2021 statistical post-mortem

[Prediction? Pain.]

Pretty slow day down here at the cracker factory so I figured I'd make a faux fancy chart with some numbers for us all to gawk at while we wait for Barry Switzer to fly Coach Leach out to his ranch on Looney Tunes Lane.

First I'll drop the data and then make a few basic observations and then y'all can banter away.

The chart covers the offense in every year since Mullen arrived in 2009. The stuff on the left two-thirds of the chart reflects SEC-only games and are mostly big-picture offensive stats. The "RZ TD %" is the % of red-zone trips that result in a touchdown and the "20+ YDs" category is the number of offensive plays that get 20+ yards. I think the rest are self-explanatory.

The stuff on the right third of the chart is from the FEI advanced stat rankings, which you can find here and here. The "FEI Off." is the national, overall offensive efficiency rank, which is an opponent-adjusted stat that's calculated with many different raw efficiency-based inputs. I've included two of those raw, unadjusted inputs in the chart as well just to give you a flavor for the thing. The first, which I've called "% Yards Gained," is the percentage of available yards that an offense gains per drive. The second, which I've called "TD %," is the percentage of an offense's drives that results in a touchdown. (Other categories that feed into the FEI offense ranking include percentage of drives that result in at least one first down, that end in a turnover, or that end in zero or less yards gained.) Keep in mind that the "FEI Off." national rank is adjusted for opponent quality. So when you see 2018's high adjusted ranking, for instance, remember that over half our games that year were against teams that finished in the Top 26 nationally in scoring defense. (Five SEC teams plus Iowa. Two more, La. Tech & A&M, were both Top 50, too.)



My quick takeaways:

- Though we don't have the defensive stats side-by-side for comparison, it's always good to remember how most years, Mullen won with defense first. The offenses were up and down and, Dak aside, at their best when they were efficient and competent, not when they were high-powered. I've looked at this before and don't remember the results exactly, but I believe that most years during his tenure, the defenses outperformed the offenses statistically.

- Moorhead's offense made some small strides in Year 2 all things considered, didn't it? Too bad the defense was horrific and the off-field stuff was getting sloppy.

- Just in case you weren't paying attention: last year's offense was God awful.

- The improvement from Year 1 under Leach to Year 2 is nuts. I mean, seriously, WTF? I know why it happened because Leach tells us every freaking press conference. Reps, reps, reps, consistency, consistency, consistency. But damnation, people, it's still amazing to see it in writing at season's end.

- In his second year of a complete program overhaul, taking almost a decade of run-first football into the wacky, alternate dimension of the air raid, Leach produced an offense that scored more TDs per drive and gained more yards per drive (as a % of available yards) than any offense since 2009 save two that were led by the Dallas Cowboys' starting QB and one of the best (if not the best) players in program history. That's pretty damn strong.

A few notable things I omitted:

- We were 4th nationally in % of drives that gained at least one first down. The previous high since 2009 was 18th, which we hit in 2013 and 2015.

- Our offensive line did pretty well overall. You can look at sack rates and "line yard" stats here if you'd like. Low sack rates, low TFL-allowed rate, and a really solid rate of short-yardage conversions on runs, too.

- Will finished 6th in the SEC in passer rating in SEC games.

- The creator of the FEI system got with the dude who created the S&P+ advanced-stat system -- which is now mostly behind a paywall at ESPN -- many years ago and created a composite of their rankings called the "F+" rankings. Our offense is ranked No. 20 nationally in that system, which tells me that the S&P+ likes our offense, too.

- The S&P+ system assigns post-game "win expectancy" percentages to every game. The gist is that regardless of the score, the system tells you which team would normally be expected to have won the game based upon their play-by-play efficiency throughout the game. Our post-game win expectancy in the Memphis game was 94.9% and 63.7% against Arkansas. Insert gif of man getting kicked in the nards.

- This has nothing to do with the offense, but our special teams play has to be addressed. The FEI ranks our special teams play at 124th nationally and the S&P+ ranks it at 125th, and it's almost entirely due to punts, punt coverage, and field goals. The field goal situation is what it is. Get a kicker. Now. But the punt game, man, what the crap? In a game where every additional yard your opponent gets on a punt increase the points they're on average going to score, that can't continue.