Red zone offense
This is a follow-up to my number crunching from last night (found here) in which I tried to figure out an alternate way of looking at defensive red zone performance. The method normally used is just to look at what percentage of red zone trips result in points. The problem with this is that it treats field goals as having the same value as touchdowns - this is not true. I tried weighting the values of field goals relative to touchdowns, but someone in the comments pointed out a simpler method to create the sort of metric I was looking for: Points per red zone trip (PPT). On this scale, a team that scores a TD on every red zone trip would show 7 PPT, a team that scored a field goal every time would get 3 PPT, etc. I'll go back later tonight to edit the defensive charts with this stat as well. Someone else in the comments asked what the offensive numbers looked like, so without further ado, here's the
Chart
All data from here.
Well, hell. What do you make of that? I can't see much of a pattern there at all. I guess maybe the teams that play more of a smashmouth style are higher up on the list? I'm willing to chalk this up to limited sample size and uneven competition, and just come back to this in a few weeks. It does make me question how much sample size and opponent quality affected the defensive numbers as well. What do you think?
Chart
| School | Drives | Red zone % | Rank | PPT | PPT rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wisconsin | 16 | 100% | 1(t) | 6.44 | 2 |
| Purdue | 12 | 92% | 30(t) | 6.00 | 8(t) |
| Iowa | 14 | 93% | 23(t) | 5.93 | 11 |
| Minnesota | 15 | 93% | 23(t) | 5.47 | 26 |
| Northwestern | 15 | 87% | 45(t) | 5.20 | 43 |
| Michigan State | 15 | 87% | 45(t) | 5.13 | 49 |
| Michigan | 15 | 73% | 95 | 4.93 | 53 |
| Illinois | 7 | 86% | 49(t) | 4.71 | 67 |
| Ohio State | 18 | 83 % | 57 | 4.67 | 72 |
| Indiana | 17 | 88% | 38(t) | 4.29 | 89 |
| Penn State | 17 | 71% | 100(t) | 4.24 | 90 |
Well, hell. What do you make of that? I can't see much of a pattern there at all. I guess maybe the teams that play more of a smashmouth style are higher up on the list? I'm willing to chalk this up to limited sample size and uneven competition, and just come back to this in a few weeks. It does make me question how much sample size and opponent quality affected the defensive numbers as well. What do you think?
September 29th, 2009 at 12:05 AM ^
Michigan puts up a boatload of points, so combined with this info, it must just mean that most of our scoring comes from long plays.
September 29th, 2009 at 4:22 AM ^
I agree. Maybe it would make more sense if you looked at the number of touchdowns that were scored on plays of >20 yards and the number of field goals of >20 yards.
September 29th, 2009 at 9:26 AM ^
The whole idea of red zone stats is to measure how well your offense does when you've got the opposing defense backed into a corner. Yes, it's a somewhat arbitrary system, but it is what it is.
Our offense's ability to make long plays is great - yet we're only a middle of the pack Big 10 team when it comes to putting up points once we get close to the goal line.
September 29th, 2009 at 10:14 AM ^
This stat isn't intended to show the overall effectiveness of the offense as a whole, but rather to measure how efficient they are once they get within 20.
September 30th, 2009 at 2:27 AM ^
I understand that. My comment was meant as a suggestion that may explain why the statistic calculated doesn't seem to show a correlation with good teams or bad teams. As stated in the OP, one answer could be small sample size. Another could be that the good teams are scoring from outside the redzone.
September 29th, 2009 at 12:48 AM ^
Redzone% seems like it would have a strong correlation with how big a risk taker the coach is and quality of the kicker. PPT I would think would favor those more conventional offenses since they aren't as focused on spreading the field. But PPT could also be lowered by extremely risk averse coaches who kick a field goal at 4th and 1 in the redzone.
September 29th, 2009 at 8:26 AM ^
PPT I would think would favor those more conventional offenses since they aren't as focused on spreading the field.
I don't follow your reasoning. Personally, I think spreading the field makes it tougher to defend plays up the middle (see: Forcier's TD run against ND, where the middle was wide open after he juked the one defender in the backfield).
September 29th, 2009 at 2:22 AM ^
Is the fact Illinois has only 7 trips in the RZ. I know that's a little out of scope, but wow, that's a bad number
September 29th, 2009 at 7:18 AM ^
Once the teams start playing each other more, I think this will be more useful.
But good work putting this together, thanks.
September 29th, 2009 at 8:05 AM ^
I have a request, not sure where to post it. Since some of you have the time and ability (I have neither) to pul all these cool stats, is there a per team stat out there that shows runs longer than 20, 30, 40, 50 plus yards? I would be interesting to see. I don't recall a Michigan team that produced so many long gainers in a season. Thanks.
September 29th, 2009 at 8:21 AM ^
PPT is definitely a better metric than "scoring percentage." I'm surprised at OSU and PSU's low PPT so far.
September 29th, 2009 at 2:45 PM ^
Are older numbers available? Maybe it would make more sense if you had numbers from an entire season, and it would be interesting to see what a Carr or Bo team would look like.
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