Big 12 Stats Review: Off-week snapshot of Baylor's nine conference foes

Since Baylor has an unusually early off week it’s a good time to take a quick glance around the Big 12 to see what we can tell about some of the early games with each school.  For simplicity, we will look at yards per drive, average field position, and points per red zone attempt for both the Big 12 school and their opponents.  The basic structure is as follows:

• Yards per drive will be displayed next to the opponent yardage per drive with a semi-transparent “hidden yards” showing up for either side indicating who held an advantage in starting field position and how big of an advantage it was.   
   
• Points per red zone attempt is listed with the number of red zone attempts noted in the school name labels.
   
• With the exception of WVU and KU we will be looking at one game per school to focus on the most relevant games.   
   
• Both yards per drive and points per red zone attempt are overlayed on top of a green, yellow, and red background to indicate whether it’s good, average, or poor for the respective offenses.

With that out of the way let’s dive into the first group.

Group 1: Dominant but Untested

Baylor, Kansas State, and Texas Tech don’t have much to critique yet and have bulldozed their first two opponents.  However, none have faced any proven FBS opponents yet so it’s wait and see.  Neither of the following charts offer any reasons for concern.  The concern is how well the results translate to playing P5 opponents.

Group 2: Offense is Scary, Defense Probably Needs Work

Texas-LSU, OU-Houston, and Oklahoma State-Oregon State all had the Big 12 offenses do really well.  The problem is the other side did better than you would like in yards per drive.

However, inside the 20s, both Texas and LSU shut each other down.  OU and OSU’s FBS games didn’t have poor red zone results for any offense.

Group 3: Poor Red Zone Offense Squanders Yardage Advantages

TCU and ISU got a lot of knee jerk criticism for their games against Arkansas Pine Bluff and Northern Iowa.   If they convert in the red zone better these games likely don’t stay close.  Both moved it better than the score implies and held relative field position advantages.

Group 4: Rebuilding Projects

Kansas and West Virginia have had it rough this season.  Each are 1-1 with a win over a pretty good FCS team each and a humbling loss to very different FBS teams.

West Virginia was outgained by both opponents but their defense and field position advantage kept things close with JMU.  The other was a decisive loss at Missouri.

In the red zone WVU has only one attempt on the season and failed to score.   They couldn’t stop Mizzou and did a good job slowing JMU down.

As for Kansas, the Jayhawks were outgained per-drive in both games but found a way to beat Indiana State with a decent red zone performance on offense and good red zone defense.   Their defense kept it up against Coastal Carolina but the offense went 0 for 1.

Bonus Group: Big 12 Exes In A Wild One

Nebraska and Colorado had a very Jekyll and Hyde game.   The YPD for the entire game were pretty even while each half was radically different.   Each team took turns dominating and it led to a very heartbreaking loss for the Nebraska fans who took over Colorado’s stadium.