berk18;842637603 said:
Here's more data for this discussion. Below, I've ranked our 2014 and 2015 conference opponents by scoring D, and given their ppg yielded in parentheses. Our stats against them in that year come after the colon:
[U]Cross-Season Conference Game Comparison (2014):[/U]
Stanford (19.4 ppg): 410 yards, 5.39 yards/play, 17 points
UO (23.8 ppg): 560 yards, 6.02 yards/play, 41 points
UW (24 ppg): 368 yards, 4.38 yards/play, 7 points
USC (24.6 ppg): 384 yards, 4.92 yards/play, 30 points
UCLA (28.7 ppg): 366 yards, 5.01 yards/play, 34 points
UA (29.3 ppg): 573 yards, 7.96 yards/play, 45 points
OSU (36.4 ppg): 546 yards, 5.81 yards/play, 45 points
WSU (41.9 ppg): 589 yards, 8.3 yards/play, 60 points
CU (43 ppg): 585 yards, 8.13 yards/play, 59 points
[U]Cross-Season Conference Game Comparison (2015):[/U]
UW (20 ppg): 481 yards, 5.23 yards/play, 30 points
Utah (23 ppg): 467 yards, 6.23 yards/play, 24 points
Stanford (24.1 ppg): 495 yards, 6.35 yards/play, 22 points
USC (28.1 ppg): 394 yards, 6.46 yards/play, 21 points
UCLA (28.8 ppg): 426 yards, 4.84 yards/play, 24 points
WSU (30.4 ppg): 469 yards, 6.25 yards/play, 34 points
ASU (35.9 ppg): 680 yards, 9.32 yards/play, 48 points
Oregon (37.8 ppg): 432 yards, 6.55 yards/play, 28 points
OSU (42.3 ppg): 760 yards, 9.16 yards/play, 54 points
In 2014, there was a pretty clear dividing line at 29 ppg. We played four defenses who gave up more than that, and scored 40+ against all of them while gaining 500+ yards. We went 3-1, with the loss obviously coming against UA on the hail mary. Above that line, we struggled with every team except Oregon. The numbers tell the story vs. Stanford and UW. We only scored 7 and 17 points in those games, so the offense obviously didn't work. Oregon was a positive outlier, with us scoring way more points than they usually gave up, and keeping it at under a 14 point differential for the first half, where we did most of our scoring. USC and UCLA look like good offensive games on the scoreboard, but notice how few yards we gained against them. Those stats are way closer to the awful UW game than to the rest of our schedule. That's because our offense came off of turnovers, or in a limited number of garbage time snaps. We weren't moving the ball in those games.
2015 is completely different. To start from the bottom again, there is one clear negative outlier in the Oregon game, which was a true WTF game for our offense, especially with only 10 first half points. That was really bad. Other than that, OSU and ASU went exactly as they should've. The interesting games all lie above those three, though.
To move to the top, let's look at how we did vs. the better defenses.
First comparison: UW 2015 vs. Stanford 2014. In the 2014 Stanford game we were down 24-7 at the half. We made it look more respectable in the second half by scoring a whopping 10 points, so that salvaged things, but it wasn't a close game and our offense didn't work at all when it mattered. We lost 38-17 to a Stanford team that was only 4-4 in conference at that point. In the 2015 UW game, we scored 20 first half points and never gave up the lead on our way to scoring 30. Advantage: 2015 offense.
The 2014 Oregon game was a clear positive outlier for us, so we'll put that down as a mark in favor of the 2014 offense vs. the 2015 offense.
Second Comparison: Utah and Stanford 2015 vs. UW and USC 2014. Against UW in 2014, we were losing 28-0 at the half and only scored seven points overall. The 2015 Utah game was within one score at the end of every quarter. Enough said on that front. Against USC in 2014, we gained 382 yards with 4.92 ypp. Against Stanford in 2015, we gained 495 yards at 6.35 ypp. We scored more against USC in 2014, but we were losing 31-9 at the half, and 31-16 at the end of the third. USC had a depleted roster and was milking clock for the entire second half. With all this considered, the 2015 games against both Utah and Stanford were better than both of the 2014 games against UW and USC.
Third Comparison: USC 2015 vs. USC 2014. In 2014, as I've said, we were down 31-9 at the half, and 31-16 at the end of the third quarter, before scoring two 4th quarter TD's to make things interesting. Our offense failed where it mattered. In 2015, we gained a few more yards, but had a way higher yards/play rating. The game was out of hand for a stretch in the third quarter, but was a one score game at the end of the first, second, and fourth quarters. Slight advantage to the 2015 offense, but to be fair USC's 2015 scoring defense was a little worse.
Fourth Comparison: UCLA 2015 vs. UCLA 2014. The 2014 UCLA game was close throughout, but only because of TO's deep in UCLA territory. In the first half, we punted every time that UCLA didn't hand us the ball. In the second half, we did have two 54 yard TD drives, one after a turnover on downs, and another after a punt, and the game was still competitive at this point, so that's a mark in favor of the 2014 offense. Our next TD in the 2014 game was only a 2-play, 32 yard drive after Hundley threw an interception. Until the last drive of the game, we had punted every single time that we got the ball inside of our own 40 yard line. The offense didn't work well in this game. It didn't work much better in the 2015 game, but our first FG drive was a 14-play, 66 yard drive. At the end of the half we went 75 yards in 8 plays for a TD to make it 23-10. In the third quarter we went 73 yards in 12 plays for a TD, although at that point the game was getting out of reach. Our 2014 offense did a better job at capitalizing on field position, but the 2015 offense was better able to drive the ball without their success being as dependent on field position. These two performances are close to a tie, with the big difference being the TO ratio.
So here's what I take away from these comparisons: Oregon was an outlier in both years, once in a positive direction, and once in a negative direction. It's only two games, but we can speculate that this is because of Oregon's boom or bust style of play. When you play them, you can either get completely overwhelmed and boat raced (2015) or you can get yourself into a wild shootout (2014). With the 2015 Oregon game as an exception, in both years the offense clearly worked against teams that gave up 29+ ppg, and this is what we should expect. Our ppg was lower against this tier in 2015, but the higher ppg in 2014 didn't help us win more games, with the loss to UA being an obvious case of a barnburner leading to lots of points in a losing effort. As I argued in my last post, we also wouldn't have scored as many points against WSU and CU in 2014 if our defense had been better, as it was in 2015. It should also be noted that OSU was the only truly atrocious (40+ ppg) defense we played in 2015, while both WSU and CU were awful in 2014 and accounted for 35% of our scoring in conference play.
The big difference between the two years is at the top of the conference, where in 2015 we actually moved the ball and scored some on the better defenses in the conference, occasionally looking downright good against these teams. In both years, we underperformed against USC and UCLA relative to the rest of the conference, and so it seems that we were less able than other teams to make up for deficiencies in athleticism against the two best recruiting teams in the conference, even though they weren't exceptional defenses overall. If you want to argue that our offense was worse in 2015, it can only be through quibbling over the fact that we should have scored more against the bad teams in the conference, and not through a comparative study of the entire schedule in each year, particularly at the top, where it matters most for many of us.
Of course, this is a relative comparison, and I think it's fair to say that in absolute terms there are coaches out there that would've won nine games with this roster, so there's still plenty of room for disappointment. That also sets the bar for the rest of Sonny's contract, though, since to my eye it would take relatively minor improvements to go from the seven-win regular season that we just had to a nine win regular season. There's no doubt that we're a lot closer to that now then we were when Sonny started with this group of players, though, so it's fair to say that he should be able to build on this new starting point in the next two seasons. If he does it, great. If he doesn't, then we haven't made that much of an extra commitment to him with this recent extension and should be able to get rid of him.
"Data," "yards" and "yards/play" are argumentative and unweighted (and ultimately generally irrelevant) "data" with no comparative form outside an "I can use Excel" argument purported by berk, "18."
What is the third-down conversion rate for those games (offense and defense) weighted based on sat (score at time)? Crunch the numbers in the basement of Evans and please return. Thanks.