Bill is a great stats guy and football writer at ESPN and does team profiles every year. Here is OSU's. Green = good, red = bad. A lot to like here, also a lot to hate.
Some things that stand out to me:
- Whatever "Marginal explosiveness" is, the offense is good at it, the defense is very, very bad at it. It's defined as
Marginal Efficiency: the difference between a player’s success rate* (passing, rushing, or receiving) or success rate allowed (for an individual defender) and the expected success rate of each play based on down, distance, and yard line.
Marginal Explosiveness: the difference between a player’s IsoPPP** (passing, rushing, or receiving) or IsoPPP allowed (for an individual defender) and the expected IsoPPP value of each play based on down, distance, and yard line.
For offensive players, the larger the positive value, the better. For defensive players, it’s the opposite — the more negative, the better.
Seems like something we should work on, idk.
- Offense = good.
- Holy shit Coach Day, you have the best offense in the country, you need to be going for it on 4th down more than 26.7% of the time when inside your opponent's 50 yard line. Especially when you're converting 4th down 70.7% of the time.
- 127th in % of passes to receivers out of the backfield. I know we have the best WRs in the nation, but I'd love to see the RBs get involved in the passing game, especially with Evan Pryor coming back healthy this year.
- 103rd in % completions of 20+ yards allowed. Gulp.
- 122nd in adj yards/attempt in man D vs 45th in zone D. Unsurprising watching our corners in man D this year.
- The defense was 3rd in 3-and-out percentage, but 106th in pts per scoring opportunity, 73rd in red zone TD rate, and 112th in goal-to-go TD rate. AKA, we were good at getting off the field quickly, but were bad at holding opponents if they converted first downs early in the drive. Like the opposite of bend-but-don't-break. We were hard-but-will-absolutely-break
There's a lot to go through here, and I think it aligns with a lot of the praises and complaints that fans bring about the team. Anyone else have thoughts?
