Study Hall: Oregon 45, Wisconsin 38

And another week goes by with me neglecting Study Hall ... but we will continue to crawl through this Better Late Than Never series...

Five Thoughts

1. Explosiveness: Oregon had it. Wow, did they have it.
   
   
2. Seriously, that was the difference in the game. Both teams were efficient, both avoided passing downs, and both spent half of their time on the opponent's side of the 50. But while Wisconsin was scoring pretty easy points, Oregon was scoring really easy points.
   
   
3. Here's the problem with Darron Thomas: Oregon just wasn't very good on passing downs, even in this game, when so much they did, worked. The play-calling, the execution and the skill position speed were incredible for this Oregon team, and when defenses had to cover both the run and the pass, Thomas was the perfect quarterback. But for a quarterback who has now left early for the pros, Thomas just couldn't make enough plays. Oregon was amazing on first down, fantastic on second ... and very average on third.
   
   
4. Both defenses improved in each quarter as they became accustomed to one another, each improving in each quarter.
   
   
5. I just can't wait to see what De'Anthony Thomas has in store for us in the next few years.
   
   

Quick glossary (complete with national averages) after the jump.

A Quick Glossary

F/+ Rankings: The official rankings for the college portion of Football Outsiders. They combine my own S&P+ rankings (based on play-by-play data) with Brian Fremeau's drives-based FEI rankings.

Field Position %: The percentage of a team's plays run in their opponent's field position. National average: 43%.

Leverage Rate: A team's ratio of standard downs to passing downs. National average: 68%. Anything over 68% means a team did a good job of avoiding being leveraged into passing downs.

Passing Downs: Second-and-7 or more, third-and-5 or more.

PPP: An explosiveness measure derived from determining the point value of every yard line (based on the expected number of points an offense could expect to score from that yard line) and, therefore, every play of a given game. National average: 0.32.

S&P: Think of this as an OPS (the "On-Base Plus Slugging" baseball measure) for football. The 'S' stands for success rate. The 'P' stands for PPP, an explosiveness measure that stands for EqPts Per Play. S&P is measured for all non-garbage time plays in a given college football game. Plays are counted within the following criteria: when the score is within 28 points in the first quarter, within 24 points in the second quarter, within 21 points in the third quarter, and within 16 points (i.e. two possession) in the fourth quarter. For more about this measure, visit the main S&P+ page at Football Outsiders. National average: 0.747. Standard downs S&P average: 0.787. Passing downs S&P average: 0.636.

Standard Downs: First downs, second-and-6 or less, third-and-4 or less.

Success Rate: A common Football Outsiders tool used to measure efficiency by determining whether every play of a given game was successful or not. The terms of success in college football: 50 percent of necessary yardage on first down, 70 percent on second down, and 100 percent on third and fourth down. National Average: 42%.