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How the hell do you stop Baylor? Part I: What are they doing?

2013-05-22T14:32:12Z

After a third consecutive bowl appearance in 2012, it has become very apparent in Waco and beyond that the savior of Baylor football was not Robert Griffin III, but head coach Art Briles.

Briles had come to Waco via Houston in 2008. From 2002-07, he had transformed Houston from a Conference USA creampuff into a multi-season league champion with an explosive spread offense that had produced standouts quarterbacks like Kevin Kolb and Case Keenum. From 1999-2001, Briles had learned the college game under spread offense patriarch Mike Leach as Leach's running backs coach while adding his own contributions to the Texas Tech run game. This drastically improved the Tech attack.

Briles' own history as a football coach goes back to the 80's when he got started in Texas High School football, the hotbed of modern offensive creativity. Briles began as a Wishbone/Veer offense guru before embracing the possibilities of the spread passing game in the 90's and transforming Stephenville HS into a Texas 4A state power.

These roots are essential to understanding how Briles has come to develop the concepts of his particular brand of the spread offense.

When Briles left Houston to take the head coaching job at Baylor, he brought one extremely important person with him, Copperas Cove "athlete" Robert Griffin III. Griffin took over the quarterback spot as a freshman, and Baylor sent a small snowball hurdling down the mountain of possibility that exists for any FBS Texas school. This snowball eventually became an avalanche of offensive football.

After struggling through Griffin's freshman year and sophomore campaign, which was marred by a knee injury that put him on the bench, Baylor exploded into prominence in 2010 with a 7-6 record that included a win at struggling Texas. Then 2011 happened, and opposing coaches descended into Big 12 Hell, a world of burning sulfur, prodding demons, weekly shootouts, and a Baylor football program that could no longer be penciled in as a win, even for Bob Stoops.

After eventually disposing of rival TCU in the season opener, RG3 also took down Big 12 giants Texas and Oklahoma in Heisman moments that catapulted Briles' Baylor program into the national spotlight.

If Big 12 defensive coordinators were expecting their visitation in hell to be brief, they were in for a horrendous shock.

In 2011, Griffin had tormented Big 12 defenses with a season in which he threw for 4,293 passing yards at 10.7 yards per attempt. He flung 37 touchdown passes to only six interceptions while adding another 699 yards and 10 touchdowns on the ground.

In 2012, Florence threw for 4,309 yards at 9.3 yard per pass, with 33 touchdown passes to 13 interceptions, and 568 rushing yards with 10 more touchdown runs.

Griffin was unmistakably a legendary football player, and the seemingly minor differences in production between his campaign and Florence's (RG3 also faced a season with tougher Big 12 defenses) amounted to the difference in beating OU, UT, or TCU. However, it's now clear that Baylor has an offensive system that has to be taken seriously if opposing coaches want to transform their stays in hell into a stop in purgatory before ultimate ascendance into the heavenly bliss of yesteryear.

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So how did Briles build this system? What exactly is he doing that's so damned hard to stop?

Baylor's attack is a system that relies on simple principles and a holistic approach to attacking defenses that makes sense when viewed from an outsider's perspective, yet is strangely unique to football. To fully grasp what makes Baylor different, and seemingly unstoppable, you must examine three aspects of that system.

No. 1: The formations

Like most pure spread teams, Art Briles' typical offensive sets usually include four receivers and very rarely include fewer than three. However, Briles' understanding of "spread" is one of the purest you'll find in football.

Here's an example of the Air Raid-influenced Oklahoma offense in a four-wide receiver formation:

There are horizontal stretches for the defense from outside receiver to outside receiver, however nothing at all like what Baylor does on a routine basis:

Notice that the slot receivers are aligned way outside the hash marks. The wide receivers in Baylor's offense have extraordinarily wide splits in comparison with other teams. This serves a few purposes for the offense:

1. It makes effective disguise very difficult

Teams that want to bring outside defensive backs on blitzes or disguise which players will be covering the slot receivers have tremendous difficulty doing so when the receivers are so far away from the offensive line.

Oklahoma [used] a five-man box with their OLBs out wide to match the Baylor splits and their safeties deep to prevent scores. Baylor ran for 252 yards.

If you want the Baylor QB to wonder whether you are blitzing off the edge or covering the slot receiver you'll have to really book it right before or after the snap in order to reach your assignment, or the QB will have a pretty open pitch-and-catch for easy yardage.

2. It stresses the defensive perimeter

Thanks to Baylor's extensive screen-and-outside-throw package, you need players to be able to get out to those receivers in order to defend the screens and passes that will otherwise snatch up five to 10 yards per snap with relative ease.

3. It isolates some part of the defense

Defenses have to make choices with their alignments against Baylor. Are you going to maintain a normal six-man box to stop the Baylor run game and give up screen passes to the outside, or will you widen out your linebackers to stop the screens and hope they can get back inside to stop Baylor's run game?

In the image above you can see that Oklahoma has a five-man box with their outside linebackers out wide to match the Baylor splits and their safeties deep to prevent scores. Baylor ran for 252 yards in that game.

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No. 2: Holistic concepts

Many teams will spread the field with multiple receiver sets and attack the perimeter with the quick passing game, but not every team is actually able to spread out wide and still attack other parts of the field. Many of Texas' offenses under Greg Davis in the 00's drove Longhorn fans crazy with attacks that lacked a power run game or vertical passing threat.

Two-deep, pattern-reading defenses such as the one Oklahoma is deploying above against Baylor were created to stifle spread offenses by forcing them to drive the length of the field by being nearly perfect on short passes.

However, Baylor has their eyes on the entire field nearly all the time.

Perimeter concepts

Another feature of Baylor's extra wide receiver splits appears in their screen game.

At the last moment you see TCU cheat their linebackers' alignment after Baylor's QB Nick Florence has already received the play call. The right backer sneaks out to stop the hitch screen while the left backer cheats in to stop a run play.

As it turns out, it's a packaged concept that features a screen against the right backer with a run against the left backer. It's up to Florence to read the right backer and determine if the screen or inside zone run is the better playcall.

Lots of teams use this packaged concept, but the difference is in the split of the Baylor receivers. The slot receiver catches the screen four yards past the line of scrimmage, whereas many teams throw that pass behind the line. Thanks to tough running and good blocking by the outside receiver he finishes the play 13 yards downfield.

This kind of tactic requires a quarterback who makes quick reads and possesses the arm strength and accuracy to hit receivers split out wide. Every instant saved while the ball is delivered means less time for the defenders to respond and arrive to make the tackle. When the quarterback can make that throw accurately, the Bears are able to stay ahead of the chains with the yardage gained even before the receiver makes a move or breaks a tackle, which happens routinely.

Baylor has many spread passing concepts that they utilize, mostly based off of quick reads for the QB that can attack different parts of the field. But their ability to repeatedly hit the perimeter on screens for consistent yardage is primary to their overall success.

Downhill running game

Baylor has a very diverse running game that is built to take advantage of its personnel and spacing and also includes the Quarterback as a threat.

It includes but is not limited to:

Inside zone paired with bubble screens

Notice here that the wide spacing and threat of bubble screens to either side of the field transforms the normally downhill Inside Zone play into one in which explosive runner Lache Seastrunk is almost immediately in the open field by drawing the linebackers and safeties out to the flats.

Baylor has also used the play with bigger running backs like Terrance Ganaway or Glasco Martin, who find that running downhill through the arm tackles of linebackers darting back into place after checking the screen is an enjoyable exercise.

Zone Read

Instead of reading linebackers to throw the bubble screen, the QB will read the DE (or here an OLB) and either hand off or keep the ball based on the read. In this example, Baylor is aiming for the cutback lane with both the QB and the RB as an ode to Briles' Veer-option football past. As a result, the linemen are essentially blocking down at angles. Defenders who are looking to avoid being reached on zone blocks have to worry about the possibility of this "Zone slice" play punishing them for pursuing too hard.

Power Read

Baylor will utilize Power-O blocking by the offensive line, with a guard pulling into the hole. If the DE crashes inside, then the QB will hand the ball off to a sweeping WR or the running back, who handles the run much like an outside zone run. They also run Power Read with the back looking for the inside gap and the QB looking outside. As with all Baylor plays, there are multiple stress points and a quick read by the QB to determine which to exploit.

The run game is the lifeblood of the Baylor offense. It has enough diversity in keys, varying angles, and threats to present defenses with schematic problems aplenty before the opponent can even address the screen game, or the final component of Briles' death trap.

Play-action and vertical passing

In many of the clips you'll see opposing safeties lining up deep off the ball, as many as 15 yards, before the snap. This final element to the Baylor offense is the reason why.

Giving up 13 yards on a hitch screen pass is scary enough, but the way in which Griffin and Florence would routinely throw deep bombs over the heads of safeties for one-play scores absolutely terrifies defensive coordinators.

While coaches would want to bring the safeties either outside the hashes to help against the screen game, or closer to the line of scrimmage to stop the inside runs, the Bears' vertical passing game demands that they stay back.

Most essential to Baylor's success is the play-action game:

In the first clip, they catch Texas corner Quandre Diggs with a double move by Terrence Williams. The safety help isn't there because the safety is peeking into the backfield to stop the run.

In the second clip, Baylor targets Kansas State's Dante Barnett, the replacement safety for Ty Zimmerman, with Tevin Reese and a double move inside. Teams that have poor play on the back end will find their weakest links isolated and attacked vertically by Baylor. It's nearly impossible to hide major chinks in the armor at defensive back, and the stakes are six points.

While so much of the rest of the Baylor playbook urges defensive backs to fly downfield to make tackles on runners and receivers, the vertical passing game will quickly destroy defenders who play with flat feet or peek too long into the backfield.

No. 3: Tactics

Baylor is a no-huddle team, naturally. For defenders and opposing coaches, this means that in processing the myriad of places on the field where you are on the verge of being assaulted, you have next to no time. Most, if not all, of Briles' concepts begin with one quick read by the QB; this means that the offense thrives on simplicity. Baylor is basically an option offense in all that it does. The nature of spread passing games has become quick-triggered and based on one or two reads, just like the Veer offense that Briles operated in the 80's.

The danger for Baylor is if the defense becomes difficult to read and the QB is made to hesitate or has to make a decision with inaccurate information. However, utilizing any serious degree of disguise or different personnel groupings is made extremely difficult by the wide spacing of the Baylor personnel and the quick tempo. If you call in a blitz or exotic look and are unsuccessful, the Bears can hurry to the line of scrimmage and punish you for the mistake over and over again while you desperately try to switch to a safer call.

The better the grip Baylor has on the defensive approach, the quicker the Bears can snap the ball and make plays. They keep coming all day long, and Briles doesn't seem to remotely care about margin of victory or defeat. They've been held under 30 total points only four times in the last two seasons and never under 20. In that same stretch, they've scored 50 points or more nine times.

Essential to Baylor's ability to attack so many different parts of the field is the fact that Briles recruits so well to this system. He finds big, mauling kids to fill the offensive line and uses some of his best, most powerful athletes inside at guard or center so that defenses are forced to devote numbers in the middle to stop the run game.

At running back, Baylor balances power backs like Glasco Martin or Terrance Ganaway with explosive speedsters like Lache Seastrunk. The wide receivers have to block to play, but Briles prizes speed above all. His players are usually either accelerating from a stand still after catching a screen pass or trying to blow past safeties on play-action routes.

Quarterback is obviously the key to the offense. The ability to make quick decisions is a crucial element to a Briles QB, although this is also manufactured by playing in the system for years. The more essential physical gifts are a strong arm, accuracy, and enough mobility to force the defense to account for the QB in the run game.

The team features all of these elements in their 2013 personnel and likely a few more wrinkles that Briles has worked up in the offseason. So how can it be stopped? We'll get to that in Part 2.

F/+ in the Pac-12: Finding the worst offense in college football

2013-05-16T16:12:12Z

Let's continue our tour of every major conference's F/+ ratings. Last time, I took you through the Big Ten. This time, I'll take you through the Pac-12. A brief review:

The better a team's offense is, the further "north" they are on the chart.
The better a team's defense is, the further "east" you want to be.
The best teams reside in the NE corner.

The gray lines on the chart are percentile rankings for offense and defense: The 0, 20th, 50th, 80th, and 100th percentiles are represented on the chart. The corresponding F/+ ratings are shown at the bottom and left of the chart (for example, a team in the 80th percentile on defense has a +8.2% F/+ rating).

In the chart below, the NCAA logo is the average for all FCS teams. It is (by definition) at the intersection of the 50th percentiles of offense and defense. Now that we're on our third conference, the chart is beginning to get crowded. Instead of using conference logos, I switched to colored dots for the conferences.

In the chart below, I added dots for every Pac-12 team covered in this time period (64 teams).

The "1" in the chart below represents the average F/+ offensive and defensive rating for every team who finished with the best record in the Pac-12 over this 6-year period.

Now, here’s a closer look at the Pac-12 champions over this time period. The blue dot is the average of all seven of these teams (there was a tie in 2007).

Observations:

Five of the seven conference champions are in the extreme upper right-hand corner of the chart (80th percentile or better on offense and defense). All of the SEC league champs were in this elite corner.
The 2008 USC team is the 4th best college football team from 2007 to 2012 according to F/+. The next-best Pac-12 team in this time period is last season’s Oregon team, which did not manage to win the league title (Oregon is the gray dot just inside of the "U" in USC.
In this six-year period, five Oregon teams have finished the season in the elite NE corner. No team in college football achieved this in all six seasons (not even Alabama!). Other programs with five appearances in the last six seasons: Alabama, Ohio State, and Oklahoma. Boise State makes four appearances.

Okay, now it's time for a little fun. For each team in the Pac-12, I used my "what have you done for me lately" ratings system: F/+ ratings for each team weighted this way:

2012: 40%
2011: 30%
2010: 20%
2009: 10%

I figure recruits kind of look at it this way. 70% of the rating is what has happened in the last two years...everything else is a foggy memory. Using this weighting system, I plotted the teams using the chart below.

As referenced above, Oregon has become an elite program in college football. Stanford is close, but not quite on Oregon's level. Meanwhile, USC has slipped down to second-tier status in the Pac-12.

Okay, one more thing. Let's take a look at the best and worst offenses in the Big 10 during this six-year period. I highlighted teams that appear on both top 10 or bottom 10 lists.

That 2008 USC team was really, really good. Their lost to the just-decent Oregon State team in Corvallis cost them a shot at Tim Tebow in the title game.

The 2009 Wazzu team has the worst offense in college football from 2007-12. The beat out ‘09 New Mexico State, ‘11 Akron, and ‘11 Florida Atlantic for this honor. They were truly terrible, scoring seven or fewer points in five games. My word.

Next up, the Big 12.

Third-and-percentages: A do-over

2013-05-16T15:04:55Z

This article is part two of a series on third downs in college football, you can find part one here.

Last Tuesday, I published an article detailing how successful teams are at converting third downs based off of the distance to go and the type of plays teams were running. The data I published last week suggested that teams converted third downs at a much higher rate when passing the ball than when running the ball, and not just for third-and-longs either. This trend appeared for any distance greater than three yards to go. I was lucky enough to have my data reviewed by PeterinVA, who pointed out a mistake I had made in the data assumptions. The NCAA records sacks as rushing plays (I have no idea why). So when I tabulated the play-by-play results by play type, all of the sacks were counted as rushing plays. This explains the drastic difference between pass conversion % and rush conversion %; it only counted the passing plays where a pass actually occurred.

So, I have fixed the raw data and identified all of the plays where a sack occured and gotten the correct results, and we can now proceed as planned.

The Data:

I'll say it again and every time after this, thanks to cfbstats.com for providing the play by play data for every season since 2005. This project wouldn't be possible without it. In my first post, I detailed how I got a list of each and every third down by distance in the last five years (2008-2012). From there I looked at how often teams passed the ball at each distance. The following chart outlines the total pass % by distance to go for each year since 2008, with all garbage time plays removed.

(Also, I redefined garbage time by the same standards that Football Outsiders use when I fixed the sack results. So the data is now more consistent. If it isn't apparent yet, I have already classified my first post as a do-over.)

There seems to be a clear rise in how often teams pass on third down until about third-and-6 or third-and-7, and then teams pass at about the same rate for any distance longer than that. The trend does start to slope back towards rushing the ball more as the distance-to-go gets more and more insurmountable. I think this is because some coaches just start to play it safe and run the ball to prevent an interception and set up the punt. The good thing is that there does not seem to be any trend year to year, so I will be using the average of all third downs from 2008-12 for any future reference to pass %.

Now that we have an average passing % on all third downs by distance-to-go, what can we learn about third down conversion % by distance? I'll now combine a chart from my earlier post detailing the conversion percentages by play type. I'll also include how often teams are passing the ball by distance.

Conclusions:

I'm not really sure what value we can gain from this chart. Teams start passing the ball more than half the time at about three yards to go from a first down. While teams quickly pass the ball more than they run the ball, the conversion % is actually pretty stable. It is only until teams have seven to eight yards to go for a first down that the percent of passing plays that gets you a first down is higher than the same percentage for running plays. But, teams are also passing the ball four times out of five at this point. It's possible that when teams run the ball at this distance, they have noticed that a draw play will fool a defense or something like that. The third-and-13 spike is still there, and thanks to all those in the comments of the previous post, I'll be investigating some of the ideas you guys had in the future.

I'm not really sure what direction I will go next with this data, feel free to suggest anything you would like to see and I will continue to update this series as I make progress.

Random blast from the past: Jackie Sherrill eyes Texas A&M

2013-05-13T15:45:02Z

I was not looking for a January 1982 article on Jackie Sherrill, but when you fall down the Google rabbit hole, you get sidetracked. So fine, let's get sidetracked.

Before Sherrill was leading Mississippi State to unexpectedly great and unexpectedly terrible seasons, and before he was making "Jackie Sherrill Castration" a legitimate Google search item (here's the most interesting read from that search), Sherrill was Pittsburgh's head coach, the guy who recruited Dan Marino, the guy who, as associate head coach, had helped Johnny Majors to put the pieces together for Pitt's rather surprising 1976 national title season.

Following the 1976 title, Pitt lost Majors to Tennessee. They snatched up Sherrill, who had spent one season as Washington State head coach (Wazzu would replace him with Warren Powers, who also stayed for just one year before taking the Missouri job), and while Sherrill didn't win another title, wow, did he come close. Pitt went 11-1 in 1979, losing only at North Carolina early in the season. The next year, the Panthers went 11-1 again, losing only at Florida State. And in 1981, they began the season ranked eight and spent a month at No. 1 before a jarring blowout loss to No. 11 Penn State. They rebounded with a 24-20 win over Herschel Walker and No. 2 Georgia in the Sugar Bowl, but a couple of weeks after the bowls, they found themselves once again about to lose their head man.

Sherrill indeed left for Texas A&M, where he was tasked with rebuilding a program that had fallen on hard times. Tom Wilson had gone just 17-17 in three seasons, and it took Sherrill three years (16-16-1 record) to build anything noteworthy. He went 29-7 from 1985-87, but A&M was put on probation in 1988, and he resigned that December. He resurfaced three years later in Starkville, where he won some games, took home the 1998 SEC West title, and castrated a bull.

Pittsburgh, meanwhile, is still trying to recover. Foge Fazio did pretty well with Sherrill's recruits -- the Panthers started the 1982 season, Marino's senior year, at No. 1, but lost three times and finished No. 10. They went 8-3-1 in 1983 and started 1984 ranked third in the country but finished just 3-7-1. Fazio was done a year later. In the 27 seasons since Fazio's departure, PItt has finished ranked only four times, never better than 15th in 2009.

The Relationship between game length and home winning percentage

2013-05-13T15:25:44Z

Football statistics are weird. This is one of those weird ones. I haven't yet decided whether this I should call this one signal or noise, but I think it's interesting enough to do a quick write up and get some others' input on it.

There's little question that TV has increased the the time that it takes to play a college football game. There hasn't been, as far as I can find, any work done on determining whether this increase in game length has any impact on the outcomes on the field.

Looking at games between FBS teams from 2007-2012 (ignoring the one percent of games on the extremes), there appears to be a noticeably negative correlation between game length and home winning percentage.

As a quick orientation to the chart, the black line is the rend line of home winning percentage. The red line is the 58% average home winning percentage for FBS games. The box encloses 88% of all FBS games and the red star marks the scatter point of both averages...58% home winning percentage and 197 minute game length.

Although the scatter plot shows a lot of variation in winning percentage as the game length increases there is a obvious negative correlation even in the boxed area which encloses 88% of all games.

I'm pretty confident that the correlation is there, but I'm stumped as to why it's there. Intuitively, game length shouldn't favor one team or the other. I can't think of any plausible explanation for this, so I'd like to know if you have any ideas.

Let's hear them.

A book announcement

2013-05-10T17:49:42Z

You'll hear plenty about this in the coming weeks, but for now, an announcement (via Twitter):

Since I just sent the last chapter out for edit (you're a champ, @robweir), I guess I can go ahead and mention this…
— Bill Connelly (@SBN_BillC) May 10, 2013

For the last six months, I've been putting the pieces together for a book about, well, college football.
— Bill Connelly (@SBN_BillC) May 10, 2013

The working title is Study Hall: College Football, Its Stats, and Its Stories.
— Bill Connelly (@SBN_BillC) May 10, 2013

Talked to tons of coaches, cfb writers and nerds about it and learned a lot about the game. It turned out exactly as I hoped it would.
— Bill Connelly (@SBN_BillC) May 10, 2013

Basically three parts: current events, stats (how coaches and fans use them, how they SHOULD use them), and general wonkery.
— Bill Connelly (@SBN_BillC) May 10, 2013

The goal is to have it out in mid-July, though that date is dependent, obviously, on a ton of publishing-related forces.
— Bill Connelly (@SBN_BillC) May 10, 2013

Happy Friday.
— Bill Connelly (@SBN_BillC) May 10, 2013

Read by Howard Schnellenberger. (That was a joke, but THAT WOULD BE AWESOME.) RT @gbhunting: Audio book plz
— Bill Connelly (@SBN_BillC) May 10, 2013

4th down and the run

2013-05-10T15:00:08Z

Welcome to part two of the series exploring fourth down. This time I’ll look at the numbers behind running on fourth down and explore many of the aspects we looked at in the previous article, 4th Down and the Pass.

During the 2012 Charting Project, the Football Study Hall team recorded 138 fourth down rushing attempts, including traditional runs, options, reverses, QB sneaks and scrambles (with the scrambles presumably coming from botched pass attempts, but I’m going to count them). Much like passing on fourth down, I tried to identify a few trends that emerged when teams attempted to run on fourth, which include:

Running on fourth down was overwhelmingly an offensive field position call
Attempts came from leading and trailing teams at nearly identical rates
For some teams, being up by 30 points just wasn’t enough
Running on fourth down was successful on more than 60 percent of all attempts
No offensive scheme was statistically more successful at converting on fourth down

Field Position and Point Difference

When charting for the previous article, my favorite piece of data to look at was field position because it provided a very interesting indicator of risk acceptance or aversion. Having had so much fun with it in the previous article, it was the first thing I tackled here (no pun intended). Just as with passing, teams rushed with the highest frequency outside of field goal range. However, unlike passing, which trailed off within field goal range, rushing attempts fluctuated based on distance. I was happy to see that at longer distances, teams followed the adage lauded by in-game commentary that says, “at least walk away with three points on the board.” What the graph below shows is exactly that—a fifty percent decrease in rushing attempts when teams were within field goal range—except when in the shadow of their opponent’s end zone. See the chart below.

Based solely on field position, it appears teams were willing to kick the field goal and settle for three points between the opponent’s 10-20 yard lines, reserving the riskier alternative—rushing—for attempts outside of field goal range or where the payoff was higher (touchdown). This is a very logical decision for three reasons. First, if an offense stalls out and fails to convert on fourth down between the 20-10 yard lines, that offense failed to provide their defense a substantial field position benefit, and taking three points would have been better than none at all. Second, kicking from the hash marks within the 10 yard line makes for an increasingly difficult “chip shot” as the angle decreases closer to the end zone. This in turn makes rushing less of a risk. Finally, even if the offense fails to convert on fourth down within the 10 yard line, that offense has now successfully pinned their opponents deep within their own territory.

My second step when looking at the data for running on fourth down was to identify the point difference between the two teams when the fourth down was attempted. If you read the first article in the series (refresher here), you will remember that 75 percent of teams passing on fourth down were trailing, and over half of all attempts were made by teams trailing by multiple scores. However, when we look at rushing attempts on fourth down, we get an entirely different image. Instead of seeing the trailing teams attempting at higher rates, we actually see a near mirror image between leading and trailing teams. Below is a graph showing the difference in score when fourth downs were attempted. (Note: in this article “one score” refers to one touchdown plus successful two-point conversion).

And just because I love charts, below is a quick scatter plot (this time it’s color coded to match the chart above) showing the distance and point difference combined into one.

Distance, Formation and Success

Based on the criteria in the two sections above, it is easy to assume the leading team will go for it on fourth down in order protect a lead and a trailing team will go for it on fourth down to take the lead, but this doesn’t seem the be the case as the scatter plot graph shows. Instead, it appears that an even simpler concept determined when teams would attempt to run on fourth down: distance. In fact, the distance to go was without a doubt the single largest factor in determining when teams attempted to run on fourth down. Of our 138 charted rushing plays, 126 of them were fourth-and-five or less. Nearly 92 percent! Compare that, for a second, with our passing data where only about fifty percent of all passing attempts came on fourth-and-five or less. When we add those numbers together, the data shows that on all plays of fourth-and-five or less, there are 2:1 odds that the play called will be a run.

So, what about success? Below is a chart showing rushing success rates based on distance. As you would expect, the number of attempts dropped off dramatically as the distance increased, and only a few teams were daring enough (or stupid enough, you be the judge) to run on fourth-and-eleven or more. In addition to being quite successful on the few instances we have of rushing on fourth and long, I was surprised to see that the teams weren’t the flashy or dynamic running teams like Oregon, but instead teams like Washington State, Alabama, Arizona and Georgia Tech.

To even a causal football fan, the chart above should not be surprising. Fewer teams are willing to risk running on fourth-and-five, but many are willing to pound out a yard or two on fourth-and short, banking on superior athletes, timing, a hard snap count, or scheme to provide them with the edge necessary to convert. But since we had all this data, I didn’t want the chart above to be where the number crunching stopped. I wanted to look at how successful individual offensive styles were at converting fourth down and see if certain styles were more effective than others. For the sake of brevity, I broke all plays out into six offensive types. The chart below shows those types and their relative percentage of all fourth down runs. Note that in this article, “traditional” running plays constitute all other running plays (i.e. single back, “I” formation, etc… regardless of whether the QB is under center or in the shotgun).

I will admit that the data for Zone Read, Reverse, and Scramble are incomplete and therefore inconclusive, but it was interesting to note the success rates of our two largest segments: QB Sneaks and traditional running plays.

So when the two groups above (distance and attempts/conversion percentages) are combined, we are able to see where teams are willing to run and what kinds of teams are willing to run at certain distances. Below are six graphs showing the attempted and converted fourth downs of each type by distance as well as some quick facts about each.

Option
Attempts: 10
Converted: 7

Notes: 100% success rate at one yard, and nearly all unsuccessful beyond. Most attempts by Georgia Tech (5), longest successful play by Navy vs Arizona State.

QB Sneak/Draw
Attempts: 12
Converted: 8

Notes: Most attempts by West Virginia (3), longest successful play by Colorado vs Washington State.

Reverse
Attempts: 1
Converted: 1

Notes: Only attempt conducted by USC vs Syracuse, not a large enough sample size to draw conclusions.

Scramble
Attempts: 4
Converted: 4

Notes: Charted attempts by Oregon, TCU, Wake Forest, and Washington State. Longest successful attempt by Washington State vs Stanford. Not a large enough sample size to draw conclusions.

Traditional
Attempts: 102
Converted: 63

Notes: Most charted attempts by Oregon (12), longest successful attempt by Alabama vs Western Kentucky (17 yards)

Zone Read
Attempts: 9
Converted: 4

Notes: Most charted attempts by Oregon (3), and longest successful attempt by Oregon vs Oregon State.

Based on the six charts above, I am unwilling to claim any style is definitively more successful than the others.

Conclusion

To wrap up this graph-fest I’m calling an article, the data presented a few key takeaways. First, the data confirms running is the fourth-and-short play of choice, statistically speaking. At nearly 2:1 odds, offense chose run over pass on fourth-and-short. When we look at those same numbers within the opponent’s ten yard line, that ratio climbs to 3:1. Based on that, if I’m a defensive coordinator deep in my own territory, I’m expecting a run. Second, whether up by three or trailing by thirty, teams are willing to run at nearly identical rates. And those identical rates hold true regardless of which quarter of the game we’re in. Barring marginal changes, teams ran at almost exactly the same rates in all four quarters. The third and final conclusion is that no one formation or scheme appeared to be dramatically more or less successful than the others. Yes, some show much higher/lower success rates in our sample data, but with so few attempts, I’m unwilling to call what we saw a “trend.”

And finally, for those readers who slogged all the way through this article (book?) and have made it to the bottom of this page, here are a few fun facts.

Fun Facts

West Virginia went 7 for 11 on fourth downs against five different opponents.
Georgia Tech had one of those days against Georgia in Clean, Old-Fashioned Hate…at least from a fourth down conversation standpoint. On five different occasions, Georgia Tech attempted to convert on fourth down while trailing Georgia. At the time of the attempts, Georgia Tech trailed by: 18, 25, 32, 39, and 39. I don’t know why I keep trash-talking my own team, but even USC’s ineptitude vs Notre Dame on fourth and goal wasn’t as bad.
And finally, Oregon. Oregon led all teams with the most rushing attempts and successes on fourth down, going 12 for 17 against eight different opponents. The Ducks would also be the winner of the No Sportsmanship Award, attempting to convert on six occasions while leading by 30 or more points.

Til next time, everyone!

More on year to year shifts, using f/+

2013-05-10T13:00:04Z

Your casual fan knows the difference between a 5-7 team and 7-5 team. But they can't explain why one 5-7 team really over performed or another 5-7 team underperformed, except with maybe a vague reference to the least scientific of all prognostication: the preseason rankings.

Today's nerdiness is in looking at something I hinted at in my last article: How much of a turnaround can a team manage?

Using F/+ data for the last 8 seasons (2005-12), here are some of the biggest movers and shakers and some ideas of what moved their respective needles.

The "Live by the Cam, Die by the Cam" Award

Auburn

This might seem a bit obvious, but it really underscores a basic premise of college football: Individual talent can't stay at any university for very long. It's hard to overstate the full collapse of the Auburn program, but the Tigers' F/+ scores shed some light on how much one Heisman winning athlete (and one of the SEC's best ever quarterbacks) meant to the Tigers.

Auburn was solid from 2005-07, with F/+ ratings of +22.2% (seventh overall), +16.5% (20th) and +20.9% (16th). The 2008 and 2009 seasons were disappointing for Auburn (62nd and 39th, respectively), even though the '09 squad managed an 8-5 record in Gene Chizik's first year. Of course, that was nothing to 2010: Cam Newton led the Tigers to 14-0, a national championship, a No. 3 F/+ ranking and a one-year jump in F/+ of 26.7 percent.

And then...

...Auburn's F/+ rating in the last two seasons fell from plus-36.5% in 2010 to minus-18.6 in 2012. Last year, Auburn ranked just 105th. Ooh. That hurts.

Bill's take: Not only did Cam Newton's personality infiltrate Auburn's offense in 2010, but upon Newton's departure, Chizik made a series of pretty questionable moves. It appeared that he handcuffed offensive coordinator Gus Malzahn quite a bit in 2011, working to craft a more conservative, pro-style offense. My guess is that he decided that recruiting big-time talent and crafting a system around it was more important than recruiting specific talent for the system at hand. That's generally not a very good move. Auburn's 2011 and 2012 offenses had no identity and no confidence, and it appears Auburn has acknowledged his by firing Chizik and bringing back Malzahn. It's hard to say Auburn will be too good in 2013, but the Tigers shouldn't be as painful to watch. That's something.

Runner Up: 2009 Ball State, which had a 33.8-percent drop in F/+ from 2008.

Honorable Mention: 2010 Florida, dropping 31.0 percent from the previous year (more on the Gators below).

The Jimmy John's Freaky Fast Turnaround Award

Oregon State

The Beavers turned things around big-time in 2012, improving their F/+ rating by 31.5% and rocketing 70 spots in the rankings, from 88th to 18th. They also flipped their nine losses into nine wins.

Bill's take: Mke Riley's approach of valuing speed above all else (size, defined talent) seemed to reap dividends in 2012, as receivers Markus Wheaton and Brandin Cooks led an explosive receiving corps that even survived injury issues at the quarterback position. Oregon State gets its players the ball in creative ways, and things clicked pretty well in 2012.

Runner Up: 2008 Rice (3-9 to 10-3, and 24.3% improvement in F/+)

Honorable Mention: 2011 Vanderbilt (2-10 to 6-7, 24.0% F/+ improvement)

The Brick Tamland "That Escalated Quickly, I Mean That Really Got Out Of Hand" Total Collapse Award

Tie: 2010 Texas and 2012 Southern Mississippi

Did anything go right in Austin in 2010? Garrett Gilbert threw seven more interceptions (17) than touchdowns (10), and the Longhorns incredibly fell from ninth in Off. F/+ to 100th; defensively, Texas dropped 26 spots from 5th to 31st in Def. F/+. Overall, Texas' F/+ dropped a whopping 39.8%. An elite program had a very very mediocre year.

That's more than we can say for the hapless 2012 Southern Mississippi Golden Eagles. Oy. Southern Miss fell from 12-2 to 0-12 in one year, and first-year head coach Ellis Johnson got canned. Their defense fell 78 spots from 19th to 97th in Def. F/+.

Bill's take: Colt McCoy and his passing downs magic masked a lot of deficiencies in Texas' scheme from 2006-09, and without his magic wand, Texas just fell apart. The Longhorns have slowly begun to figure things out again, but they had to basically start from scratch (which is crazy considering the blue-chip talent at hand). Meanwhile ... it appears that Southern Miss' collapse was simply the perfect confluence of losing a lot of difference-makers and hiring what was definitively the wrong head coach. They should bounce back a solid amount in 2013.

The "Billy Bob" Most Improved Award

Tie: Oklahoma State

The Cowboys have improved an average of 4.8% F/+ each year since 2005. Now, It doesn't mean each year was better than the last, but it does mean that this program is headed in the right direction.

I think the clearest explanation is simply the combination of good coaching and money. Mike Gundy was a great hire, and Oklahoma State has a billionaire alum who wants to see the program succeed. Sometimes, explaining things IS that simple. But Gundy deserves a world of credit. Even though last year was a step back from 2011's peak, where OSU finished fourth in Offensive F/+, it wasn't much of one, at least in terms of F/+ rankings. Just about every odd year, OSU takes a quantum leap in some aspect of the game. For instance, most fans don't remember just how good the 2011 defense was: +18.2% Defensive F/+ raw score, matching their No. 4 ranking in Off. F/+. In 2007, they were 74th, and in 2009 they were 17th. Special teams, too, has improved - from 2006's No. 83 ranking in Special Teams F/+ to seventh in 2011 and 10th last year.

Bill's take: Mike Gundy is awesome. As a Missouri fan, I was terrified at the thought of him taking the Arkansas or Tennessee job this past offseason. (And yeah, having T. Boone certainly doesn't hurt.)

Runner up: San Jose State. See my earlier article on what improved them.

So what moves the needle?

Most of the time with a large data set it actually gets easier to see what causes trends. You find commonalities between what moved in each direction. But this actually was more difficult to parse because of the large sample; things average out quite a bit. There were a number of teams who, despite coaching changes, new offensive and defensive schemes, and inevitable player turnover, netted 0.0% change since 2005.

What the best teams do have in common is either exceptional player talent (and fit) -- see Auburn 2010; or they have exceptional coaching talent, like Oregon or Oklahoma State, which both improved at an average rate of 4.8% year over year. I know that sounds trite but, it makes perfect sense: No matter how sophisticated the tactics or shiny the uniforms it still comes down to execution and leadership. To underscore that, look at 2011 Vanderbilt and 2012 Vanderbilt. The offense actually got markedly worse - dropping from 43rd to 69th in Off. F/+. That's unusual for teams improving their records. The Defense both years was solid but only better by degree (40th to 35th). On the other hand, Special Teams improved from 73rd in 2011 to 6th in the country last year. And the Commodores had nine wins.