I'm trying to find the exact stats on this, but I know on one of the recent broadcasts a stat was pointed out that Ohio State was the first team since 1946 to score 45+ points in five consecutive games. Well, this week makes that six in a row which I believe puts the Ohio State offense in legendary, rarefied air (maybe?). Could we be talking about the greatest scoring offense ever? This is obviously a very difficult statistic to research. I've been looking at some of the most prolific CFB offenses in history for one who has come closest to replicating this feat.
First I started by looking at a list of some of the best offenses ever. Here's a sample of the data of most consecutive games with 45+ points of the top 5 offenses from that list. I quickly realized that this isn't really going to provide much of an answer, but it's sort of interesting nonetheless
| Team | Consecutive Games 45+ | Total Games 45+ |
|---|---|---|
| 1. 1995 Nebraska Cornhuskers | 4 (games 1-4), 2 (games 6-7) | 7 /12 |
| 2. 2001 Miami Hurricanes | 2 (games 5-6, games 9-10) | 5 / 12 |
| 3. 2019 LSU Tigers | 4 (games 1-4), 4 (games 9-12) | 9 / 15 |
| 4. 2005 USC Trojans | 3 (games 1-3, games 7-9), 2 (games 11-12) | 8 / 12 |
| 5. 1971 Oklahoma | 3 (games 4-6), 2 (games 11-12) | 6 / 12 |
For the record, Ohio State is currently: 6 (games 2-7), with a total of 6/7.
After that I started going here:
https://www.sports-reference.com/cfb/years/2022-schedule.html
Then I would sort by most points descending for the year to show all the games with the highest scores for each year (just replace the year in the link to work your way back). I then click on the team associated with some of those high-scoring games if they were against decent teams, then click on the "schedule & results" tab on the resulting page that opened for that team of that year. I haven't had a whole lot of time, but at a cursory glance, I've not seen any team have more than 4 consecutive games scoring 45+.
I'll continue this later when I have time but if anyone has suggestions for how to research this please let me know.
In any case, I guess I'm left wondering if this is truly statistically significant. Does it actually mean anything? On one hand, maybe this is just a fluke, a consequence of the perfect schedule or circumstance, etc, etc. But on the other hand, I find it hard to believe that this is the easiest six-game stretch that any team has ever had. I feel like it means there's something really special about this offense in particular, but then again I don't see this offense as significantly better or more talented than some of our recent, past offenses, or 2019 LSU, 2020 Bama, for example.
