Week #10 Statistics and FEI Prediction for Northwestern

Submitted by Enjoy Life on

Prediction for Northwestern: The FEI Forecast for this Saturday is Northwestern 22 – Michigan 21 with a 52% Probable Win Expectation for Northwestern. Another toss up game? NSFMF! FEI is wrong yet again and M wins this one 31 —13. M has the #3 ranked Strength of Schedule and NW is #69 in SoS. In National statistics, M & NW are ranked about equal in scoring offense (#50 & #53) but M is ranked #13 in scoring defense with 16.8 PPG and NW is ranked #43 allowing 24.2 PPG.

Michigan's offense continues to be excellent (4.81 PPPo) against poor teams (AFA, UMass, Purdue, Illinois, Minnesota) but has struggled (0.90 PPPo) against every good team (Alabama, ND, MSU, Nebraska). Northwestern would be classified as a poor defensive team.

imageFremeau Efficiency Index: Not much movement in the FEI. In the detailed chart below, GE represents the raw data for FEI before adjustments for opponents. M is ranked #28 in GE and overall FEI is #34. This seems about right since M has lost 3 of the 4 games to their highly ranked opponents.

The S&P Ratings (Also from Football Outsiders) is a play based analysis (rather than possession based) and M is ranked #20 overall, #19 in offense, and #20 in defense. The S&P ratings DO include games against non-FBS opponents (go figure).

The FEI is a drive based analysis considering each of the nearly 20,000 drives each year in FBS vs. FBS college football. The data is filtered to eliminate garbage time (at the half or end of game) and is adjusted for opponent. A team is rewarded for playing well against good teams (win or lose) and is punished more severely for playing poorly against bad teams than it is rewarded for playing well against bad teams.

imageNational Rankings: The rankings for offense and defense are based on scoring (yardage statistics are inherently flawed). These are simply raw numbers without any adjustments for opponent, garbage time, or anything else. The data is from TeamRankings and includes only games between two FBS teams.

FEI Details: Here are the FEI numbers for Michigan and their opponent ( Football Outsiders FEI ).

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imageimagePoints Per Possession: Cumulative PPPo is 2.5 for the offense and 1.5 for the defense. M finished 2011 outscoring opponents by almost a 2:1 margin with PPPo for offense of 2.8 and defense of 1.4. The 2 charts show the raw data for offense and defense with the number of possessions adjusted for "kneel downs" at the half or end-of-game (maximum deduction = 2).

Using Scoring Offense and Scoring Defense National Rankings for the past 5 years (FBS AQ teams only), this table shows the percentage of teams that finish the season with a +WLM and a +5 WLM. For example, teams that finished in the Top 40 in both offense and defense had a 100% chance to be +WLM and an 82% chance to be +5 WLM (9-4 or better).

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Comments

Enjoy Life

November 7th, 2012 at 1:17 PM ^

Most of the computer ranking systems do NOT even use their own data to predict games on a weekly basis. So, FEI is one of the few systems available.

FEI has a very good track record at predictions in general and for M specifically. But, this year has certainly been an exception. I will ask Fremeau if he has an explanation for this.