For “available yards”, we have games like Ole Miss, Bowling Green, and Louisville to dig out from. We even gave up too many yards to SCST (if they aren’t excluded from the stats).
That stat will be horrible all year, even if we’re above average for the rest of the season.
Miami and Wake might be the two games we played good defense, and I’m not that sure about Wake. Miami got a ton of yards, but we tackled. Was that game a fluke?
Yeah this is pulled from bcftoys and removes ScSt. I don't imagine it would be much improved with their inclusion.
Available yards? Who came up with that one? Honestly, of all the pointless stats (pun intended), that has to be one of the most useless and misleading I've ever seen.
I am trying to imagine a scenario where someone presents me with novel information I don't understand, and instead of asking questions to widen my knowledge, I say "that has to be one of the most useless and misleading I've ever seen." I'd wager the only thing misleading would be your own understanding.
It's a superfluous mirror of time of possession. In that, we're # 116:
Discover the current NCAA FBS Football leaders in every stats category, as well as historic leaders.
www.ncaa.com
Ah yes, I was correct.
Let's say you have an opponent start at their 25 yard line in two separate drives. On one drive, they drive all the way down to your two yard line and fail to convert. No point, you take over at your two. In the other drive, they drive to your 40 go for it, and fail, no points. Both drives have led to 0 points, however, one drive led to an additional 38 yards of flipped field position.
@slugboy had another good example. Let's say you have one drive start at you 25 and it goes 20 yards. You are now punting and you captured 26.7% AY. You have another drive that starts at the opponent 50. You go 20 yards captured 40% AY and went from out of FG range to inside of FG. Those 20 yards will have taken the same time of possession, but one is worth way more than the other.
While you might be under some notion that all drives ending in 0 points are the same, that is emphatically false. Capturing available yards is a core part of flipping fields and scoring points. An offense that consistently flips fields coupled with a defense that prevents the opposing offense from doing the same will win more ball games than others. It is easy for a human to look at a drive and say "hey the offense didn't score, but look the forced the other team to start deep within their own territory". This is one single stat that helps capture this.
There is also the fact that "total yards" is a stat that is affected by a lot of things like number or drives and starting field position. GT under Paul Johnson in 2014 was 17th in total yards. We also ran the ball a lot and therefore on average had less drives per game than average. When considering available yards gained per drive, GT was second in the country.
We can even see some interesting examples of this in action
| Wk | Opponent | R | Final | NG Final | Dr | AY | DY | Pl | Pt | TO | SFP | OV | ODE | OPD | OAY | OPP |
| 6 | Miami | W | 28-17 | 28-17 | 7 | 511 | 356 | 70 | 28 | - | 73 | 14.1 | 2.02 | 4 | 0.697 | 5.09 |
| 8 | North Carolina | L | 43-48 | 43-48 | 11 | 830 | 584 | 67 | 43 | -1 | 75.5 | 22.4 | 2.04 | 3.91 | 0.704 | 8.72 |
| 9 | Pittsburgh | W | 56-28 | 49-21 | 12 | 697 | 503 | 64 | 49 | -1 | 58.1 | 17.6 | 1.47 | 4.08 | 0.722 | 7.86 |
The UNC game had the most yards by far. But look at the Miami game. We "only" had 356 yards, but we also only had 7 drives (BCF ignores the final drive as it was garbage time). The Pitt game had less yards by 80 in more drives, but we had better field position on average (58 AY per drive vs 75.5), so the total available yards for the game were less than vs UNC.
