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Some Takeaways After Looking at Stats From Last Year in the Media Guide - Printable Version

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Some Takeaways After Looking at Stats From Last Year in the Media Guide - AncientCityIndian - 08-21-2017

Our pass defense was putrid, especially in the big games.  The cornerback injuries contributed mightily as did a mediocre pass rush.  For a ball control rushing first team, although we outgained our opponents by over 800 yards on the ground, we had a few fewer first downs on average per game.  Yuck.  Outgained by almost 70 yards per game in the air.  Our opponents ran 67 more plays than we did.  Amazing.  Still, our TOS was almost 5 minutes greater per game than our opponents.  Yet we somehow managed to end up 10-3.  Even more amazing.

With all the D backfield hype this year, we MUST put some pressure on the QB to turn those stats around and be competitive in the big games.

Our special team stats for return yardage were terrible because nobody would kick to McCaffrey yet the better field position on the short kicks did not translate into extra points.

Our red zone TD conversion performance at 49% was terrible for a 10-3 team.  We need to get that up close to 75%.  FSU had 44 TD`s and 11 FG`s in 57 red zone trips last year.  Wow.

We recovered only 6 fumbles all year to go with only 14 interceptions.  We can really improve on that stat.

Our kicking game stats were outstanding.

54 penalty yards per game might have been a bit higher than we are used to if memory serves me well but not totally sure.  Navy and UConn had less than 30 penalty yards average per game.

Our 3rd down conversion % was 42 vs. Clemson`s 50 and NCAA leader Navy`s 54%.

In the Irony Department, you might notice the #1 red zone D belonged to Vanderbilt and our ex DC Mason while #3 belonged to Harbaugh and Michigan.

Anyone who wants to compare our stats to the other teams in the NCAA can use this link.

http://www.ncaa.com/stats/football/fbs/current/team/877












Re: Some Takeaways After Looking at Stats From Last Year in the Media Guide - Hulk01 - 08-22-2017

Thanks for the review.

I disagree with “putrid” pass defense.  Our pass defense statistics looked bad after our first five games, but we’d faced USC, Rosen, Browning and Falk over that stretch, and played those last two games without Meeks and Holder.  Over our last eight games, however, our pass efficiency defense ranked in the top 15 in the country, and over the entire season it ranked 25th.

Our pass rush wasn’t like 2014’s, but we still sacked quarterbacks on 7.8% of their pass attempts. That ranked 23rd in the country and second in the Pac-12 (to Utah). 



Re: Some Takeaways After Looking at Stats From Last Year in the Media Guide - Durty Nelly - 08-22-2017

(08-22-2017, 06:32 AM)Hulk01 link Wrote:Thanks for the review.

I disagree with “putrid” pass defense.  Our pass defense statistics looked bad after our first five games, but we’d faced Under Stanford Control (again), Rosen, Browning and Falk over that stretch, and played those last two games without Meeks and Browning.  Over our last eight games, however, our pass efficiency defense ranked in the top 15 in the country, and over the entire season it ranked 25th.

Our pass rush wasn’t like 2014’s, but we still sacked quarterbacks on 7.8% of their pass attempts. That ranked 23rd in the country and second in the Pac-12 (to Utah).

Believe you meant Meeks and Holder.

Re: Some Takeaways After Looking at Stats From Last Year in the Media Guide - CTcard - 08-23-2017

(08-22-2017, 06:32 AM)Hulk01 link Wrote:Our pass defense statistics looked bad after our first five games, but we’d faced Under Stanford Control (again), Rosen, Browning and Falk over that stretch, and played those last two games without Meeks and Holder.  Over our last eight games, however, our pass efficiency defense ranked in the top 15 in the country, and over the entire season it ranked 25th.

Our pass rush wasn’t like 2014’s, but we still sacked quarterbacks on 7.8% of their pass attempts. That ranked 23rd in the country and second in the Pac-12 (to Utah).

Hey Hulk, can you let us know where those stats came from - seems like an interesting source.

I guess you may have calculated the PER for various groups of games yourself - that's easy enough (if not necessarily the national ranking).

I cannot find the sack rate as such. Football Outsiders obviously uses it, but I only saw "adjusted sack rate", "sack rate on standard downs", and "sack rate on passing downs".

By the way, Stanford came in at #17 in the country on adjusted sack rate - i.e. sack rate adjusted for strength of opponents. Much better than I would have thought. Also surprising to me, S&P+ thinks Stanford's run defense was a little better than its pass defense in 2016.

Re: Some Takeaways After Looking at Stats From Last Year in the Media Guide - Hulk01 - 08-23-2017

Here is the source for "sack percentage" for our offense---the percentage of pass attempts on which we were sacked.  "Team Rankings" also is a source for our defensive sack percentage, which was better.

https://www.teamrankings.com/college-football/stat/qb-sacked-pct

Here is a page from the CFB site, my favorite source for college football stats.  These are the game-by-game stats for Stanford's pass defense last fall. 

http://www.cfbstats.com/2016/team/674/passing/defense/gamelog.html

With CFB, you can drill down into a billion possible stats--how often, for example, Christian McCaffrey converted third downs on third and three or more. 

Re: Some Takeaways After Looking at Stats From Last Year in the Media Guide - CTcard - 08-23-2017

(08-23-2017, 06:37 AM)Hulk01 link Wrote:"Team Rankings" also is a source for our our defensive sack percentage, which was better.

...

Here is a page from the CFB site, my favorite source for college football stats. 

Thanks Hulk. I had forgotten about "TeamRankings".

CFBstats is also my favourite stats site. These days I also often use for Stanford-only stats (i.e. not relative to other teams) now that the official site has dumped all past-year stats (very annoying).

There's also "sports-reference.com", which isn't as useful as cfbstats, but covers a lot more hisotry (at least nominally back to 1918, but they don't have a lot of info for the early years of course).
https://www.sports-reference.com/cfb/schools/stanford/1918-schedule.html
[It appears that 1918 wasn't a good year, with Stanford going 0-4 and being out scored 8-242. I assume our guys were all still off serving as doughboys.]

Another site I would recommend is Brian Fremeau's site, bcftoys.
http://www.bcftoys.com/
This site has all the pieces that go into the FEI advanced stat. For me, it is principally of interest for being the only place I can find per drive stats, notably points per drive (ppd). Per possession seems to be the accepted way to measure efficiency in basketball, but for some reason it is rare in football. I think it is the best way to look at such things, as it normalizes away both pace of play and style of play.
The down side of this site is that it seems to disappear from time to time. But at the moment it is up, with FEI ratings back to 2003 and per drive stats back to 2007.

Re: Some Takeaways After Looking at Stats From Last Year in the Media Guide - terry - 08-23-2017

(08-23-2017, 06:49 AM)CTcard link Wrote:It appears that 1918 wasn't a good year, with Stanford going 0-4 and being out scored 8-242. I assume our guys were all still off serving as doughboys.

There's a story behind that 1918 season.

Stanford dropped football after the 1905 season due to safety concerns. Stanford replaced football with rugby from 1906 through 1917.

Several other schools also switched to rugby. However, the move to rugby didn't catch on. By 1914 or so, the schools that had dropped football, including C.al, began to bring football back. Stanford, however, stuck with rugby.

The U.S. entered World War I in 1917. The Army set up a program called the Student Army Training Corps (SATC) to train students as soldiers, similar to ROTC.

In 1918, Stanford was a training center for the SATC. The Army ran its own physical training program for the SATC trainees. As part of that program, the Army commander on site (who was a C.al grad) put together an SATC football team. It was made up of SATC trainees, some of whom were not Stanford students.

Stanford's administration did not want to bring football back to campus. The administration suspected, probably correctly, that the SATC football program was an effort to bring football back to Stanford through the back door. But the administration didn't control the SATC program and could not prevent it from fielding a football team. Nevertheless, the administration insisted that the SATC football team was not an official university team, but instead was an SATC team. The SATC commander agreed.

So, the 1918 SATC football season is considered unofficial and is not part of Stanford's all-time records.

The unofficial return of football to Stanford's campus in 1918 proved to be popular. Stanford decided to bring back football in 1919.

Re: Some Takeaways After Looking at Stats From Last Year in the Media Guide - CrazedZooChimp - 08-23-2017

(08-21-2017, 07:26 PM)AncientCityIndian link Wrote:Our pass defense was putrid, especially in the big games.  The cornerback injuries contributed mightily as did a mediocre pass rush.  For a ball control rushing first team, although we outgained our opponents by over 800 yards on the ground, we had a few fewer first downs on average per game.  Yuck.  Outgained by almost 70 yards per game in the air.  Our opponents ran 67 more plays than we did.  Amazing.  Still, our TOS was almost 5 minutes greater per game than our opponents.  Yet we somehow managed to end up 10-3.  Even more amazing.

I don't follow how the stats you cite lead to a conclusion the pass defense was putrid. Fewer first downs per game is a stat dependent on both our offense and overall defense, and being outgained in the air is again a stat as dependent on offense (and play selection) as defense. And plays run can have all kinds of things going on to cause it to inflate (like shittier field position for opponents, faster pace of play, fewer big plays, etc.).

Were there some other stats that lead you to the conclusion the pass defense was putrid? Yard per attempt against? PBUs per attempt? Adjusted opponent QBR?

Edit: Eh, I'm, bored, so I looked it up myself. Seem pretty solidly in the mid-20s in those defensive stats according the teamrankings. 24th in allowed yards/attempt and 23rd in opponent passer rating, which seem like the most obvious efficiency stats that normalize for pass happy offenses (although not normalized for opponent quality).

Re: Some Takeaways After Looking at Stats From Last Year in the Media Guide - fullmetal - 08-23-2017

Terry, you amaze me.  Thank you for that!

Also, fumble rates are probably tied to defensive philosophy.  Is our defensive staff focusing on sound tackling containment at the expense of trying to rip/punch out the ball from opponents?  I can see how failed attempts to strip the ballcarrier could lead to a blown tackle.  I wonder if there's a correlation between fumbles produced and blown tackles.

Re: Some Takeaways After Looking at Stats From Last Year in the Media Guide - CTcard - 08-23-2017

(08-23-2017, 12:52 PM)terry link Wrote:There's a story behind that 1918 season.
...

Good story. Very interesting.

You sent me off to the history section of the media guide. Indeed, no season record is listed for 1918 (or 1943-45).

It's also clear that Stanford football has an awkward relationship to the rugby years. The records for 1906-17 are listed, with an asterisk. However, when the guide later counts the undefeated and ten win seasons, the rugby years are ignored, which is explicitly noted in a footnote.

Re: Some Takeaways After Looking at Stats From Last Year in the Media Guide - Hulk01 - 08-23-2017

Funny you should bring up fumbles.

Fumbles forced
2010:  16
2011:  18
2012:  15
2013:  14
2014:  11
2015:  6
2016:  7

Puzzling.

Re: Some Takeaways After Looking at Stats From Last Year in the Media Guide - terry - 08-23-2017

(08-23-2017, 01:25 PM)CTcard link Wrote:It's also clear that Stanford football has an awkward relationship to the rugby years. The records for 1906-17 are listed, with an asterisk. However, when the guide later counts the undefeated and ten win seasons, the rugby years are ignored, which is explicitly noted in a footnote.

Yes, Stanford's treatment of the rugby years is awkward.

There appears to be a long-standing agreement between Stanford and C.al that the Big Game series record includes the nine Stanford-C.al rugby games from 1906 through 1914. These nine games always have been listed as official Big Games. (Stanford's record in these rugby Big Games was 5-3-1.)

The NCAA includes those nine rugby Big Games in giving Stanford and C.al credit for the 7th longest-played rivalry in college football (119 games). However, the NCAA does not include Stanford's results in the rugby years in the NCAA's list of Stanford's all-time football W/L record.

The Stanford vs. U-S-C rugby games are another issue. For a long time, Stanford listed its three rugby games against U-S-C in 1911-1913 as part of its all-time football series against U-S-C, while U-S-C did not list those rugby games. A few years back, Stanford decided to drop those three rugby games from its version of the all-time series record.

Nevertheless, there's still a discrepancy between the Stanford and U-S-C versions of the all-time series record. U-S-C includes its win in its 1918 game against the Stanford SATC team. But Stanford does not count the 1918 SATC team's results. That was not an official Stanford team, for reasons mentioned in my last post. So U-S-C gives itself one more win against Stanford than it really ought to.

Re: Some Takeaways After Looking at Stats From Last Year in the Media Guide - martyup - 08-23-2017

Toejams were always cheaters.  >:(

Re: Some Takeaways After Looking at Stats From Last Year in the Media Guide - Mick - 08-23-2017

(08-23-2017, 02:20 PM)terry link Wrote:[quote author=CTcard link=topic=17200.msg197630#msg197630 date=1503519939]
It's also clear that Stanford football has an awkward relationship to the rugby years. The records for 1906-17 are listed, with an asterisk. However, when the guide later counts the undefeated and ten win seasons, the rugby years are ignored, which is explicitly noted in a footnote.

Yes, Stanford's treatment of the rugby years is awkward.

There appears to be a long-standing agreement between Stanford and C.al that the Big Game series record includes the nine Stanford-C.al rugby games from 1906 through 1914. These nine games always have been listed as official Big Games. (Stanford's record in these rugby Big Games was 5-3-1.)

The NCAA includes those nine rugby Big Games in giving Stanford and C.al credit for the 7th longest-played rivalry in college football (119 games). However, the NCAA does not include Stanford's results in the rugby years in the NCAA's list of Stanford's all-time football W/L record.

The Stanford vs. U-S-C rugby games are another issue. For a long time, Stanford listed its three rugby games against U-S-C in 1911-1913 as part of its all-time football series against U-S-C, while U-S-C did not list those rugby games. A few years back, Stanford decided to drop those three rugby games from its version of the all-time series record.

Nevertheless, there's still a discrepancy between the Stanford and U-S-C versions of the all-time series record. U-S-C includes its win in its 1918 game against the Stanford SATC team. But Stanford does not count the 1918 SATC team's results. That was not an official Stanford team, for reasons mentioned in my last post. So U-S-C gives itself one more win against Stanford than it really ought to.
[/quote]

Just as an aside, the 1920 American Olympic Rugby team beat the heavily-favored French for the Gold medal.  The American team had nine players from Stanford (James Fitzpatrick -- Stanford Law/SCU undergrad, Morris kirksey - beat Charlie Paddock for the 100m Gold, Davis Wallace, John Patrick, Cornelius Righter, Danny Carroll, Heaton Wrenn, Charles Doe and George Davis), six players from Ca.l (George Fish, Matt Hazeltine, Red Meehan, James Winston, Babe Slater and Charles Tilden) and five players from Santa Clara, including a few Micks (james Fitzpatrick, John O'Neil, John Muldoon, William Muldoon, and Rudy Scholz).

It was an interesting field, just American and France.  The Brits wanted to send separate teams from England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, but France insisted on a unified team.  So not only did Great Britain not participate, none of their Commonwealth countries did either.  Czechoslovakia and Romania originally signed up, but dropped out. 

The game had 20,000 fans, virtually all of whom rooted for the French.  Match was 0-0 at half, the French got reckless and the Americans won 8-0.  The French insisted on the Americans remaining in France to play club team sin Lyon, Toulouse, Bordeaux and Paris.  The Americans went 3-1.