Looking at “explosiveness” in the SEC

I picked up my copy of Athlon’s college football preview this morning and was happy to see an article by Bill Connelly, of Football Study Hall, about college football analytics. Bill breaks down five points about college football stats and one of them was focusing on explosiveness and yards per play. While yards per play (ypp) aren’t the only way to measure explosiveness, it is a quick way to see where teams are at. I thought it would be interesting to look at the SEC last season and where each team stood in terms of ypp both offensive and defensively.

Offense YPP (games played against FBS)

#1 Texas A&M 7.25

#2 Alabama 7.06

#3 Auburn 6.64

#4 LSU 6.63

#5 Georgia 6.56

#6 Missouri 6.47

#7 South Carolina 6.18

#8 Ole Miss 6.01

#9 Mississippi State 5.86

#10 Arkansas 5.43

#11 Vanderbilt 5.30

#12 Kentucky 5.24

#13 Tennessee 5.19

#14 Florida 4.82

Nothing really shocking here although some might be surprised Bama is up top as their offense drew some criticism last year. Also, Ole Miss at #8 is a bit of a surprise since they are a “basketball on grass” team.

Defensive YPP (games played against FBS)

#1 Alabama 4.92

#2 Florida 5.10 (taking the Georgia Southern game out actually helped Florida here as they gave up 7.53 ypp in that game which was their most allowed all season)

#3 Vanderbilt 5.21

#4 LSU 5.24

#5 Ole Miss 5.36

#6 South Carolina 5.52

#7 Missouri 5.53

#8 Georgia 5.57

#9 Mississippi State 5.59

#10 Auburn 6.08

#11 Tennessee 6.21

#12 Arkansas 6.22

#13 Texas A&M 6.33

#14 Kentucky 6.41

While YPP is only one of the five stats Bill talks about in the article, it’s easy to see the teams that came up short in the SEC also came up short in this stat (Kentucky, Arkansas, Tennessee).

Overall YPP (adding both offense and defense together):

#1 Alabama (11-2)

#2 LSU (10-3)

#3 (tie) Auburn (12-2), Georgia (8-5), Missouri (12-2), South Carolina (11-2), Ole Miss (8-5)

#8 (tie) Texas A&M (9-4), Vanderbilt (9-4)

#10 Florida  (4-8)

#11 Mississippi State (7-6)

#12 Arkansas (3-9)

#13 Tennessee (5-7)

#14 Kentucky  (2-10)

Again, while this is only one factor you can definitely see how important “explosiveness” is to the have-nots. Looking forward to 2014, I’m not sure how much the bottom three are going to be able to change their fortune this season in terms of explosiveness and it will also be interesting to watch Florida with a new offensive coordinator, A&M without Manziel, Vandy with a new coach and of course Lane Kiffin.

*all statistics used were obtained from cfbstats