays | 702 |
| Plays/Game | 70 #114 |
| Total EPA | 36.05 #83 |
| EPA/Play | 0.05 #90 |
| EPA/Game | 3.60 #91 |
| Success Rate | 44.7% #121 |
| Starting FP | Own 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 | |
|---|
| Plays | 300 |
| Plays/Game | 30 T-#32 |
| Total EPA | -12.36 #43 |
| EPA/Play | -0.04 #40 |
| EPA/Game | -1.24 #41 |
| Success Rate | 44.3% #104 |
Our run defense is terrible
| Against the Run | |
|---|
| Plays | 402 |
| Plays/Game | 40 #130 |
| Total EPA | 48.40 #115 |
| EPA/Play | 0.12 #113 |
| EPA/Game | 4.84 #122 |
| Success Rate | 45.0% #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)
