OaktownBear;842793361 said:
I agree with you, but I think insisting on points per game is a major flaw in your thinking. Points per possession is the relevant figure. If your offense gives the other team 2 more possessions on average, the other team will score more points. At one point late in the season, we had given up 13 more points per game on defense over last year and scored about the same. But if you factored in the increased possessions on both sides of the ball, over an average game we would have given up 8 more points on defense and scored 5 fewer on offense than last year. The strategy of playing fast and increasing possessions has a direct, easily measured impact on defense stats.
When you factor in # of possessions, our scoring offense plummeted down the rankings
I like points per possession too, often called points per drive. I also found points per offensive play very interesting. I'll just say that I've been knee-deep in this stuff many times, including FEI, S&P ratings, dropping all this stuff into spreadsheets, sorting, filtering, running pivot tables. I keep coming back to PPG, because after all that work, it gets right to the point, with very minimal difference when compared to efficiency approaches. Yes, I know it is simplistic, and it is, but simple is good and desirable when it works well. If a team is scoring 40, 50+ a game, they are quite likely pretty dang efficient too in our clock-controlled game...
The good news here, for the sake of addressing this thread, the OP's concern - we are not losing some powerhouse offense. That is the case whether looking at SD's body of work at Cal, or even last year, focusing more on the Spav delta. PPG or yards per play were, as stated earlier, rather average over SD's years here (about 5th best in the conference). We improved PPG from 2015 by a little, but with a massive jump in plays per game. In 2015 we were like the 6th fastest paced offense in the Pac-12. We slowed down ever year under TF, which was totally contrary to what he preached to us in the beginning, in his seminars. It was evident to me that he was tinkering with the System to make it run right, rather un-System like, and concerning. From the middle of the Pac in plays per game in 2015 to the most in FBS in 2016 (I think the most, if not, very close), is a damn big difference. We ended-up producing 2 more points a game within conference...
Spav recruits well, is well-liked and might indeed go-on to greatness. We now need to a new OC, and others on the staff. We never got the 52 PPG experienced at La Tech in 2012. Not even 42. What we averaged much closer to 32 PPG, and in conference games in the SD era, a little over 30 PPG, which year-in and year-out is average Pac-12 scoring... As I've said many times, we never got that prolific offense that led the nation in scoring. What did translate to Cal beautifully was SD's nation leading worst D!
I continue to rejoice that we at least have a fresh start now...
