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Baylor Football

S11 Mid-Season Stats Review: Big 12 Defenses

October 19, 2018
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The Big 12's defenses have made some progress this fall while some have clearly not.  Who's done what and what can the statistics tell us?

Yards Per Drive

Yardage helps contribute to scoring as teams typically need to move the ball a considerable distance to score.  I use per-drive statistics to eliminate two biases:

  1. Teams with fewer possessions and plays get rewarded by total yards.  If a typical drive is around 30 yards it becomes meaningless to compare total yardage from games with 8 possessions to those with 16.
  2. Yards per play addresses the first concern but biases to teams who hit big plays.   For instance Army averaged a strong 48 yards per drive against OU but their 4.4 yards per play would have been 8th nationally as a season long figure for defensive yards per play.   They moved the ball all day but the per-play stat misses it completely.  Nobody left Norman thinking that was a great defensive game for OU.

For these reasons I try to break down yardage to per-drive statistics.  Below you will see several charts with Yards Per Drive.

First I have the average of their YPD from each P5 game compared against "par" which is also defined as what the other P5 offenses averaged against those defenses.   Not all opposing schedules challenge an offense as much as others.  This tells you how a team did relative to it's schedule.  P5 opponents are used so that we provide a reasonable comparison number.  Obviously early season samples are smaller so this will shift as the year goes on a little bit.

I also have the background shaded red, yellow and green.   Yellow starts roughly where a median national figure or an average national figure end up being; roughly 31 yards per drive.   From there it's plus or minus five yards.   Assuming a 12-possession game you would have a yardage swing of at least 60 total yards from typical if you fall outside this range.  Green is better than five from typical, red is worse than five from there.  This tells you if their YPD is good, mediocre, or bad as a stand alone statistic.

The gray bars are each team's "par" while the colored bars are each team.  So what did each team do?

The two teams playing the best statistically vs par are Iowa State and TCU.  Texas and WVU are allowing similar yards per drive but their opponents haven't been as strong on offense.   The rest of the league is not matching par.   Oklahoma State and Kansas State have the biggest struggles of the group both in raw stats and against par.

Below is a three year look at this metric which provides some good information.

This chart gives a decent idea of why the change was made with Mike Stoops.   His defense beat par in 2016 but wasn't great but each year since gave up more yards to otherwise worse offenses.

Baylor, Texas Tech, and TCU are slightly improved but largely remain what they've been.   Texas is still good but isn't quite the defense they were a year ago.  Kansas State and Oklahoma State have followed a very similar trend the last two seasons before massively backsliding this fall.  Iowa State has continued their dramatic improvement.

Red Zone Points

Teams can bend by giving up yards but not break if they deny points.  Red zone points helps illuminate this. Here's how many points each team scored per red zone attempt.   Any offensive touchdown is worth 7 points (it would round to that even if I tracked PAT and 2 point attempts) and any made field goal is 3.  The yellow band in this chart represents what the middle 33 percent of the country's offenses averaged in points per red zone attempt. 

This chart is another exhibit on how OU's defense has struggled.   They effectively gave up a touchdown per red zone attempt.  The only other team that is worse than median in the red zone so far is WVU.   TCU has been outstanding while the rest of the league has been solid in red zone defense against P5 teams.

Explosive Plays

A defense can do well on the above metrics and completely ruin it by allowing big plays.  Below we see that Texas Tech and Baylor struggle a lot with big plays.   Oklahoma State doesn't struggle with 30 and 40 yarders but give up a crazy number of 20+ yard plays.  TCU and Texas are the best at limiting big plays while Iowa State, K-State, and WVU do a decent job.

 

Conclusion

What can we say about each team?

  • Baylor has notably struggled with big plays despite showing improvement last week in Austin.   The yards per drive is largely where they've been since the Jim Grobe year but the red zone defense has been stout.
  • Iowa State is good in all aspects.   They won't be the most talented defense in terms of NFL prospects but the Cyclones do an excellent job.
  • Kansas had two seasons of being decent defensively in yards per drive but have regressed to where they now allow more than par.  Their red zone points has massively improved from last season where it was a joke to where they now are strong.
  • Kansas State is solid at preventing big plays and is solid in the red zone.   However they may be too conservative as they allow over 40 yards per drive to P5 opponents.
  • Oklahoma replaced Mike Stoops for a reason.  They gave up an absurd number of red zone points, weren't particularly strong on big plays, and gave up 4.3 more yards per drives than their opponents usually give up.   Their three year trend was terrible both in raw stats and against par.  It will be interesting to compare numbers after a few games with Ruffin McNeil.
  • OSU changed coordinators and so far the early results have not been good.  They allow nearly 10 more yards per drive than other P5 teams do and give up an absurd number of 20 yard gains.  They are only decent in the red zone but also see almost one more trip per game than the other 9 teams average facing.
  • TCU is who they've been in yardage and red zone points.  The surprise for me is that they are better in big plays than last year.  They are the standard for the league on defense.
  • Texas isn't what they were last year but is still a very good defense as both yardage and red zone points are not what they were last fall.
  • Texas Tech is similar in yardage, similar compared to par, and have actually improved dramatically in the red zone.   They have been FAR worse on explosive plays allowing nearly double the 30+ gains per game that they did in 2017.
  • West Virginia is back to being better than par on yardage after one year of not doing so.  They aren't great in the red zone but are solid on big plays and will give Will Grier and the offense a chance to rally back after their upset loss to ISU.

 

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