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U-Ute
01-27-2014, 02:24 PM
I posted a thread in the basketball forum that came from this article. It uses that as the basis for determining the top 5 most important statistics in college football

The Five Factors: College football's most important stats (http://www.footballstudyhall.com/2014/1/24/5337968/college-football-five-factors).

Its an interesting read just like the basketball one is. Especially since football is a more complicated sport.

In short:

Explosiveness. Not just yards per play, but the number of what I have often being called recently as "chunk plays".
Efficiency. Based on the NFL Success Rate stat (50% of needed yards on first down, 70% of needed yards on second down, or 100% of needed yards on third or fourth down).
Field Position.
Finishing Drives. Measured as Points Per Trip inside the 40 (to take into account longer field goals).
Turnover Margin.






If you win the explosiveness battle (using PPP), you win 86 percent of the time.
If you win the efficency battle (using Success Rate), you win 83 percent of the time.
If you win the drive-finishing battle (using points per trip inside the 40), you win 75 percent of the time.
If you win the field position battle (using average starting field position), you win 72 percent of the time.
If you win the turnover battle (using turnover margin), you win 73 percent of the time.



All sorts of stats and breakdown of each category. Fascinating to read a as a numbers guy.

Applejack
01-29-2014, 03:44 PM
I posted a thread in the basketball forum that came from this article. It uses that as the basis for determining the top 5 most important statistics in college football

The Five Factors: College football's most important stats (http://www.footballstudyhall.com/2014/1/24/5337968/college-football-five-factors).

Its an interesting read just like the basketball one is. Especially since football is a more complicated sport.

In short:

Explosiveness. Not just yards per play, but the number of what I have often being called recently as "chunk plays".
Efficiency. Based on the NFL Success Rate stat (50% of needed yards on first down, 70% of needed yards on second down, or 100% of needed yards on third or fourth down).
Field Position.
Finishing Drives. Measured as Points Per Trip inside the 40 (to take into account longer field goals).
Turnover Margin.




All sorts of stats and breakdown of each category. Fascinating to read a as a numbers guy.

This is interesting. Having not read the article yet, I would say that the Utes have really lacked in the efficiency area the past few years. We always seem to be relying on third and longs to bail us out.

UTEopia
02-02-2014, 06:41 PM
This is interesting. Having not read the article yet, I would say that the Utes have really lacked in the efficiency area the past few years. We always seem to be relying on third and longs to bail us out.

Did not read the article, but it almost looks like turnover margin can be the difference for the Utes: 18-7 (3-4 when even) when turnovers are even or in Utah's favor. 0-11 when turnovers favor the opposition.

2011 Utah TO OPP TO W/L Score


Montana State 0 2 W 27-10
*USC 1 3 L 14-23
BYU 2 7 W 54-10
Wash 5 1 L 14-31
ASU 5 0 L 14-35
Pitt 0 3 W 26-14
Cal 4 0 L 10-34
OSU 1 4 W 27-8
UA 0 3 W 34-21
UCLA 1 2 W 31-6
WSU 2 5 W 30-27 OT
*CU 1 2 L 14-17
GaTech 1 1 W 30-27 OT


2012
No. Colo. 1 2 W 41-0
USU 2 1 L 20-27 OT
BYU 0 2 W 24-21
ASU 3 0 L 7-37
USC 2 2 L 28-38
UCLA 1 1 L 14-21
OSU 4 0 L 7-21
Cal 1 3 W 49-27
WSU 1 2 W 49-6
Wash 2 1 L 15-34
UA 1 2 L 24-34
CU 1 5 W 42-35


2013
USU 1 1 W 30-26
Weber 0 1 W 70-7
OSU 3 0 L 48-51 OT
BYU 0 1 W 20-13
UCLA 6 2 L 27-34
Stanford 1 2 W 27-21
Arizona 2 2 L 24-35
USC 4 0 L 3-19
ASU 2 1 L 20-19
Oregon 1 0 L 21-44
WSU 2 2 L 37-49
CU 3 3 W 24-17


+1 6-2 (loss CU and UA)
+2 3-1 (loss USC)
+3 or greater 6-0
even 3-4 (loss USC, UCLA, WSU, UA)
-1 0-4 (loss USU, Wash, Ore, ASU)
-2
-3 0-7

UTEopia
02-02-2014, 06:49 PM
I posted a thread in the basketball forum that came from this article. It uses that as the basis for determining the top 5 most important statistics in college football

The Five Factors: College football's most important stats (http://www.footballstudyhall.com/2014/1/24/5337968/college-football-five-factors).

Its an interesting read just like the basketball one is. Especially since football is a more complicated sport.

In short:

Explosiveness. Not just yards per play, but the number of what I have often being called recently as "chunk plays".
Efficiency. Based on the NFL Success Rate stat (50% of needed yards on first down, 70% of needed yards on second down, or 100% of needed yards on third or fourth down).
Field Position.
Finishing Drives. Measured as Points Per Trip inside the 40 (to take into account longer field goals).
Turnover Margin.




All sorts of stats and breakdown of each category. Fascinating to read a as a numbers guy.


I guess the other thing you would need to know to make these statistics really informative is how many times teams who are favored by more than 4 points win or in other words how many times do these statistics help an team with inferior talent beat the spread.

jrj84105
02-03-2014, 01:36 PM
Notice the weight of the factors:
Explosiveness 35%
Turnovers 10%

This will sound like a broken record but my BIGGEST beef with KW is that we have rarely had any element of explosivity in our offense under his direction. KW talked a lot about it in the past few offseasons, and finally, early in the 2013 seson, DE and Wilson delivered an explosive offense. Travis and Des were at the top of the national leader boards for plays of 25+, 30+, 40+, 50+ yards etc. Turnovers certainly cost us some games, but that should have been EXPECTED and TOLERATED with a true sophomore QB running an explosive offense minus key playmakers (Scott, Murphy). It's a live by the sword, die by the sword mentality. IMO, and I think this is borne out by multivariate statistical analyses and our own experience, It's better to die by the sword than to lay in the fetal position and hope the opposition stabs itself like our offense has frequently done under KW.

KW now brings in a new OC and the buzzword for this offseason is to limit turnovers. If we crawl back into our offensive shell and revert to a highly risk averse offense with no big play capacity in order to "take care of the ball" and "minimize turnovers", then we should all know what change needs to happen.

Utah
02-03-2014, 01:57 PM
Notice the weight of the factors:
Explosiveness 35%
Turnovers 10%

This will sound like a broken record but my BIGGEST beef with KW is that we have rarely had any element of explosivity in our offense under his direction. KW talked a lot about it in the past few offseasons, and finally, early in the 2013 seson, DE and Wilson delivered an explosive offense. Travis and Des were at the top of the national leader boards for plays of 25+, 30+, 40+, 50+ yards etc. Turnovers certainly cost us some games, but that should have been EXPECTED and TOLERATED with a true sophomore QB running an explosive offense minus key playmakers (Scott, Murphy). It's a live by the sword, die by the sword mentality. IMO, and I think this is borne out by multivariate statistical analyses and our own experience, It's better to die by the sword than to lay in the fetal position and hope the opposition stabs itself like our offense has frequently done under KW.

KW now brings in a new OC and the buzzword for this offseason is to limit turnovers. If we crawl back into our offensive shell and revert to a highly risk averse offense with no big play capacity in order to "take care of the ball" and "minimize turnovers", then we should all know what change needs to happen.

I agree with what you are saying, but I think the lack of explosiveness late in the season came from Wilson not being able to grip the ball and Schulz being a terrible QB. You saw what happened in the WSU when Utah tried to be more explosive with Schulz...Two pick sixes early in the game.

Hopefully the QB position is in a much, much better place this fall.

sancho
02-03-2014, 03:04 PM
Notice the weight of the factors:
Explosiveness 35%
Turnovers 10%

This will sound like a broken record but my BIGGEST beef with KW is that we have rarely had any element of explosivity in our offense under his direction. KW talked a lot about it in the past few offseasons, and finally, early in the 2013 seson, DE and Wilson delivered an explosive offense. Travis and Des were at the top of the national leader boards for plays of 25+, 30+, 40+, 50+ yards etc. Turnovers certainly cost us some games, but that should have been EXPECTED and TOLERATED with a true sophomore QB running an explosive offense minus key playmakers (Scott, Murphy). It's a live by the sword, die by the sword mentality. IMO, and I think this is borne out by multivariate statistical analyses and our own experience, It's better to die by the sword than to lay in the fetal position and hope the opposition stabs itself like our offense has frequently done under KW.

KW now brings in a new OC and the buzzword for this offseason is to limit turnovers. If we crawl back into our offensive shell and revert to a highly risk averse offense with no big play capacity in order to "take care of the ball" and "minimize turnovers", then we should all know what change needs to happen.


I agree with most of this, but I also think there are times when you have to recognize what is going on with your team. By the time we shut down the offense, it was clear that Wilson, the line, and the WRs could not make the same magic happen that was happening earlier on. Now, it didn't work, but I don't know that it was the wrong approach. Teams had switched defensive schemes against us to press WRs and attack the QB more.

I am not worried about DC running a bland, conservative offense unless we truly don't have the tools to do anything better, in which case we are just going to stink either way. But in this case, I don't think you should read much into the "limit turnovers" quote. Seems like a routine piece of coachspeak in an interview. I mean, who wants turnovers?

jrj84105
02-03-2014, 03:26 PM
I agree with most of this, but I also think there are times when you have to recognize what is going on with your team. By the time we shut down the offense, it was clear that Wilson, the line, and the WRs could not make the same magic happen that was happening earlier on. Now, it didn't work, but I don't know that it was the wrong approach. Teams had switched defensive schemes against us to press WRs and attack the QB more.

I am not worried about DC running a bland, conservative offense unless we truly don't have the tools to do anything better, in which case we are just going to stink either way. But in this case, I don't think you should read much into the "limit turnovers" quote. Seems like a routine piece of coachspeak in an interview. I mean, who wants turnovers?
I agree that Schulz is a game manager on a good day, and that our offense had to adjust accordingly. However, I also thought we should have burned Cox's redshirt and tried for some explosivity out of the read option. I don't see the point of RS-ing a running QB as he's likely to need a RS for injuries at some point and probably doesn't want to play CFB for 6+ years.

As for the coachspeak, I don't think that's the case. It is listed as priority number one in basically every interview including the ones where KW describes why he hired DC. I think a lot of people agree that this is our number one priority to be addressed at the OC level, but I completely disagree and hope to god that isn't what DC is really here to tackle.

I predicted that an inexperienced Wilson (who has a tendency to force throws and also alter his throwing motion) would have a 1:1 TD/INT ratio and that our season would depend on his big play ability (got shouted down pretty good on the rivals board for that call) so I was neither surprised nor disappointed by this outcome because when healthy he delivered on the big play ability. The correction for the interceptions comes down to improvement in Wilson, and I think as a junior with an extra year in the system he would reduce his INT's by about a third and increase his TD's by about a third. That would be more than enough to win us a lot of games without changing our offensive system or altering our approach to risk taking. I'm making this assesment on the assumption that TW comes back for 2014, not because I think that it's a certainty or a probability but because I think 2014 with yet another inexperienced freshman QB isn't something I want to experience or even think about.

Utah
02-03-2014, 04:19 PM
I agree that Schulz is a game manager on a good day, and that our offense had to adjust accordingly. However, I also thought we should have burned Cox's redshirt and tried for some explosivity out of the read option. I don't see the point of RS-ing a running QB as he's likely to need a RS for injuries at some point and probably doesn't want to play CFB for 6+ years.

As for the coachspeak, I don't think that's the case. It is listed as priority number one in basically every interview including the ones where KW describes why he hired DC. I think a lot of people agree that this is our number one priority to be addressed at the OC level, but I completely disagree and hope to god that isn't what DC is really here to tackle.

I predicted that an inexperienced Wilson (who has a tendency to force throws and also alter his throwing motion) would have a 1:1 TD/INT ratio and that our season would depend on his big play ability (got shouted down pretty good on the rivals board for that call) so I was neither surprised nor disappointed by this outcome because when healthy he delivered on the big play ability. The correction for the interceptions comes down to improvement in Wilson, and I think as a junior with an extra year in the system he would reduce his INT's by about a third and increase his TD's by about a third. That would be more than enough to win us a lot of games without changing our offensive system or altering our approach to risk taking. I'm making this assesment on the assumption that TW comes back for 2014, not because I think that it's a certainty or a probability but because I think 2014 with yet another inexperienced freshman QB isn't something I want to experience or even think about.

I agree 100% about not playing Cox. I think that was the biggest problem with last year, and it was the Cox wasn't ready to go when Wilson went down. It's too easy to run three option plays for a QB that can run, and while that isn't ideal, it's a lot better than what we were doing with Schulz.

sancho
02-03-2014, 04:23 PM
As for the coachspeak, I don't think that's the case. It is listed as priority number one in basically every interview including the ones where KW describes why he hired DC. I think a lot of people agree that this is our number one priority to be addressed at the OC level, but I completely disagree and hope to god that isn't what DC is really here to tackle.


I'm still not worried about this. I agree that there are bigger issues than the turnovers and that you have to open things up and take some risks. I think Whitt feels the same way. I guess we'll see.



I predicted that an inexperienced Wilson (who has a tendency to force throws and also alter his throwing motion) would have a 1:1 TD/INT ratio and that our season would depend on his big play ability (got shouted down pretty good on the rivals board for that call) so I was neither surprised nor disappointed by this outcome because when healthy he delivered on the big play ability.

Funny thing is almost all of these big plays came on short passes than Dres turned into big gains or on routine runs that Poole turned into 40 yards. Wilson rarely connected on long balls. I don't think he has shown great accuracy downfield even when healthy. But good accuracy from 0-20 yards will be more than enough.


I think 2014 with yet another inexperienced freshman QB isn't something I want to experience or even think about.

I'm with you there. I always picture 2014 with Wilson at the helm. I can't help it.