Looking at the stat sheet Monday morning, VT was outgained 469-592 yards for a net of -123 yards,
Thanks to James Clark, Greg Stroman, and Joey Slye, the Hokies won the return yardage game 98-(-3).
Add in Oscar Bradburn winning Net Punting Yards 44.4-35.4.
Trevon Hill returned the only turnover for 8 yards.
The Hokies winning the penalty battle 81-34, brings the game winning Hidden Yardage game by 165 yards for a net advantage of 42 yards in the game.
Considering West Virginia ended on the 15 yard line, I think it's safe to say, we as fans needed every last hidden yard.
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IMO, Bradburn was one of the most impactful players of the game Sunday night. I see a #25 in his future
The fact that we punted 8 times and they only returned 1 (for -3 yards) should not go overlooked. Bradburn's style of punting with it getting extremely favorable rolls after a short bounce is great to have on our side
Speaking of punting, the penetration WVU was getting on the first few punts had me worried, but we cleaned up the blocking nicely.
Another good hidden yardage stat is 'yards between the 30's' that ultimately culminate in nothing. In the age of spread offenses, total yards have become an increasingly weaker indicator of offensive or defensive success. Points have, and always will be the biggest determining factor.
I just wrote pretty much the same thing in a another thread a few minutes ago. Yards is becoming like Time of Possession; the correlation to wins and losses isn't very strong.
It's better to look at things like yards per pass attempt (and over the course of a season, points per possession). And Jackson was 8.7 YPA vs Grier at 6.9 YPA. In the college game, 6.9 YPA is pretty average and your defense is going to have to play really well (and win the TO battle) to win. And you really have to win the TO battle badly to win the game when the other team's YPA is almost 2 YPA greater.
And WVU did neither.
nice
TOP blows like IRMA@!
I would take it a step further; points per possession, since offenses typically have more possessions now.
PPP is a much more useful stat.
But only to measure the effectiveness of an offense over a series of games, not one game. In a single game since both teams will essentially have the same number of possessions, it doesn't really tell you anything more vis a vis the opposing team than the actual score.
Having said that, WVU's points per possession wasn't good.
Points per play is another one to look at and again WVU scored just a hair more than .25 points per play - which is very inefficient. It would have been among the bottom 10 as an average in 2016.
"West Virginia is paying rent to the 25-yard line." -- Steve Levy.
Dude, I know you are a punter, but you gotta quit skipping arm day.
- Joey Slye to Oscar Bradburn
Maybe Joey Slye should be taking pointers from Bradburn after Sunday night.
These stats are all nice to consider, but I really think TOP is the REAL metric to focus on
Not so much anymore.
I think he was kidding
Uhhh, I think you're right....
Nah, he's just the smartest guy on the boards
It wasn't sarcasm. Check ALL of my posts from last year. I'm pulling the buggy on the TOP discussion. You and I are cut from the same cloth.
We've argued about this. I still think TOP matters more than you do - I believe teams that win TOP will win appreciably more than not. What's not clear and impossible to prove is to what extent that is the tail wagging the dog or vice versa
But regardless I don't think the correlation is as strong as it used to be and is, at times, irrelevant depending upon the matchup - which is what drove my original response to what may or may not have been a comment in jest...
You are certainly entitled to your beliefs, but at least one set of data says you're wrong (FBS games from 2005, sorry it's the only free data I could get). Now I know we like to stay away from criticizing anyone's personal belief system so that's all I'm going to say on the matter...
Looking a correlation of score to TOP may skew the results or dampen the affect in attempting to assess win-loss outcome based on TOP, so I went looking for data. I found an Open Data Exchange site that has cfbstats.dom data for 2005 through 2013.
If you looked at this as a simple binary event (win or lose), in 2005, 63% of teams that won the TOP, won the game. If a team wins TOP by 20 min, then the win pct is 72%.
The numbers shift down a bit by 2013, when winning TOP teams won 57% of games and winning by 20 min meant winning the game 67% of the time.
There is some association, but not as strong as the days when running dominated play and not as strong as many proponents of the TOP metric seem to believe.
"If head's we won, tails we lost."
OR
"If we won TOP, we won the game. If we lost TOP, we lost the game."
About the same accuracy, right?
Oh a fucking Gartner Magic Quadrant! Glorious!
Wait are you saying that you think I'm still being sarcastic? I do think TOP matters. Are you being sarcastic? I seriously can't tell right now.
I like the shown final score, the rest of this stuff is just semantics
Where do you guys think we rank in the AP this week? Poll comes out at 2 pm est. I think 18-19. Tough to punish a team for winning and the only teams above us that lost were #3 and #17 (both to ranked teams).
I am seeing some projections at #16 which I think is too much. However, I also believe they are seeing us as an opportunity for a top 10 matchup when we play Clemson, if they assume that we win the next 3 games. I am not assuming that though..
As long as we aren't #17 (#17 Florida looked awful last week, not to mention the curse last year) im happy. #16 I agree will be a little high but 18-19 should be a good landing spot. Allows us to work our way up into the 10-13 range if we keep going 1-0 over the next three weeks ahead of Clemson.
To be fair, Florida also suspended 10 players for their opener
I think 16, we won a ranked game. Early season rankings are stupid but that should count for something, plus we looked good by the eye test. All my non hokie friends were texting me about what a great game it was.
It helps that the teams right in front of us (KSU and USF) are not traditional powers either so they won't get the benefit of the doubt in the rankings. I think simply getting a ranked W jumps us over them both. My prediction: we'll jump Florida as well and land at 18. Probably a spot or two behind 0-1 FSU.
VT checks in at number 18
IIRC every WVU drive started at its own 27 or worse. It's a little easier to bend but don't break if your opponent has to go the whole field.
Not to be a dick or anything, but isn't that like...just 3/4 of the field?
Round up, man.
My rational analysis; VT was one dropped ball from losing that game (assuming they go for and get the 2-pt conversion.)
That drop in the endzone was a tough catch for the WVU receiver but if he made it, the pitchforks would have come out for Foster's defense giving up 600 yards in the opener.
I'm about the biggest Bud Foster fan there is, but I think he made a mistake by letting up on the pocket pressure in the 2nd half.
I would guess that Bud would have loved to get pressure on the QB but the D line was gassed and blitzing would have left us badly exposed.
So in the post game presser, Bud said they had to choose wisely when to bring pressure because every time WVU saw man free they were running rub routes and double moves. It would have only been a matter of time before they busted several long TD plays unless we only rushed 3/4/5 guys. It wasn't effective at times, but we picked our poison and 24 points is a solid defensive output.
You can also say that one potential TD catch would have mattered if Slye had hit either of his short field goals. So it's not too important to focus on any one hypothetical "what if."
Yes.
BTW, did you guys see the play (second half I believe) where Tremaine Edmunds and Vinny MIhota both dropped into coverage while Bud sent pressure? Classic zone blitz by Bud that made Grier throw earlier than he wanted.
I do remember that play, and to add to another point. I think we could have gotten pressure with 3/4 a little more consistently if they had fresher legs. There were stretches where our offense was not doing the defense any favors with very quick three and outs.
Not if you also assume Slye makes one or both of his missed field goals. Or if you assume the WVU FG attempt hit the post and went sideways. Or if you assume any of a number of things that didn't happen.
If BF had chosen to blitz and put more pressure on Grier, I think the end result could have been Syracuse last year or worse. As has happened so many times, Foster adjusts when opposing O's find weak spots in the armor and he put his assets in the right places this time.
Another big one, Cam Phillips comes down 2 feet further down the field on that first big pass.
If either that pass was a little bit lower, or the next pass a little bit higher, we score 7 on that series instead of 3.
Its really nice to know that, even in a winning effort like we had last week, there is still plenty of room for improvement. We still have things to clean up, and that should make you feel real good about the rest of the season, in that we don't have to play perfect to win.
I love hidden yardage and lets start the bradburb for 25 campaign. I think James Clark might get it too.
Thanks for this. I was thinking "meh, field position again" but you framed it well and with stats I wasn't expecting. Lots of fresh topics this week!