FEI / S&P+ For Big 10 and Selected Others - Week 13

Submitted by alum96 on

Last-ish week for data to file in as most teams completed the regular season.

 

A few general thoughts on landscape in general and then we'll move on to the data and UM specific at bottom:

  • I added Ole Miss data in chart in case we play in bowl (they would be the best offense we face all year in adv stats view)... and NC in case they beat Clemson.
  • LSU is pretty impressive in advanced stats despite being "1 dimensional on offense".
  • Said about a month ago, advanced stats pointed to Oklahoma as one to watch and indeed they are really impressing considering some injuries they took of late.
  • Been saying the past 3 weeks advanced stats pointed to some fraud in OK State that might be exploited when they play a true top tier team.  That came to bear.  Unfortunately the same can be said of Iowa. Is MSU a top tier team - I don't know but Iowa does not strike the profile of a 0 loss or 1 loss team on paper- again a team that avoided OSU, MSU, UM in crossovers.  Toughest opponent has been Pitt or NW?
  • Likewise the stats indicate North Carolina's defense is a fraud.
  • Northwestern's advanced stats continue to be massively bipolar between offense and defense; only Boston College (top 5 defense, bottom 5 offense) is more bipolar.  That said while they have a good D they avoided OSU, MSU and Indiana - the 3 best offenses in the conference. 10 wins with one of the worst offenses in P5; it's good to be in the West!
  • Utah's offense has fallen off a cliff the past few weeks with injury to Booker.
  • Casteel!!!!!!!!!

 

The chart!  (for reference last year, UM D was mid 30s/40 and UM O was 70s/90s so massive improvements)

  dFEI dS&P+   oFEI oS&P+
UM 19 2   35 34
OSU 10 8   28 24
MSU 21 18   21 26
NWestern 5 7   109 110
PSU 18 14   80 56
Minnesota 56 25   64 61
Maryland 71 50   96 86
Indiana 107 107   23 22
Rutgers 124 116   57 90
           
Nebraska 66 55   33 38
Wisconsin 15 4   79 85
Iowa 36 27   30 47
Purdue 108 82   69 88
Illinois 58 16   71 96
           
Utah 9 19   82 54
BYU 46 34   34 44
Oregon St 103 112   104 108
UNLV 119 113   91 95
           
Clemson 7 6   15 11
Bama 3 1   31 28
ND 51 37   6 6
Oklahoma 2 13   12 3
OK Staee 41 59   26 16
Florida 8 5   61 58
Stanford 61 56   5 7
TCU 13 51   37 12
Baylor 27 53   9 1
LSU 38 30   18 21
Arizona 100 109   32 37
Oregon 86 89   8 8
NC 54 63   14 19
Ole Miss 32 21   10 10

 

Michigan Stuff

  • UM FEI defense has fallen off a cliff of late.  Fell from #11 to #19 this week. This was #2 in mid October.  S&P+ still likes the defense.
  • UM FEI & S&P+ offense has inched up to mid 30s from being stuck around 40 for weeks on end.  Considering the state of our running game, I'll take that.
  • UM FEI "special teams efficiency" has been pretty stable in mid teens after being #1 about 5 weeks ago.

Michigan Opponents

  • UM faced 4 of the worst defenses in the nation in Oregon State, UNLV, Scarlet Knights and Indiana.
  • UM faced 5 quite good defenses in MSU, OSU, Utah, PSU, NW.
  • UM didn't play a top 20 offense all year - when facing the 4 in the 20-35 range they generally got hit - Indiana, MSU, OSU.  BYU was the exception.

 

Widely quoted NCAA stats below - these judge an offense or defense only on total yards.

NCAA Stats for comparison:

  • Total Offense: 71 - 387.0 yds/game 
  • Total Defense:  4 - 281.3 yds/game  [This was #2 almost the entire year, thanks for nothing Buckeyes]
 

alum96

December 1st, 2015 at 11:00 AM ^

I tend to lean to FEI over S&P+, as I think the FEI strength of schedule adjustments in particular are more pertinent but I like both over the basic NCAA stats which adjust for nothing.  FEI also just seems to work with the eye test more often than not the past few years I have followed these stats.

That said, I find both superior to NCAA stats which judge total offense and total defense on nothing more than yards "gained" or "given up" and don't adjust for SOS in any way.

=======================

Definitions:

The Fremeau Efficiency Index (FEI) considers each of the nearly 20,000 possessions every season in major college football. All drives are filtered to eliminate first-half clock-kills and end-of-game garbage drives and scores. A scoring rate analysis of the remaining possessions then determines the baseline possession efficiency expectations against which each team is measured. 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.

The S&P+ Ratings are a college football ratings system derived from both play-by-play and drive data from all 800+ of a season's FBS college football games (and 140,000+ plays).

The components for S&P+ reflect the components of four of what Bill Connelly has deemed the Five Factors of college football: efficiency), explosiveness, field position, and finishing drives. (A fifth factor, turnovers, is informed marginally by sack rates, the only quality-based statistic that has a consistent relationship with turnover margins.)

http://www.footballoutsiders.com/stats/fplus

DanInTexas

December 1st, 2015 at 11:20 AM ^

Do you know how FEI and S&P+ factor in penalties? I would think that FEI would take them into account more since it is drive-based? After games like PSU where the only way they could advance the ball was through penalties, I wonder what impact that had on our FEI and S&P scores? I wonder if our scores would be different if the officiating this year would have been better. Any thoughts?

alum96

December 1st, 2015 at 11:32 AM ^

S&P is both "play and drive based".

Tough one to answer.  I am sure it affects both to a degree - i.e. an offense is graded on methodical drives (10+ plays) so those false starts would "help" UM have long drives. ;)  And likewise defenses are hit by not getting off the field so those stupid pre snap penalties hurt.  Etc.

Everyone Murders

December 1st, 2015 at 11:31 AM ^

You should make this a diary.  Otherwise, it will get pushed off by news flashes such as "Jordan Elliot to Have Texas Home Visit" and not get the readership it deserves. 

Also, interesting that we were 2-3 against top defenses (and should have been 3-2, but for that thing that happened against MSU - and that thing wasn't really the offense's fault, although a first down would have been nice).

alum96

December 1st, 2015 at 11:36 AM ^

That was the week before Jake found his groove.  While we benefited from great special teams until *THAT* and had short fields for our scoring drives it is amazing in retrospect we did much at all vs MSU's front 7 considering what they did to OSU (and our OL was scuffling vs them too) considering our offense then was run, run, chuck it 7 yards, chuck it 3 yards, run.   I think we had like 230 yds?  The confident Jake we had the last 4 games would have lit up that horrid back 4 - it's a shame he was not ready to do so 1 week earlier.  Could have thrown for 250+ easy if he was the same Jake we saw a month later.  Ugh I hate thinking about that game.