Statistical Index

Before the season begins, we want to share and explain some of the statistics we will be using in our game previews and reviews.

Totals- Total points and yards function as a collection of everything that happened within a game. Obviously important, but as an aggregate it hides some of the meaning within its all-encompassing nature. It tells you which teams are producing, but it doesn't tell you why or how it happened, and it lacks context.

Yards Per Play (Y/P)- Y/P works both offensively and defensively, and it measures the average number of yards a team gains per play,  or in the case of a defense, the average number that it gives up per play. Y/P can be further broken down into Yards Per Rush (Y/R), Yards Per Catch (Y/C), and Yards Per Attempt (Y/A.)

An interesting anomaly regarding yards per play: Ohio State (6.3) significantly outgained LSU (4.2) in Y/P during the 2008 BCS National Championship game, but poor third down efficiency (23%) and a negative turnover margin (-2) limited the offenses' effectiveness.

The average Y/P for the national champion team has been 6.3 over the past ten years.

Mean figures- Yards per statistics do not reveal everything, as a player can have a number of negative carries with one big run skewing the statistics in a certain direction. Mean figures can give you an idea of where the bulk of the carries, passes, or catches are clustered.

Points Per Game (PPG)- Pretty self-explanatory; it's the average number of points a team scores , or gives up, per game. There are various filters that one can apply to make this more meaningful (i.e. filtering for BCS competition only.)

Turnover Margin- Turnovers alter possessions, and possessions provide control. In football, the ball is life, and losing control of the ball is like giving away years of your life.

No national champion has had a turnover margin worse than +5, and the average has been +14.2 over the last ten years.  Championship teams win the turnover battle.

Tackles For Loss (T.F.L)- measures a defense's ability to penetrate and cause negative yardage against an offense; when flipped, it measures an offense's ability to avoid negative plays. It does not include sacks.

Negative Play Percentage (N.P.P.)- tackles for loss allowed + sacks allowed divided by the total number of offensive snaps a team takes.  I created it to gauge how many negative plays an offense has, which, theoretically, means it acts as a referendum on the offensive line. It can also be flipped to measure a defenses' ability to cause negative plays.

Success Rate- A percentage measure originally created in the book The Hidden Game of Football. It measures the percentage of plays that can be considered successful, based on this definition of success:

50% of needed yards on first down, i.e. 5 yards on 1^st and 10 (altered from 40

% for college.)

 70% of needed yards on second down, i.e. 3 ½ yards on 2^nd and 5.

 100% of needed yards on third or fourth down, i.e. 1 ½ yards on 3^rd down.

The average success rate, for each down, hovers between 41% and 45%.

Jim Tressel has been using Success Rate since his time at Youngstown State. Ohio State partially measures their offensive success utilizing this statistic; they even break it down by situation (field position, quarter, opponent, etc.) and scheme (formation, personnel, play.) The following image is a brief look at Coach Tressel's take on the stat, from a lecture he gave early in his Ohio State career:

Points Per Play (PPP)- Bill Connelly developed this statistic in 2007, and unveiled it nationally in 2008 on Sunday Morning Quarterback (I was there!), to measure offensive explosiveness.  For every yard line on the field, the average number of points scored, in FBS play, from that yard line is tabulated, then each team's plays are charted using the net change from one play to the next.

From Bill Connelly:

 With EqPts, you can break a game down and build it back up again through point values. Add an offense's EqPts to the value of the penalties, turnovers, and special teams events of the game, and you get a pretty accurate look at how the game should have gone down given average luck for both teams.  You also get a nice measure called Points Per Play (PPP), which takes the Yards Per Play measure and ties it more directly to points scored.  This is a strong measure of a team's, or player's, explosiveness.

 S&P- Bill Connelly has combined Success Rate and Points Per Play to form an OPS-like figure. S&P can be adjusted for opponent, creating an S&P+ figure. It can further be broken into rushing, passing, and situational S & P. It has also been normalized to simplify the comparison process. 100 is an average score for both offense and defense, so anything above 100 is above average, and anything below 100 is below average.  Although I have reservations about the effectiveness of the adjustment mechanism, S&P is a very useful tool to use when analyzing college football.

Third Down Efficiency- It's the same as third down success rate, as the only way to achieve success is to get the first down. Third Down Efficiency measures how often teams avoid willingly ending a drive, assuming they don't go for it on 4^th down.

Interception Rate - Found by dividing the number of interceptions a quarterback has thrown by the number of passes attempted. It's a more accurate way to measure a quarterback's tendency to throw interceptions than the standard interception count. The lower, the better.

In 2008, draft analysts were going nuts about Matt Ryan's 19 interceptions(!), but they failed to account for his 654 attempted passes, making his interception rate an excellent 2.9%.

Sack Rate- Found by dividing the number of sacks by the number of pass attempts a team has.  Not always reliable, as what constitutes a true sack is dependent on offensive context. Spread option offenses, like Michigan, complicate things by having bubble screens built into their offense as automatic checks. Sacks are sometimes misattributed to the quarterback when they are just trying to make an extended handoff.

Fremeau Efficiency Index (F.E.I.)- Brian Fremeau's proprietary formula differs from S&P in how it calculates success; whereas S&P works on the play level, F.E.I. measures success, or lack of it, on the drive level.  Fremeau created a Game Efficiency tool that quantifies how well a team maximizes its own possessions while minimizing the opponent's possessions. This tool is then adjusted using the following guidelines:

1. Who did you beat and how did you win those games?

2. Who did you lose to and how did you lose those games?

As the quality of the opponent decreases, the value of the first question receives less weight than the second.

FEI rewards teams for playing well against good teams, win or lose, and treats losing to poor teams more harshly than it rewards victories over poor teams.

Similar to the DVOA statistic that Football Outsiders uses for NFL games, a negative F.E.I. is a good indicator for a defense, while a positive F.E.I. is a good indicator for the offense.

For more on the origin and implementation of F.E.I, see here.

F/+ - F/+ is a combination of the Fremeau Efficiency Index and the S&P + figure.

Field Position Average (F.P.A.)-  Divide the number of snaps in enemy field position by the total number of snaps and you'll  find F.P.A. It measures the percentage of plays you run in an opponents' territory, thus revealing the winner of the field position game. Ohio State had the 13^th best F.P.A. last season.

When posting our game previews we will be using many of these statistics, so it will be helpful if you familiarize yourself with those that you don't know. Our opponent previews will use last season's numbers for the first four games of the year, and then it will consist of this season's current numbers for the last nine games.