Definitions, Callouts, etc:
- Scoring Opportunities = Trips inside your opponents 40 yards line
- Success Rate = Percentage of plays where you get:
- 50% of first down yardage
- 70% of second down yardage
- 100% of third or fourth down yardage
- A 'Standard Down' is any down where the defense does not know if you will run or pass (*insert offensive coordinator joke*), such as:
- Any first down
- Any second down with 7 or less yards to gain
- Any third or fourth down with 4 or less yards to gain
- A 'Passing Down' is any down where the offense will likely pass (because they need to pick up significant yardage to stay 'on track') - this includes any offensive snap that is NOT a standard down
- A 'Power Down' (AKA 'Money Down') is 3rd or 4th down from 2 yards or less in which an offense either converted into a 1st down or scored a TD. 1st and 2nd down and goal plays within the 2 yard line are also included.
- Explosiveness is calculated based on Collegefootballdata.com's PPA metric (same thing as EPA). Basically:
- Every possible down, distance, and yard line is assigned a point value based on historical data (I think 5 years of every FBS snap goes into this particular model), this is called Predicted Points (or Expected Points). Here's a good piece if you're interested in the specifics of calculating PP.
- The delta between your starting PP and ending PP is PPA. It can be positive or negative
- Explosiveness is the average of the positive PPA; a small PPA represents a minor situational improvement. A big PPA represents a significant situational improvement. For context, against Marshall, Tuten had 27 yard rush on 2nd & 9 from our own 42 that had PPA = 2.73. In the same game, Jaylin Lane gained 7 yards on 1st & 10 from the Marshal 39, resulting in a PPA = 0.41.
Callouts:
- Sacks are counted as pass plays (because typically if a QB is sacked, they are trying to throw downfield.
- None of this is opponent adjusted (like SP+, for example)
- I'm creating this from scratch from play-by-play data. I'm seeing some (small) differences between sites (ESPN, Collegefootballdata.com) - specifically in Yardage, and Success Rate, etc
Forums:
DISCLAIMER: Forum topics may not have been written or edited by The Key Play staff.
Comments
Thoughts/Takeaways:
Defense played well against a bad offense. As excited as I was for how capable we looked on offense, seeing us barely beat the averages was a come down.
fools gold. But it feels good to win for a week. Maybe it's a good thing we're playing FSU next so that we can get knocked down to earth a bit but since they're a good team it won't hurt so much
Seems like we're getting better on creating explosives both from the beginning of this season and since last year. But definitely our big weakness is allowing explosives. Up until this game it was almost entirely explosive runs. But every team is going to allow at least some explosive pass plays, so that doesn't worry my so much. Through the first 5 games the run defense has been good down to down, but allows multiple huge explosives which has been a contributer in all of our losses.
Step 1 is beat the bad teams you should beat. Even if it's a baby step. They at least did that for 1 game. So pour the fools gold on me.
Agreed. We'd be losing our minds (more than usual) if we lost to Pitt. Good teams beat bad teams, whatever it takes. Doesn't mean we're a good team, but if we keep losing to bad teams we never will be.
What gives me hope that this game represents real progress is that, while Pitt's offense is legitimately terrible, their defense isn't bad. That and we haven't looked this good against any of the other terrible teams we've played the last couple of years.
My concern is that Pitt's defense is actually secretly garbage, and that offensive performance, while enjoyable, won't be something we see again until mid next year.
Per SP+, Pitt's offense is 66th in the country, and their defense is 50th. Honestly, I was pretty shocked to see the defense that high. I thought it would be closer to 75th. Will be interesting to see where they finish the season.
I haven't dug into the advanced box scores for Pitt's other games, but this seemed to certainly be their worst defensive performance relative to the opponent. UNC (12th best offense per SP+) had 5.4 yards per play while we had 5.5. We ran the ball much better while UNC was understandably relying on their QB.
I don' think they are anywhere as good as Narduzzi's best defenses, but they do seem to be a slightly above average defense. I'm encouraged by what the offense showed on Saturday. Last year against a similar defense we would've scored 13 points or something.
Lots of chatter about Pittsburgh being a bad team...While that does seem to be true, we have plenty of those left on our roster. If we play like we did Saturday, we have a very legit shot at 5-6 wins.
FSU - nearly guaranteed to be a loss
Syracuse/Louisville - average teams, we can win only if we play well
Wake/NC State - weak teams, these games are toss ups
UVA/BC - bad teams, these needs to be wins
Well, we are 1-0 in conference, so even with a loss to FSU you are saying we still have a shot at the ACC title.
I'm all in, ACC champs baby!!!!
Louisville is 5-0, not sure what their SoS is, but might need to move them a step above average.
They have a really easy schedule this year, so a lot of people thought this could be a really good season for them record wise. But they struggled with NCST and GT.
Yeah, L'ville is a good team regardless of how you cut it. Additionally, they will be a matchup nightmare for us at a number of different levels. I don't expect us to win that one.
We will absolutely be underdogs in that game, but Louisville is likely the 6th best team in the ACC. I would say that qualifies them as an average team. Their best win is against Indiana, who appears to be one of the worst teams in the BIG10 (granted, so does Purdue). We will have to play very well, but that game is winnable if we do.
Of the 277 total yards for Pitt, 136 came on their two scoring pass plays. That means the defense allowed 2.82 yards/play for the other 50 plays.
If we could stop giving up 136 yards on 2 plays every game, we'd stand a pretty good chance at making a bowl.
Our Rutgers stats looked very much like that as well. Defense was great for all but 5 plays. I want to clean up those 2-5 busts per game, but if the offense can score more than 17 points, we should still win more of those games with a few busts than we lose.
Rutgers had 5 blown plays on defense. Marshall had 3 blown plays by the defense. Pitt got 2.
That means FSU gets 1 or zero. Its Math!
On a related note, VT had the 8th highest improvement of any team in this week's SP+, improving by 4.2 points. How? In (small) part due to our performance Saturday, but mostly due to our past opponents improving - Purdue improving by 4.5 points, and Marshall and Rutgers improving by a lesser amount.
But in all seriousness, thanks for putting all this together. It's been cool to see and it's definitely interesting to follow as the season progresses
Love this, thanks for putting it together.