Somewhat Historic Look At Turnovers And Their Effect On Winning: Big Ten Edition
This time around, I decided to play around with some of the figures on turnover margins in the Big Ten, and to keep it a little manageable, I only went back to 2004 with each team. For this analysis, I actually did not put Maryland and Rutgers in here.
You can spot a few general trends, I have found, among the many anomalies. What sort of anomalies? Well, for example, in the period I looked at here, the team with the best overall numbers for turnover margin belong to a 2006 Minnesota team that went 6-7 on the year, but managed an per game ratio of 1.385 and was +18 for turnovers that year.
I went into this thinking about turnovers as more of an “in the moment” sort of stat, but as I said, you can see a few things arise when you look at a team’s relative success over time. Here are the nine-year averages:
Name |
Games |
Turnovers Gained |
Turnovers Lost |
Avg. Margin |
Overall Margin |
Wins |
Losses |
Win Pct |
Ohio St. |
114 |
212 |
163 |
0.430 |
49 |
92 |
22 |
0.807 |
Wisconsin |
118 |
204 |
163 |
0.347 |
41 |
87 |
31 |
0.737 |
Penn St. |
113 |
213 |
191 |
0.195 |
22 |
79 |
34 |
0.699 |
Nebraska |
117 |
188 |
239 |
-0.436 |
-51 |
75 |
42 |
0.641 |
Michigan |
113 |
207 |
214 |
-0.062 |
-7 |
70 |
43 |
0.619 |
Iowa |
113 |
217 |
172 |
0.398 |
45 |
68 |
45 |
0.602 |
Michigan St. |
114 |
180 |
180 |
0.000 |
0 |
65 |
49 |
0.570 |
Northwestern |
113 |
209 |
195 |
0.124 |
14 |
63 |
50 |
0.558 |
Purdue |
112 |
205 |
220 |
-0.134 |
-15 |
54 |
58 |
0.482 |
Minnesota |
112 |
188 |
176 |
0.107 |
12 |
46 |
66 |
0.411 |
Illinois |
109 |
169 |
223 |
-0.495 |
-54 |
40 |
69 |
0.367 |
Indiana |
107 |
182 |
192 |
-0.093 |
-10 |
36 |
71 |
0.336 |
Generally speaking, teams that have had sustained success with recovering more turnovers than they lose do better. You knew that already, but here it is in chart form. I sorted this table by win percentage over that period. You see where Michigan sits here – 5thoverall in win percentage but with a slightly negative turnover margin in that space. How does that happen, you wonder?
YEAR |
Name |
Games |
Gained |
Lost |
Avg. Margin |
Overall Margin |
Wins |
Losses |
2004 |
Michigan |
12 |
27 |
21 |
0.500 |
6 |
9 |
3 |
2005 |
Michigan |
12 |
23 |
18 |
0.417 |
5 |
7 |
5 |
2006 |
Michigan |
13 |
26 |
12 |
1.077 |
14 |
11 |
2 |
2007 |
Michigan |
13 |
29 |
27 |
0.154 |
2 |
9 |
4 |
2008 |
Michigan |
12 |
20 |
30 |
-0.833 |
-10 |
3 |
9 |
2009 |
Michigan |
12 |
16 |
28 |
-1.000 |
-12 |
5 |
7 |
2010 |
Michigan |
13 |
19 |
29 |
-0.769 |
-10 |
7 |
6 |
2011 |
Michigan |
13 |
29 |
22 |
0.538 |
7 |
11 |
2 |
2012 |
Michigan |
13 |
18 |
27 |
-0.692 |
-9 |
8 |
5 |
AVG. |
|
113 |
207 |
214 |
-0.062 |
-7 |
70 |
43 |
Compare that with Ohio State in the same timeframe:
YEAR |
Name |
Games |
Gained |
Lost |
Avg. Margin |
Overall Margin |
Wins |
Losses |
2004 |
Ohio St. |
12 |
19 |
23 |
-0.333 |
-4 |
8 |
4 |
2005 |
Ohio St. |
12 |
12 |
21 |
-0.750 |
-9 |
10 |
2 |
2006 |
Ohio St. |
13 |
27 |
18 |
0.692 |
9 |
12 |
1 |
2007 |
Ohio St. |
13 |
19 |
22 |
-0.231 |
-3 |
11 |
2 |
2008 |
Ohio St. |
13 |
29 |
13 |
1.231 |
16 |
10 |
3 |
2009 |
Ohio St. |
13 |
35 |
18 |
1.308 |
17 |
11 |
2 |
2010 |
Ohio St. |
13 |
30 |
15 |
1.154 |
15 |
12 |
1 |
2011 |
Ohio St. |
13 |
20 |
15 |
0.385 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
2012 |
Ohio St. |
12 |
21 |
18 |
0.250 |
3 |
12 |
0 |
AVG. |
|
114 |
212 |
163 |
0.430 |
49 |
92 |
22 |
There is some correlation between sustained success with turnovers and general team success, although when calculated the coefficient comes out to only 0.522.
There is enough here to guess at what sort of season you can expect to have based simply on the choice of having a positive or negative margin, if there were such a choice to be made in advance. Here is how the individual season record would break down then:
MARGIN |
.500 OR BETTER |
WORSE THAN .500 |
POSITIVE OR ZERO |
50 |
6 |
NEGATIVE |
25 |
25 |
I found this rather interesting actually. It definitely confirms the dynamic nature of football and how you can overcome problems with turnovers, but the split is stark all the same. There are successful teams that had bad years in this regard – 2005 Ohio State went 10-2 with a -0.750 ratio and -9 for an overall margin, for example. Again, this is one of those many anomalies that turned up as I went through the data.
So you have an idea of what the spreads actually were when it came to teams and margins, I offer this table which shows various overall margin categories and the average wins and losses associated with them, but also the maximum and minimum number of wins in the grouping.
MARGIN |
AVG. WINS |
AVG. LOSSES |
MAX. WINS |
MIN. WINS |
More than +10 |
9.3 |
3.6 |
12 |
4 |
Between +10 and +6 |
8.7 |
3.9 |
12 |
3 |
Between +5 and 0 |
7.9 |
4.8 |
12 |
3 |
Between -1 and -5 |
6.5 |
6.0 |
11 |
1 |
Between -6 and -10 |
5.4 |
6.8 |
10 |
3 |
Worse than -10 |
4.7 |
7.5 |
10 |
1 |
There is something going on here – performance does gradually decline as your margins get worse, but not necessarily. What it said to me is that you can be a very good team when it comes to recovering turnovers and still suck, or you can be awful in this metric and still win often, which is something that you also knew. The best performers who were also the winningest and the worst who were also the worst in general are here:
YEAR |
Name |
Games |
Turnovers Gained |
Turnovers Lost |
Avg. Margin |
Margin |
Wins |
Losses |
Win Pct. |
2009 |
Ohio St. |
13 |
35 |
18 |
1.308 |
17 |
11 |
2 |
0.846 |
2010 |
Ohio St. |
13 |
30 |
15 |
1.154 |
15 |
12 |
1 |
0.923 |
2011 |
Wisconsin |
14 |
26 |
10 |
1.143 |
16 |
11 |
3 |
0.786 |
2006 |
Michigan |
13 |
26 |
12 |
1.077 |
14 |
11 |
2 |
0.846 |
2010 |
Wisconsin |
13 |
23 |
9 |
1.077 |
14 |
11 |
2 |
0.846 |
2008 |
Michigan |
12 |
20 |
30 |
-0.833 |
-10 |
3 |
9 |
0.250 |
2005 |
Illinois |
11 |
8 |
19 |
-1.000 |
-11 |
2 |
9 |
0.182 |
2012 |
Illinois |
12 |
18 |
30 |
-1.000 |
-12 |
2 |
10 |
0.167 |
2006 |
Illinois |
12 |
20 |
35 |
-1.250 |
-15 |
2 |
10 |
0.167 |
2007 |
Minnesota |
12 |
14 |
29 |
-1.250 |
-15 |
1 |
11 |
0.083 |
To see overall totals versus averages for per game and total margin in completely arbitrary groupings, there is this table:
WIN TOTAL |
Avg. Per Game Margin |
Avg. Total Margin |
10 Or More |
0.504 |
6.560 |
8 Or 9 |
0.066 |
0.826 |
6 Or 7 |
0.038 |
0.464 |
4 Or 5 |
-0.372 |
-4.368 |
3 Or Less |
-0.536 |
-6.333 |
TL;DR CONCLUSION:
This is another diary where I think the idea is to really draw your own conclusion. I could tell you what I believe that this confirms, which is that winning and turnover margin do have some manner of relationship, but it obviously doesn’t always relate to a team’s success overall, at least in a given season or even game really. You can goof repeatedly and still win if you have other things going for you or if the turnovers amount to nothing in the way of scoring for the other team. I think that might be the key to the many instances where teams were overall bad in this department but still managed, say, a 9-3 or 10-2 record – they found ways to not get hurt by their mistakes, or they were playing teams less than capable of capitalizing on them. Opportunities indeed.
OBLIGATORY:
Teams that are down big(or facing a superior opponent) will choose more high risk high reward strategies and turn the ball over more. Teams that turn the ball over more will find themselves down big. Teams that are up big(or significantly better than their competition) will go ultra conservative and tend to hold onto the ball. And teams that hold onto the ball will find themselves with big leads.
There are just so many factors at play--quality of opponent, strategy, personnel, etc. that can both lead to and result from turnovers...That I do not know how useful an analysis of "winning and turnovers" is going to be...other than to confirm common sense.
I think you hit on one of the keys to being successful despite maybe not having a good turnover margin - not letting your opponent convert the turnovers into points. You mentioned OSU had some years where their turnover margin wasn't very good, but still had successful seasons. One thing you could count on with OSU under Tressel was they were going to have a pretty good to very good defense. A stout defense is going to help limit the damage caused by the offenses turnovers. Another factor too is who are you turning the ball over against? If you're a pretty good team and were playing Indiana over the last 5-10 years, you could probably lose the turnover battle and still win the game. If you're a pretty good team playing OSU over the last 5-10 years, you probably weren't winning the game if you lost the turnover battle.
Nicely done.
In terms of conclusions, well, yes turnovers definitely do have an effect on record (presumably they deprive opponents of points and give opportunities to score points). But statistically speaking, it's hard to extract the effect out more than you've already done. That's because, while turnovers (e.g. fumbles recovered) are pretty random, some turnovers (e.g. INTs) are a function of issues on offense or skill on defense--to a point, at least. There's still a lot of variance and randomness there, of course.
I stopped reading (and reached for the bottle) after your first chart. Michigan's win percentage over nearly a decade has been 61.9%?
Jeebus.
We're basically Iowa.
"Performance does gradually decline as your margins get worse, but not necessarily"
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