Hello Followers. Hope you’re having a great week!
As for me, well, like many of you, I have been a bit beside myself with the whole coaching situation.
So, if you’re interested in reading about something other than Vince Grippi’s Replacement, then click on after the ole jumperoo.
Followers, any time that I start to write about numbers, I am instantly reminded of the artistic genius frequently exhibited by our good pals over at Cougcenter.com. I mean, not only do they talk about numbers all the time, but that damn SBNation interface makes their stuff look so darn perty!!!!!
So, as you glance through this junk, please keep in mind that I am a total (technology) idiot…….
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Okay…So, let’s start with the focus of my rare empirical investigation into Cougar Football. First, I was interested in seeing about how we may have improved (or not) with respect to four important outcomes. These outcomes are:
Total Points Per Game Scored
Total Points Per Game Allowed
Total Yards Gained Per Game
Total Yards Per Game Allowed
My second goal was to look at improvement from a couple of different perspectives. I was interested in seeing how we might have improved (on each outcome) with respect to last season, and I was also interested in charting our performance relative to our conference brethren.
Consequently, there are four “categories” of numbers that appear on each chart. The first (in blue) represents the peformance of the 2010 WSU Cougars. The second (in red) represents the performance of the 2011 WSU Cougars……From there, the third category (in green) represents the Pac-10 conference average fror 2010. And the fourth (in purple-YIKES) represents the Pac-12 in 2011.
As you look at the charts, keep in mind that the Pac-10 and Pac-12 averages EXCLUDE the Cougars, since my goal was to understand how we compare to others in the conference independent of ourselves. Also, as you will see in the graphs, I plotted each outcome according to each game (along the X axis) so that outliers–such as our extreme performances in Games 1 or 2 would not obscure our performance or performance trajectory.
Limitations
Whenever you use numbers/stats to paint a picture, you run the risk of severely skewing and/or distorting “reality.” Undoubtedly, I do that a bit here. After all, the quality of opponents varies between seasons, the venue (home or away) varies between weeks/seasons, and statistics such as “total yards for” and “total yards against” also carry with them important flaws (Which is why we have these things called “efficiency” and “adjusted efficiency” metrics). Again, my point here is to paint a general picture. So, here we go…
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Points Per Game Scored
As you see in this first graph, the Pac-Whatever has been an offensive league the past couple of seasons, with teams other than WSU averaging right around 30 points a game. What this chart shows us is that, with the exception of our first two games this year, we have only been at or above the conference’s average in points for TWICE in the past two seasons! YIKES.
At the same time, this graph also demonstrates considerable improvement relative to last season. After all, this year, we have fallen under 20 points only twice, and have done so obviously with our back-up quarterback. What’s more, when you look at our lowest points outputs of the year, two out of three came in games where Tuel started…..Also interesting, our near identical Game 9 flops.
Points Per Game Allowed
This one is a bit crazy with lines going all over the place. What is interesting to me is that if you exclude Week 1 for both seasons, we have really struggled to hold teams down to THE AVERAGE points allowed for other teams in the conference. With a full sample of games in from 2010, we accomplished that “feat” a whopping three times (if you exclude Montana St.). And two out of those three came in the last three weeks of the year (against a CAL team with a back-up quarterback and a 5-7 Oregon State Team).
And this year? Well, we haven’t been BELOW the conference average for points allowed once during the conference slate. That, dear Followers, is simply BRUTAL.
Total Yards Gained Per Game
Big improvement here relative to last year as well as the conference. And again these improvements are manifest (so far) with our back-up QB.
As you can see, only one time last year did we match the conference average in total yards (UW). However, this year, we have met or exceeded the conference average in 5 of 9 games.
What is also striking to me about this chart is that our two games under 300 yards of total offense came against 3-4 defenses. Hmmmm…
Total Yards Allowed Per Game
Of course, this is where efficiency statistics matter, since we had two games (Weeks 5 and 8) where our offense was on the field for 40 minutes of the game–amassing over 85 plays in each.
But, if we exclude Week 1, we can see that we’ve held opponents below the conference average in total yards twice this year in conference (three overall) which matches the total for a full slate of games for 2010. What’s more, the total number of games in which we’ve allowed 500 or more yards in a game has decreased considerably: We’ve only had two such games this year, while we had five last year.
Again, some improvement, but this statistic is a bit misleading because these numbers aren’t adjusted for efficiency, nor for differences in opponent (we substituted USC with Colorado, Oklahoma State with UNLV)..
CONCLUSION
While I was somewhat surprised that our offense largely remains below average with respect to our conference brethren, these numbers DO SUGGEST that our offense has improved significantly from last year’s team. And again, these improvements have occured with our back-up quarterback.
In contrast, while our defense has improved significantly with respect to total yards allowed, we have not been able to successfully improve upon what is “AVERAGE” for the conference in points per game allowed. And really, that says a lot, at least in my book:
While we have approached or exceeded “average” at times offensively, we have consistently been below–or well below–average defensively.
And if you want to talk about Bowl games, well, that formula just won’t cut it.
Kahn will be back on Friday to follow up on this a bit more.
All for now. Go Cougs.
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