True...our defensive scores, special teams, etc...go into that points scored per game stat (as do short fields they generate by getting TOS). What specific offensive efficiency metric are you talking about though?
I guess I like to keep it simple and imagine that those defensive/special team scores aren't swaying scores that much compared to what other teams generate from their defense/special teams. And fans got so enamored with offensive plays per game/running the play clock down....I get it was frustrating but was it that big of a deal? I was more pissed with the dropped passes first part of season, Leary was Mr TIpped passes constantly, etc...
So in the end, to me, just score the ball when you've got it and don't screw up with all the TOs (that certainly lose games when you lose the TO battle most games).....that is easier to compare. So Hamdan needs to keep get to 29 pts a game and less than 1.5 TOs per game to beat last year's offense. It's sort of that simple.
These are the stats that gamblers look at, but even without money on the line they are relevant. Efficiency shows how effective the offense is play to play. Explosiveness, of course is long plays. Last year we were very explosive, but not effective. Benny and CRod years we were very efficient, but not explosive. Efficiency measures consistency, whereas explosiveness measure playmaker talent and execution. You want both, but I would weight efficiency more important than explosive, despite explosive being a key metric for success. You must do both. The finishing drives is affected by efficiency because if you can run in the red zone you're more likely to score a TD, but you have to be able to pass to have an effective run game in the red zone.
Key Advanced Stats for Betting College Football
OK, now to the actual stats.
Connelly and Football Outsiders boiled down the success of a football team into
five factors.
- Efficiency (Success Rate)
- Explosiveness (IsoPPP)
- Field Position
- Finishing Drives (Points Per Trip Inside the 40)
- Turnovers
These factors come together to make
S&P+, which rates FBS teams from 1-130 based on play-by-play performance and not wins and losses. The S&P+ numbers are usually very close to point spreads.
Success Rate (efficiency): Created by
Football Outsiders, it's defined as gaining 50% of necessary yardage on first down, 70% on second down and 100% on third and fourth down.
Essentially, how often do you put yourself in a good position to move the chains? Success Rate has the highest correlation to winning games.
Explosiveness: Coaches
talk about it all the time now. If you can move the ball in large chunks, and prevent your opponent from doing so, you're going to win a lot of games.
The best explosiveness measure is
IsoPPP+ because it's relative to field position. A 35-yard touchdown pass is incredibly valuable because it covers all the yards remaining to score. There was no way that team could have gained more than 35 yards on that play, even if the ballcarrier was 15 yards clear of the closest defender.
CFBStats.com also has raw big play numbers, like total plays of 10-plus yards, all the way to 90-plus yards.
Points per trip inside the 40 (finishing drives): The "red zone" being defined at the 20-yard line is kind of arbitrary. The 40-yard line is a better measure, because it's when a team could conceivably score points via a field goal or eventually a touchdown.
Just look at the points a team expects to score on 1st-and-10, by yard line. It really starts to get serious once you get to your opponent's 40.
