Study Hall: Mississippi State 48, Texas A&M 31

Mississippi State 48, Texas A&M; 31

Confused? Visit the Advanced Stats glossary here.

Basics	Mississippi State	Texas A&M;	Nat'l Avg
Total Plays	77	93
Close Rate (non-garbage time)	68.8%
Avg Starting FP	31.3	29.2	29.7
Possessions	14	16
Scoring Opportunities*	8	8
Points Per Opportunity	6.12	3.88	4.69
Leverage Rate**	67.5%	41.9%	68.4%
Close S&P;***	0.689	0.478	0.508
* A scoring opportunity occurs when an offense gets a first down inside the opponent's 40 (or scores from outside the 40). Leverage Rate = Standard Downs / (Standard Downs + Passing Downs) * When using IsoPPP, the S&P; formula is (0.8Success Rate) + (0.2IsoPPP)

EqPts (what's this?)	Mississippi State	Texas A&M;
Total	40.3	31.3
Rushing	23.7	8.3
Passing	16.6	23.0

Success Rate (what's this?)	Mississippi State	Texas A&M;	Nat'l Avg
All (close)	63.5%	46.3%	42.2%
Rushing (close)	65.8%	56.3%	43.6%
Passing (close)	60.0%	42.1%	40.7%
Standard Downs	67.3%	53.9%	47.5%
Passing Downs	45.5%	26.7%	30.7%

IsoPPP (what's this?)	Mississippi State	Texas A&M;	Nat'l Avg
All (close)	0.91	0.54	0.85
Rushing (close)	0.78	0.41	0.73
Passing (close)	1.12	0.61	0.99
Standard Downs	0.76	0.51	0.77
Passing Downs	1.91	0.68	1.14

Line Stats	Mississippi State	Texas A&M;	Nat'l Avg
Line Yards/Carry (what's this?)	3.86	4.31	2.93
Std. Downs Sack Rt.	10.5%	8.0%	4.7%
Pass. Downs Sack Rt.	0.0%	0.0%	7.3%

Turnovers	Mississippi State	Texas A&M;
Turnovers	2	3
Turnover Points (what's this?)	8.3	15.3
Turnover Margin	Mississippi State +1
Exp. TO Margin	Mississippi State +1.03
TO Luck (Margin vs. Exp. Margin)	Texas A&M; +0.03
TO Points Margin	Mississippi State +7.0 points

Situational	Mississippi State	Texas A&M;
Q1 S&P;	0.669	0.499
Q2 S&P;	0.659	0.528
Q3 S&P;	0.738	0.453
Q4 S&P;	0.430	0.578
1st Down S&P;	0.596	0.530
2nd Down S&P;	0.729	0.524
3rd Down S&P;	0.565	0.457

Projected Scoring Margin: Mississippi State by 16.0
Actual Scoring Margin: Mississippi State by 17

The element of surprise was certainly involved -- MSU knew A&M; wasn't going to run and was geared to stop the pass, and besides, when it's 28-7 in the second quarter, the other team's going to pass a lot -- but ... yeah, A&M; maybe should have run more on Saturday. It worked when the Aggies tried it (Tra Carson, Tray Williams, and Brandon Williams: 19 carries, 126 yards), and it would have eased the pressure on a freshman quarterback who was losing the plot.

Kenny Hill is good and will probably be awesome soon, but asking him to shoulder the load of a huge comeback probably wasn't the greatest thing in the world. (Neither was the fact that his receivers had the dropsies again.) And in the end, there was a lot of good and bad on his stat line: 37-for-62 (60%), 365 yards, 4 TD, 3 INT, 4 sacks for 33, 5.0 yards per attempt.

Meanwhile, anything over 50% is a pretty good success rate. Mississippi State's success rates were obscene. 64% would have been pretty good had MSU been playing Texas A&M-Kingsville.; This offense is just humming.