Thursday, September 23, 2010

This should come as no surprise...

I'm still working on my statistical dive into the last decade of UGA football and the past 4 National Champions, all out of the SEC.

I'll hit you with some quick highlights -

2009 - Alabama's offense "underachieved" in 15.38% of its games.

2008 - Florida's offense "underachieved" in 0% of its games.

2007 - LSU's offense "underachieved" in 7.69% of its games.

2006 - Florida's offense "underachieved" in 0% of its games.


From 2006 (Ga Tech)-2009, Bobo's offenses "underachieved" in 21.05% of their games.

From 2001-2006 (Auburn) Richt's offenses "underachieved" in 31.43% of their games.

Now, it's unfair to lump ALL of the UGA offenses together and then look at the other teams for only one year. So, I'll be comparing single-year results in a later blog. I just wanted to hit you guys up with this one, and let you know that I'm still working away. It's a ton of data.

Go Dawgs.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Appreciate the hard work, Mr. Dukes. Makes for some very interesting reading.

Holla said...

Ah...

I should have waited to read this post before finishing my comment under the other post.

Again, my concern is that we should use total yards to determine whether a team's O outperforms the average opponent of the D they are facing. We shouldn't worry about how it breaks out in passing or rushing.

I will be shocked if UF's % of underperformance is still 0 if we do that. In both 08 and 06? But we can all use our memories here: 06 was a stout D and a serviceable O that did not light the world on fire. Yet they somehow outperformed the average in every single one of their games in 06? This is hard to believe.

Similarly in 08. That year their O was absolutely dominant--for the last 2/3 of the season. For the first month or so everybody was commenting on their O "struggling." They got in the range of 250 yards of total offense against Tennessee that year, won handily in the margin of victory (due to a late push and UT's woeful ineptitude). Was UT's defense so stout in 08 that that 250 from Florida was an above average performance? The numbers could say so, but it raises an eyebrow at this point.

Ben Dukes said...

Ahh...you see, Xon...there is where you are limiting your sight too much. By your own direction, shifted from including games when an offense failed to exceed the average in any particular area, but instead shifted to an OVERALL underachievement. However, you don't take into account one very important factor - scoring points.

Let's take your 2008 FL vs TN game for example, FL's 245 total yards was indeed eighten yards below the average surrendered of 263. FL out rushed the avg opponent by 46 yards while underpassing the average opponent by 64. However, Florida's offense also outscored the avg TN opponent by a touchdown.

Because I don't remember the exact game and the situations within, I don't know if FL was often playing with a short field, or if they just didn't get it going through the air. Still, when the statistical numbers are so close to the yearly average, and you outscore the average by a touchdown, I'd say that's definitely not an underperformance.

Yardage statistics and point statistics do not, when used exclusively of one another, tell the whole story. However, when utilized together, you can really start to see trends.