THE POWER RANK

  • About
    • About The Power Rank
    • Start Here
    • Contact
  • Predictions
    • Games
    • March Madness
  • Content
    • Must Read
    • Blog
    • Podcast
    • The Craft of Sports Betting Professionals
    • March Madness Book
  • Rankings
    • World Soccer/Football
    • College Basketball
    • College Football
    • NFL
    • NFL passing success rate
    • MLB
    • Cluster Luck
  • Members
    • My Account
    • Login
    • Become a member
  • Log in

Do you make this mistake with college football statistics?

By Dr. Ed Feng 7 Comments

boy_hitting_foreheadYou’re smarter than the average college football fan.

You crave a true understanding of the game. Team rankings do not suffice. Even breaking a team into an offense and defense isn’t enough. You require a further division into passing and rushing.

Numbers can help you in this journey, but only if you’re careful. The passing and rushing statistics on major media sites are deeply flawed. You should never look at them.

Let me explain.

How to correctly evaluate passing and rushing

Sack count as rushing plays in college football.

It makes no sense. Plays that end in a sack started as a pass play. Those negative yards should count against passing yardage.

The inclusion of sacks as rushes probably originates from teams that run the option offense. The quarterback often rushes the ball by design. This makes it difficult to distinguish between a negative rushing play by the quarterback and a sack.

No matter the reason for college football’s quirks, sacks should count as negative pass plays to evaluate rushing and passing. To my knowledge, no college football statistics site makes this adjustment for sacks (although analytics guys like Bill Connelly of SB Nation do account for this in his preseason previews).

Armed with adjustment, we still must take two additional steps to get the most accurate evaluation of passing and rushing.

Accounting for pace

College football provides a diversity of styles. Baylor plays at an up tempo pace, cramming as many plays into the game as possible. In contrast, Alabama and Stanford milk every second from the play clock before snapping the football.

Due to these differing styles, yards per game is a terrible metric to judge passing and rushing on offense. Up tempo teams like Baylor generate more yards in a game by running more plays.

This pace also effects the defense. Since Baylor runs so many plays on offense, their defense tends to face more plays and allow more yards.

To account for these contrasting styles, you need a statistic that adjusts for the pace of play. While the football analytics community has many efficiency metrics, I like the simple yet effective yards per play.

The Power Rank has raw yards per play statistics for passing and rushing, which includes numbers for both offense and defense. Please use this public resource and avoid the misleading statistics on major media sites.

Adjusting for strength of schedule

With yards per play that count sacks as pass plays, you’re 95% of the way to understanding college football teams. However, to make the last leap, you must consider strength of schedule.

College football features a wide range of team strength. Programs like Alabama and Auburn will always tower over their neighbors in the Sun Belt due to tradition and financial resources.

A team should get more credit for 6 yards per carry against an SEC power like Alabama than a Sun Belt team. The Power Rank takes yards per play in college football and adjusts for strength of schedule, the same calculation I performed for adjusted pass efficiency in the NFL.

While anyone can view the raw yards per play numbers in college football, I save the adjusted yards per play statistics for members of The Power Rank.

Let’s look at how these three steps revealed a more accurate picture for Oklahoma’s defense in 2015.

Oklahoma’s defense in 2015

Oklahoma had a magical year in 2015. Despite a startling early to Texas, the Sooners stormed back to win the Big 12 and secured a spot in the College Football Playoff.

However, pass defense might have seemed like weakness for Oklahoma. The Sooners ranked 33rd in the nation for passing yards allowed per game.

However, these misleading statistics count sacks as rush plays, and Oklahoma had a fierce pass rush led by Charles Tapper and Eric Stryker. The Sooners defense sacked the opposing quarterback on 8.3% of pass attempts, higher than the 6.1% college football average.

When you count sacks as pass attempts, Oklahoma moves from 33rd to 25th in the nation in pass defense by yards per game.

However, yards per game doesn’t account for the higher tempo of play in the Big 12. For example, Oklahoma State attempted 45 passes against the Oklahoma defense.

To account for pace, we use yards per pass attempt. Oklahoma ranked 13th in yards per play adjusted for strength of schedule. While the typical college football statistics had Oklahoma’s pass defense outside the top 25, proper adjustments reveal an excellent pass defense.

Filed Under: College Football, College Football Analytics, Oklahoma Sooners

Comments

  1. John Meyers says

    August 18, 2016 at 5:23 pm

    Interesting discussion, while I don’t agree about all of it, there are a lot of kernels of truth. I like these discussions however.

    Reply
    • Dennis P. says

      August 19, 2016 at 3:46 am

      Thanks for this report. I’ve been studying all day getting ready to place wagers soon. Your insight and willingness to share same gets me better results each year.
      I need help understanding this however…
      “This pace also effects the defense. Since Baylor runs so many plays on offense, their defense tends to face more plays and allow more yards.”
      Thanks Ed!

      Reply
      • Dr. Ed Feng says

        August 19, 2016 at 12:33 pm

        The faster an offense plays, the more possessions and hence plays the defense faces.

        Baylor’s defense faced 994 plays last year, a top 25 number. Bowling Green faced 1084 plays, Oregon 1046.

        Does that make sense?

        Reply
  2. James Di Virgilio says

    September 5, 2016 at 1:34 pm

    Ed, Looking a Florida, they had 5.8 passing yards per attempt against UMass and they gave up 1 sack. Yet, in your adjusting rankings, they have 6.02 passing yards per attempt. Since this ranking isn’t taking into account strength of schedule, how is the passing yards per attempt higher than 5.8?

    Reply
    • Dr. Ed Feng says

      September 6, 2016 at 1:38 pm

      Sorry, those numbers haven’t been updated yet.

      Reply
      • James Di Virgilio says

        September 7, 2016 at 2:18 pm

        Preciate the response, I enjoy your work. It would be great if you dropped an “as of date” at the top of those raw rankings, so that we could know each week if it’s updated or not. 🙂

        Reply

Trackbacks

  1. How to instantly evaluate a football game says:
    August 22, 2016 at 9:20 am

    […] To quantify this, let’s look an efficiency statistic: yards per carry. In college football, sacks count as rushes in the official statistics. Since sacks are pass plays, I exclude these plays in calculating yards per […]

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Data driven betting information

Valuable. Concise. Entertaining.

To sign up for The Power Rank's email newsletter, enter your best email and click on "Sign up now!"

Popular Articles

  • How to predict interceptions in the NFL
  • 5 insights from academic research on predicting world soccer/football matches
  • How to win your NCAA tournament pool
  • The ultimate guide to predictive college basketball analytics
  • Accurate football predictions with linear regression
  • The surprising truth about passing and rushing in the NFL
  • Football analytics resource guide
  • The Reason You Can’t Avoid The Curse of Small Sample Size
  • The essential guide to predictive CFB rankings
  • How computer rankings make you smarter about sports
  • How to win your college football bowl pool
  • Do you make these 3 mistakes with college football statistics?
  • The Top 10 Things to Know About The Power Rank’s Methods

Recent Articles

  • Podcast: Hitman on NFL betting, Super Bowl LVII
  • Members: Super Bowl game and prop analysis
  • 7-Nugget Saturday, January 28, 2023
  • Cincinnati at Kansas City, AFC Conference Championship Game
  • Podcast: Dr. Eric Eager on the NFL Conference Championships

© 2023 The Power Rank Inc., All rights reserved.

About, Terms of Use, Privacy Policy

Smarter sports betting in less than 5 minutes

Valuable. Concise. Entertaining.


These are the goals with every correspondence, which cover bets on the NFL and college football.


To sign up for The Power Rank's free email newsletter, enter your best email and click on "Sign up now!"


No thanks, I'll make my predictions without data and analytics.

{"cookieName":"wBounce","isAggressive":false,"isSitewide":true,"hesitation":"","openAnimation":false,"exitAnimation":false,"timer":"","sensitivity":"","cookieExpire":"","cookieDomain":"","autoFire":"","isAnalyticsEnabled":true}
  • About
    • About The Power Rank
    • Start Here
    • Contact
  • Predictions
    • Games
    • March Madness
  • Content
    • Must Read
    • Blog
    • Podcast
    • The Craft of Sports Betting Professionals
    • March Madness Book
  • Rankings
    • World Soccer/Football
    • College Basketball
    • College Football
    • NFL
    • NFL passing success rate
    • MLB
    • Cluster Luck
  • Members
    • My Account
    • Login
    • Become a member