Statistical Review: Arkansas #73

Quick quiz: What was the on-field difference between Arkansas 2011 and Arkansas 2012?

Answer? Arkansas 2012 was terrible.

Seriously, the differences are more contained than you might imagine.

First, Brandon Allen. Arkansas scored 13 fewer points per game in 2012 than in 2011, but Tyler Wilson, when playing, was virtually the same guy. He completed 63% of his passes in 2011, 62% in 2012. He averaged 8.3 yards on completions in 2011, 8.4 in 2012. He took a step back in the interception department, and his EPA fell from 108 to 70. Adjusting per play, Wilson was about 2.3 points per game better in 2011 than 2012. When you consider the receiving options Arkansas was rolling out for some games, Wilson's 2012 numbers are not bad at all. Brandon Allen, on the other hand, was on the very short list for worst quarterback in college football in 2012. I recognize that he did throw 18 of his 49 passes against Alabama, but he was even worse against La-Monroe on 20 throws. Arkansas would have been 29 points better in 2012 had Wilson attempted Allen's 49 passes, and that number grows to about 40 points if we consider Wilson's value in maintaining drives.

Second, turnovers. Arkansas was +1 on turnovers in 2011. In 2012, they were -19. Net, they were -55 points from turnovers (4.5 points per game; just under 5 points per game versus 2011). The INT margin alone went from +5 to -10. Half of this was that Wilson doubled his interceptions and Brandon Allen was almost as good at targeting the wrong colored jersey as he was his own, but the Arkansas defense failed to get their hands on passes as well. Then there was Knile Davis. Davis was more likely to drop then ball than any non-quarterback with at least 100 touches in the country; lucky for him, Arkansas recovered most of those fumbles. But, in a vacuum, I would propose that Arkansas would have improved its yards per carry if Mr. Butterfingers could get a grip.

Finally, pass defense. Arkansas was significantly better against the run in 2012 than in 2011. And if you throw out Alabama and A&M, who averaged 5.0 and 6.8 yards per carry against the Hogs, the run defense was stellar. That would have been more important if teams had needed to run the ball. That was not the case. Teams improved their completion percentage against Arkansas by five percentage points, but more important, the yards per completion jumped from under 11 to 13.3.

In short, Arkansas 2011 would beat Arkansas 2012 by about three TDs on average. I would argue that more than two-thirds of that gap was a product of 1) Tyler Wilson getting knocked out of a couple of games, 2) the Arkansas secondary playing like Texas 2012 v. Oklahoma and 3) ball security issues for Wilson and Davis.

The Statistical Review breaks down teams along a number of performance categories, everything from red zone scoring to field goal percentage, and compares that performance against the rest of the FBS. All 124 teams will be reviewed from 124 to 1 by the hybrid rankings. You can find short descriptions of the stats used in the table below.

Statistical Review: Minnesota #74

Phillip Nelson attempted 154 passes in 2012 for Minnesota. He completed 48.7% of them. Only Dayne Crist attempted more passes for a lower completion percentage. But if you count passes he completed to the opposition, that completion percentage jumps to just under 54%, very similar to Max Shortell's 56% completions.

Minnesota didn't have much success throwing the ball, so they ran 61% of the time. But 3.8 yards per carry isn't good enough, either. It is little surprise, then, that they averaged 22 points per game and 1.7 points per possession.

The Minnesota pass defense was well above average. Opponents managed only 10.5 yards per completion, good enough to put Minnesota in the top 10 in that category, while also holding opponents to 57% completions. Porous run defense, though, offset any advantage the pass defense offered. All together, Minnesota fielded a very average defense that was aided, for appearance sake, by a slow-tempo offense that helped keep stats down.

The Statistical Review breaks down teams along a number of performance categories, everything from red zone scoring to field goal percentage, and compares that performance against the rest of the FBS. All 124 teams will be reviewed from 124 to 1 by the hybrid rankings. You can find short descriptions of the stats used in the table below.

Statistical Review: Duke #75

Duke won six of their first eight games. They lost their last five games, and in losing those games they allowed 246 points. If one of those five opponents had managed a touchdown instead of a field goal on one possession, Duke would have allowed 50 points per game over a five game stretch. That's the kind of thing you right epic poems about.

Did Duke collapse? The short answer is no. Their performance might have dropped a little, but the real reason for the collapse is that they replaced Wake Forest for Clemson. And I don't just mean the schedule got harder. If 246 is remarkable, so is 15.5; Duke allowed 15.5 yards per completion. They allowed plays of 25 or more yards on 7% of plays.

What did the 2012 variants of Florida State, Clemson, Miami, Georgia Tech and Cincinnati all have in common? They were all among Duke's final five opponents and they are all exceptionally explosive teams. The adjusted metrics that account for schedule have Duke as the country's worst team at preventing explosive plays, and they played a stretch of explosive offenses that was second to none. Matching Duke and Cincinnati in a bowl game must have been someone's sick joke.

The Statistical Review breaks down teams along a number of performance categories, everything from red zone scoring to field goal percentage, and compares that performance against the rest of the FBS. All 124 teams will be reviewed from 124 to 1 by the hybrid rankings. You can find short descriptions of the stats used in the table below.

Statistical Review: Nevada #76

Nevada lost six games. They lost three by one point and another by six. That's not to say Nevada was better than we thought; they lost that claim by allowing no fewer than 21 points in every game this season despite facing one of the nation's softest schedule. No, Nevada wasn't any better than we thought, but they're record could have been better.

How does a team go about winning or losing a lot of close games? They key is to have a big gap between the offensive and defensive units. In the case of Nevada, the offense is legitimately good while the defense is legitimately awful. They score easily against their mediocre opposition and their mediocre opposition scores easily against them. It is more likely that each scored will be matched on the next possession, so games tend to be close. Connecticut, at the other end, had 8 of 12 games decided by 7 points or less.

The Nevada offense was effective, but this was definitely not Colin Kaepernick's Nevada offense; their one shortcoming was a lack of explosiveness. In part, this lack of explosiveness is because they ran the ball 62% of the time - running plays are less likely to be explosive - but they averaged a pedestrian 11.7 yards per pass completion. They made up for this lack of explosiveness by maintaining drives. Nevada averaged 6.4 plays per possession, behind only Army and Marshall. They were tackled for a loss on just over 1 in 10 run plays and 5.2 yards per carry. They converted 40% of their possessions into touchdowns, and may have been even better if not for a below average turnover rate (13.3% of possessions) and a poor penalty rate (63 yards per game). 

On defense, they were fairly atrocious across the board.

The Statistical Review breaks down teams along a number of performance categories, everything from red zone scoring to field goal percentage, and compares that performance against the rest of the FBS. All 124 teams will be reviewed from 124 to 1 by the hybrid rankings. You can find short descriptions of the stats used in the table below.

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Statistical Review: Western Kentucky #77

Western Kentucky 2012 is the reason I use two metrics to measure strength of schedule. They played one team in the top 25, two in the top 50, and four in the bottom 25 plus Austin Peay. But that one team in the top 25 was Alabama. Fewer teams had an easier road to six regular season wins - six by my count - but almost 100 teams had a better chance of going undefeated based on schedule alone.

They also demonstrated the value of focusing on points per possession instead of points per game. With only 11.8 possessions per game, Western Kentucky was in the bottom 10 nationally. As a result, they scored only 28.2 points per game (70th nationally) but scored 2.38 points per possession (46th best).

In all other ways, the Hilltoppers violated my best rules of thumb. For example, on defense they had a high TFL and sack rate and were average at preventing explosive plays, yet they were poor on 3rd down. Usually, the ability to get in the backfield while also preventing explosive plays adds up to good 3rd down defense.

On the other side, they allowed a high sack rate, they were not explosive, and yet 3rd down offense was a strength. Go figure.

The Statistical Review breaks down teams along a number of performance categories, everything from red zone scoring to field goal percentage, and compares that performance against the rest of the FBS. All 124 teams will be reviewed from 124 to 1 by the hybrid rankings. You can find short descriptions of the stats used in the table below.