Tracking the Offense: Week 8

I procrastinated so long this week I almost lapped myself. Here we go.

2014: W&M, OSU, ECU, GT, W. Mich, UNC, Pitt, Miami
2015: OSU, Furman, Purdue, ECU, Pitt, NC State, Miami, Duke

THE BIG TWO: TOTAL OFFENSE AND SCORING OFFENSE

When I first started getting the charts ready for this week, I kind of felt like this was cheating a little bit. The stats from a 4 OT game are going to be skewed in favor of the offense. Except, then I realized, no, not necessarily. There is rumor of a 2 OT game in recent history that ended with a combined 9 points scored. Just because a game is going to overtime doesn't mean the offense is going to necessarily pad their stats. The offense has to produce, and keep producing, to keep the game going into further successive overtimes. Against Duke, the offense did that. So I believe it is a valid measure of the performance of this offense to include stats from the 4 OTs. The offense answered the bell repeatedly against Duke, and should be credited for that.

As you can see, the performance against Duke, coupled with the fact that at this point last season the offense was in freefall, has nudged 2015 yardage production back above its 2014 counterpart for the first time since the Pitt debacle.

The scoreapalooza that was the Duke game has nudged us back above 30ppg for the year. Although it is an arbitrary number pull straight outta my ass, I feel that 30ppg is the floor for what could be deemed acceptable scoring performance. After being razor-thin for three straight weeks, the delta between 2015 and 2014 scoring has widened up to +5.5 points per game.

THIRD DOWN CONVERSION PERCENTAGE

Against Duke, the offense converted 11 of 22 third downs. That 50% conversion rate was the best performance of this season so far. The net result is a delta percentage of +5.7%, and the largest single week move in this category, up or down, so far this year. Allow me to reiterate, these are all rolling averages, meaning the impact of any one single game diminishes as the season progresses, and yet the largest move of the season occurred with 2/3 of the season in the books.

A particularly poor showing in third down conversions at this point last year couples with our best performance this year to narrow the gap between 2015 and 2014 to -2.0 percentage points, the closest by far we have been all season.

RED ZONE EFFICIENCY

Another week of perfection, at least in terms of managing to put something on the board on every trip inside the red zone. Of course, a game with 4 OTs will inflate the number of red zone opportunities, because a team only has to drive five yards to get into the red zone, and in two of the four overtimes, the offense had to settle for field goals. On the other hand, both VT field goals came after Duke had already posted a field goal on their possession. Both times VT opened an overtime with the ball, the Hokies found the end zone. What does it all mean? No frickin clue.

I said last week I'm too lazy to calculate national rankings for RZE. Then someone, and I can't remember who you are, pointed out in another forum post that you can copy the stat tables directly from cfbstats.com into Excel. Whoever you are, thank you, and please take credit in the comments so I can edit this to give you proper credit.

Virginia Tech ranks 28th in the nation in my made up stat of Red Zone Efficiency, and is good for 3rd in the ACC, behind NC State and Georgia Tech. I don't have week-over-week data for 2014, but I cant tell you VT finished the season ranked 78th in RZE last year.

YARDS PER

Duke made us fight for our yards, and the result is a delta of -0.2 yards per play this week. Although I'm not tracking this in any way, it's worth noting that the type of game we had to play against Duke couldn't have been played without discipline on offense. The offense committed three penalties this week, and one was an intentional grounding call against Brewer, which I won't exactly attribute to a lack of discipline as opposed to a lack of picking up the damn pass rush.

The delta percentage this week is -3.6%, and the 2015 offense is picking up 0.3 yards per play more than they were at this point last season.

Michael Brewer had a very not good 5.7 YPA against Duke. On the other hand, his 120.38 passer rating Brewer posted was the highest the Duke defense has allowed all season. Still, the net result is a nosedive to 7.1 YPA on the season. It's not the biggest week-over-week drop we've seen in this category, but it's still good for a delta percentage of -5.3%. Remember what I said about the effects of individual games having less impact as the season progresses? Yeah, not good.

Not much to say here. Travon came back down to earth a little with a good-but-not-great 4.9 ypc. That drops YPC-RB down 0.1 ypc on the season. The backs this season outpace last season by 0.8 ypc. Marked improvement continues to be the theme now that we've settled on a back rotation of McMillian and Rogers.

Also to be noted, everyone is now well aware that McMillian had five touches in the first half. However, those of you complaining about that, have you considered whether McMillian would have had the stamina for his 24 second half and overtime carries had he been overused in the first half? The running game was fine this week, and Travon was fresh in the second half when we needed him to help come back to tie the game.

SUMMARY

"As Brewer nears being medically cleared for live games, I will be paying particular attention to whatever effect his return has on [Red Zone Efficiency and third down conversion percentage.] "--Me, two weeks ago

Other than that, we have a pretty okay offense, folks. Even more okay with Brewer back behind center. But there's a chance this is due to opponents planning against Motley on film. Let's see if it keeps up.

And God help the defense.