Study Hall: Baylor 67, Washington 56

And my foray into tennis is done for a while, so ... time to double back down on college football for a bit.

Five Thoughts

1. As good as Robert Griffin III was in this game (24-for-33, 295 yards, 1 TD), he was more than matched by Washington's Keith Price (23-for-37, 438 yards, 4 TD). Baylor definitely had the advantage in the run game, however. Terrance Ganaway (21 carries, 200 yards, five touchdowns) led the way, of course, but Jarred Salubi (five carries, 101 yards, two touchdowns) and receiver Tevin Reese (two carries, 101 yards) more than pitched in. Washington's Chris Polk (30 carries, 147 yards) was certainly good, but Ganaway, Salubi and Reese gained 255 more yards in two fewer carries.
   
   
2. Between Baylor's run game and Washington's passing game, both teams had ridiculous explosiveness. What set Baylor apart as much as anything, then, was Baylor's ridiculous efficiency. Washington bailed themselves out a few times with nice work on passing downs, but Baylor faced fewer passing downs overall.
   
   
3. Washington did a lovely job of getting to Griffin in the pocket. Granted, that was all they did well on defense, but four sacks in 37 attempts is still lovely. Josh Shirley had three of them.
   
   
4. Washington was absolutely phenomenal in the second quarter, but they faded. The per-quarter S&P margin:
   
   Q1: Baylor +0.396
   Q2: Washington +0.884
   Q3: Baylor +0.327
   Q4: Baylor +0.880
   
   
5. I'm curious what a new defensive coordinator can do for the Huskies. I don't think anybody was surprised to see them making a move after a dreadful 2011.
   
   

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%.