With national title delusions dashed, Virginia Tech now sets its sights squarely on winning an ACC Championship.
We are currently undefeated in ACC play this season so let's see who we play next...looks like Georgia Tech. Well, I can't imagine this game having any bearing on who wins the Coastal, but let's go ahead and analyze it anyway.
Let's start with the computer rankings.
Where those computers predict the result, and what Vegas thinks.
So Vegas has Tech at about an 8-point favorite this time around, with computer opinions all over the place, including a couple predicting an outright Georgia Tech win. The odds of an 8-point favorite winning are 78.8%. (Note: an improved odds model is now being used in case you're wondering why this is so close to the prediction for an 11-point favorite last week.)
Now let's look at any overall offensive or defensive advantages before diving deeper.
This is comparing strength vs. strength and weakness vs. weakness in the game. It's a rarity for Virginia Tech when the opposing offense has a higher rating than its defense.
When Virginia Tech Has the Ball
Here is an explanation of S&P ratings, and FEI ratings.
So who has the advantage when Brewer & Co. are operating? First we'll take a look at passing versus rushing, as well as passing downs versus standard downs.
The Hokie offense takes a slight edge almost across the board, but nothing stands out as particularly dominant in either direction. Now let's take a look at the personality of the greater Tech offense versus the Georgia Tech defense:
The Yellow Jackets maintain a surprising advantage on many of these personality metrics, with the exception of explosive drives where VT has shown a greater ability to score in a hurry.
The Virginia Tech offense is closest in personality to:
- Arkansas State
- Texas
- Purdue
Ouch.
The Georgia Tech defense is closest in personality to:
- UTEP
- Wyoming
- South Florida
LOL.
When the Georgia Tech Has the Ball
Next we analyze strength-on-strength with the VT defense trying to stop the Bees and their painful-to-watch triple option offense. This feels almost unnecessary, but let's again look at pass-run comparisons first.
So to summarize, advanced computer algorithms have figured out that Georgia Tech has a decent rushing and passing offense (remember this is efficiency mostly, so not passing much doesn't mean they're terrible at it) but gets dominated once they are forced into passing situations. Try learning THAT from watching them play.
Maybe we should just move on to personality advantages.
The GT offense maintains an advantage across the board except for one area that is fairly surprising: methodical drives. While the triple option may be known for producing just that, keep in mind that thus far Virginia Tech's defense is exceptionally good at preventing that.
When we've been beat on defense, it's more explosive plays that have done it.
The Virginia Tech defense is closest in personality to:
- Wisconsin (Okay...)
- Oklahoma State (Interesting...)
- Florida International (Stats are useless)
The Georgia Tech offense is closest in personality to:
- Navy (#analysis)
- Duke
- Western Kentucky
Who To Watch Out For
Remember when we were all concerned before the season that there was going to be some kind of 6-RB committee in our backfield? Here's something to chew on: Georgia Tech has recorded carries from NINE RB's already this year. I know they run the triple option, but geez.
Who to watch out for is fairly straightforward with the Yellow Jackets, but keep in mind their first three games have come against weak competition:
- Quarterback Justin Thomas presents the typical GT QB statistical profile: he runs as often as he throws, but when he throws he tends to have a high YPA—10.3 in this case, with 15.7 attempts/game. Thomas has averaged 6.47 YPC.
- Splitting carries pretty much equally with Thomas thus far is senior RB Zach Laskey, averaging 5.36 YPC.
- Senior WR DeAndre Smelter has hauled in far more receptions than any other Bee, averaging 26.44 YPC on 9 receptions.
- A dark horse to watch out for: senior RB Charles Perkins, who has rushed 9 times for 111 yards on the season.
Statistical Key to the Game
Until they change offensive schemes, the statistical key to the game will be limiting Georgia Tech's yards per carry. Their success has long-been determined by YPC. I don't think anything else needs to be written on the subject.
My Prediction
Georgia Tech always scares me (and every other Hokie), and in my preseason predictions I said this was the key game for the season. I'm really concerned about the injuries on our defensive front considering how important the line is against the triple option, and GT's receivers are comparable in size to the ECU receivers that just won repeated battles against VT's corners. I think that after studying film they take to the air a little more than usual and may push 20 pass attempts in the game.
That said, I trust our DB's to bounce back and not lose that many battles again, and Georgia Tech's defense is very suspect. While I see the Georgia Tech scoring on us, they'll also burn clock and we'll be able to respond.
5.2 YPC by the bees and the final is Hokies 24, Yellow Jackets 23. Game ball to Shai McKenzie who picks apart their D for 140 yards and tricks us into thinking we've found a running game.
As always a thanks to Football Outsiders, cfbstats.com, and Minitab Statistical Software.
Comments
As long as we win and don't get any broken knees from the cheap blocks.
Well this didn't give me any confidence. Have the computers seen the GT defense?? that ECU game must have really hurt us as far as stats go. I for one hope it's a lot closer than 24-23. But after the way we played against ECU who knows which team will come out. I would really like for us to have turned the corner from last year. Hopefully the team that played against OSU is more the norm than the one that played against ECU. I agree with the D-line concerns as well. So a nailbiter for 3 hours huh....that's not going to help my thinning hair any.
I sure don't. Otherwise, that means Ron Cherry has figured out something crazy in the rule book more bizarre than the one-point safety.
"With national title delusions dashed, Virginia Tech now sets its sights squarely on winning an ACC Championship."
If I had a nickel for every time I'd heard that in the last 15 years... I'd have about 75 cents.
I guess a couple seasons had that sentiment twice ;)
Next year you'll have enough to buy a Snickers bar.
Remember, "Sharing is caring." I love Snickers.
By the beard of Zeus this sight literally makes you smarter (at least about VT athletics) every time you hop on to this site, well done! And since I'm up the street from this shitty vocational school in Atlanta, please GAWD puhlease go Adrian Peterson on their ass!!!
too soon?
Arkansas State....Texas.....Purdue.
Wow.
Purdue made me really, really sad.
The Texas part shouldn't make you much happier, have you seen them lately?
Our Offense Is Like :
ark state- ran a fake punt where a player faked his death, said player almost gets killed while getting up from his great fake
texas- makes a debacle of the coin toss last week and ends up kicking off to start each half I have never seen that before
purdue- they still play football?
Analysis- our offense sucks ass
Sorry, brother, 34 pts, 35 pts and 21 pts points to otherwise.
I'd like to hear your analysis backed by something other than emotion and expletives.
Comparatively, stats show it definitely solidly middle of the road after we've played against a few solid teams whereas many others are just finished or finishing with their cupcakes. 56th in Passing yards, 85th in rushing yards and 71st points for. 125 teams in D1 means middle is 62.5
So, I'd actually put ours, tentatively, slightly better than average when cupcakes are taken into account.
I'd like to hear about the coin toss screw up, BTW.
UCLA won the toss and elected to defer. Texas choose to kickoff. So UCLA got the ball twice. Guess my sarcastica got lost in there but when our offense most resembles those 3 teams I cringe as should any other fan.
LOL, they need to teach "Pay attention to detail" at Texas.
Honestly I have never seen that happen in any level of football I was dumbfounded when I saw that.
I can't remember the year or game but I swear this happened in a game we played in. I'm pretty sure it was at home. I only remember it because I had never paid attention to the ability to defer the decision after the coin toss (I also believe the rule was new).
I believe it was a LOLUVA game years ago, they won the toss, deferred to the 2nd half, and elected to choose which end of the field to defend rather than choosing to receive.
uva basically did the same thing, they screwed the toss up. Groh just wouldn't admit it, said it was because of the wind. Which was stupid.
he should have just said what Strong said, "that guy got confused."
We all know that they should have elected not to play.
Legs to you all for reassuring me that the Wild Turkey didn't kill ALL my brain cells.
I'll add some context...
By S&P, we're currently the 73rd-rated offense so a little below average. But that's among all D-1 teams and not just the Power %. In the ACC, only Virginia (LOL) and Wake Forest are rated lower. So in the ACC, a conference not known for dynamic offenses, we're rated lower than all but two.
In FEI (which doesn't use the W&M game) we're 92nd, rated ahead of Virginia (LOL again), Louisville (!), and Wake Forest.
Also, our offense scored 28, not 35, against anOSU. And those 28 came on just 4.21 yards per play which is unusual...basically we scored 28 not because we moved the ball well but because we had so many possessions.
Maybe we have optimism for the future, but at this point I'd have to say that's all just looking at the good signs and not based on doing anything much thus far.
not just a lot of possessions but also many plays per possession. Specifically, we were very efficient on third downs.
Do these rankings consider the SOS or relative offensive and defensive strength of the opponents? Seems like GT has played much easier teams than VT has, is VT being statistically punished for that, or does it compensate accordingly?
Definitely accounted for...otherwise I'd use something easier like yards/game or points/game or something.
In short, for offense S&P is a combination of "success rate" (how well you gained certain yardage on each down...for example 50% of needed yardage on first down) and "IsoPPP", which is an explosiveness measurement. S&P+ then adjusts those for who you played. Rather than using the total for the game, it is base don individual plays.
FEI is basically an efficiency metric for gaining yardage on a play-by-play basis, again adjusting for opponent. These also discard "garbage time" plays.
If I remember correctly, Al Groh kicked off to start both halves against us one year when he was at UVA. I forget which year and I'm too lazy to look it up, but I definitely recall making fun of LOLUVA for it...
I never even knew this was possible.
"ARTICLE 1. Each half shall start with a kickoff. Three minutes before
the scheduled starting time, the referee shall toss a coin at midfield ... Before the second half, the referee will obtain the teams
second-half options.
...
"a. The winner of the toss shall choose one of the following options:
"1. To designate which team shall kick off.
"2. To designate which goal line his team shall defend.
"3. To defer his selection to the second half.
"b. The opponent shall then choose option 1 or 2 above, as available.
"c. If the winner of the toss chooses option 3 above, then after the opponents
choice the winner selects the available option (1 or 2 above)."
So we won the toss and chose option 3 (to defer), and they thought we chose option 1 (for them to kick), and they chose option 2 (which end) rather than option 1 (for us to kick)?
They chose option 3 to defer, we chose to receive, they chose which end to defend.
2nd half, with first choice of everything, they chose which end to defend, with their coach later claiming that it was a strategy call because it was very windy. We obviously chose to receive again.
well there mr fancy pants statistics man, you forgot this is a VT homer site, logic does not apply here. I suspect Kendall fuller locks down their main receiving threat, Jarrett and Clark stack the box and shut down the option, and Dadi and Ekanem break a QB in each quarter. Brewer finally is over the tenderizing he took in the OSU game and finds Bucky over the middle who walks into the endzone with yellow jackets hanging off his feet like loose socks. Ford and Phillips break DB's ankles like they play for the Washington Generals. Shai weaves through their defense after they have managed to extract themselves from the dirt following Marshawn's first down run. The real Tech walks away with a 50-3 win. HOKIE STATISTICS MAN!
That was fun and all, but I am a Six Sigma advocate and always read your posts and find your conclusions interesting and informative. Keep it up! Numbers don't lie.
If the stats could predict everything we wouldn't have beat OSU and I'd be writing you from Las Vegas!
I hope your substituted reality proves way more accurate than my numbers.
your tagline needs to be the general disclaimer form all the investment prospectus':
Past performance is not indicative of future results.
Stats only tell the story up to this point, as in any situation the model can only be "predictive" if outside factors can be held constant. In this case the opponent (and innumerable other factors) changes each week, blowing the model all to hell.
I like it! "Luck" is the biggest factor - by luck I mean unpredictable events like injuries, bad calls by refs, a player slipping, a punt bouncing funny, etc. The standard deviation of the final score around the spread most seasons is around 15 or so. Think about that - only about 2/3 of games finish with two touchdowns! It's a highly unpredictable sport.
The numbers tell us plenty about overall effectiveness and the "personality" of the teams, because after the game we can account for all of those luck factors and find out how well teams truly move the ball or prevent the other team from moving it. But they can't predict well because we can't know ahead of time what luck events will happen in that game.
It also can not take into account that players and coaches improve or unique circumstances such as that this will be the 4th different type of offense we will face this year. The effectiveness of our defense against W7M style offense in no way reflects our effectiveness against a GT style offense.
Statistics are like a bikini: they reveal a lot, but what they don't show is usually more interesting...
Also some people use statistics the way a drunk uses a lamp post...for support rather than illumination.
Numbers don't lie, but the men that choose which numbers to highlight do .... often without even realizing it!
GT doesn't scare me, I hear this every year. Here are the facts - in acc play we are a dominant 8-2 against them, only one of those loses was to the gimmick single wing option O - the other was to Megatron.
LET'S GO!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I have a bad feeling about this game for some reason. Does anyone else see this as a potential bad loss?
GT hasn't looked all that great against inferior teams, a lot depends on VT injured players though
Nope, not even a little.
Maybe a little nervous. Im concerned about our D line play because of the injuries and depth problems. Not sure how effective we will be. I'll be happy to get this week behind us!!!!
By bad loss do you mean GT blows us out? I'd be shocked if that happens.
No. what I meant was just another home loss to a team we should beat
I agree.
Their defense is terrible. But our offense has been inconsistent.
Their offense is tricky, albeit with a new QB. Our defense has injuries at key positions.
This one is sorta hanging over my head.
Not worried about this game at all; they just have to tackle, not cover, and showed they can do that against OSU. Hokies 27-10, Bucky with 2 TDs.
You are really not worried about this game at all?
Luther Maddy and hurting, Facyson is still not himself after his solid freshman campaign and CPJ and the jackets always play VT close, even when we have had BETTER defenses.
Combine that with a noon start after the offense looked really shaky against ECU and I'm not feeling a VT blowout here.
GT always has a good run game IMO, I think tech should be able to sniff it out pretty well.