2012 Michigan State Spartans Football: Statistical Profile

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Confused? See the glossary at the bottom.

Offense

Receiving Corps

^ Arnett is a Tennessee transfer who is eligible to play immediately at Michigan State.
^^ Fowler struggled with injuries and caught only two passes in 2011.

Offensive Line

Defense

Defensive Line

^ Hoover missed 2011 with injury.

Linebackers

Secondary

Special Teams

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Glossary

Adj. Line Yards: A line measure derived from the formula found here. The idea is to divvy credit for a given rush between both the runner and the blockers.

Adj. Pace: Part of the offensive footprint, this takes into account both the number of plays a team attempts and the type of play. Since passes, on average, take up less time (thanks to the fact that 30-50 percent of them are incomplete and stop the clock), pass-heavy offenses are prone to run more plays, therefore limiting the effectiveness of a general plays-per-game measure. Adj. Pace takes a team's run-pass ratio into account.

Adj. POE: An opponent-adjusted "Points Over Expected" measure for running backs that looks both at what a runner gained and what would have been expected given the opponents involved. For more information, start here.

Adj. Points: A look at how a team would have performed in a given week if playing a perfectly average team, with a somewhat average number of breaks and turnovers. The idea for the measure is simple: what if everybody in the country played exactly the same opponent every single week? Who would have done the best? It is an attempt to look at offensive and defensive consistency without getting sidetracked by easy or difficult schedules. And yes, with adjusted score you can allow a negative number of points. For more, start here.

Adj. Record: See Adj. Points.

Adj. Sack Rate: An opponent-adjusted measure of sack rates.

Adj. Score: See Adj. Points.

Adj. TO Margin: What a team's turnover margin would have been if they had recovered exactly 50 percent of all the fumbles that occurred in their games. If there is a huge difference between TO Margin and Adj. TO Margin (in other words, if fumbles, dropped interceptions, or other unlucky bounces were the main source of a good/bad TO margin), that suggests that a team's luck was particularly good or bad and might even out the next season.

Adj. Yards Per Target: A look at a receiver's total receiving yards divided by the number of times he was targeted. Slight adjustments are made for the percentage of times a receiver was targeted on standard ("%SD") and passing downs. Players targeted more on passing downs are likely to have a lower overall per-target average, since passing is more difficult on passing downs.

Bend-Don't-Break: Part of the defensive footprint, this is a comparison of a team's Def. Success Rate (efficiency) to its Def. PPP (explosiveness). The higher the number, the higher percentage of a team's overall S&P was made up by success rate, i.e. the more willing a team was to sacrifice efficiency to prevent big plays. (The lower the number, the more likely a team was to take aggressive risks.)

Covariance: Covariance is a statistical tool that provides a measure of the strength of the correlation between two or more sets of random variates. For these purposes, it is used to compare a team's performance (using opponent-adjusted Adj. Score) to the quality of the opponent at hand. Some teams play their best games against their worst opponents, and some teams do the opposite. This measure is used for both the offensive and defensive footprint. For more, go here.

Go After the Ball: Part of the defensive footprint, this looks at a team's forced fumbles, interceptions and passes broken up. In other words, it looks at their ability to go after the ball. The higher the number, the more they got their hands on the football.

Highlight Yards: The portion of a given run that is credit only to the running back; after a certain number of yards, the line has done its job, and most of the rest of the run will be determined by the running back himself. For more information, start here.

Need for Blitzes: Part of the defensive footprint, this compares a team's standard downs sack rate to its passing downs sack rate. The lower the number, the more they were able to generate pressure on standard downs, and the less need for blitzes.

Turnovers Luck: Presented in Points Per Game fashion, Turnovers Luck looks at the difference between a team's Turnover and Adj. TO Margins and, using the average point value of a turnover (~5.0 points), projects how many points a team gained or lost per game last season.

Yards Per Point: A measure long tracked by Phil Steele as a means of looking at teams that were a little too efficient or inefficient the previous season. A positive YPP Margin means a team's offense was less efficient than opponents' offenses, and to the extent that luck was involved, their luck might even out the next year.