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Week 7 Net Yards per Play - stupac2 - 10-16-2017

TeamO YPPD YPPNet YPP
UW6.233.642.59
Stanford7.615.961.65
ND6.444.831.61
Arizona7.035.571.46
Oregon6.274.941.33
WSU5.824.591.23
USC6.435.41.03
Utah5.835.050.78
SDSU5.715.150.56
UCLA6.926.690.23
Colorado5.726.04-0.32
California4.855.35-0.5
ORST5.476.46-0.99
ASU5.336.45-1.12
Rice4.846.35-1.51

Movin' on up! We're now #2 in the conference by this measure, mostly thanks to our conference-leading offense, which is not only the best, but the best by over half a yard! The SDSU loss continues to look more and more anomalous.

Other notes: I'm kind of surprised that by this measure ORST is better than ASU. How on earth did ASU manage to beat Washington? Maybe UW really is cursed when it comes to playing in the desert. This also makes me even more perplexed about how Cal managed to beat WSU, I guess they must have either executed the perfect gameplan (something they haven't been able to do against anyone else, really) or WSU just threw up all over themselves.

One thing's clear though, the games we all expected to be the most important (@WSU, vs UW) loom large. But now they look much more winnable than they did even a week ago (of course, no one needed this table to see that).

Re: Week 7 Net Yards per Play - needle - 10-16-2017

Washington State had seven turnovers against kal.

Re: Week 7 Net Yards per Play - Goose - 10-16-2017

(10-16-2017, 08:33 AM)stupac2 link Wrote:I guess they must have either executed the perfect gameplan (something they haven't been able to do against anyone else, really) or WSU just threw up all over themselves.
Actually, I think it was a bit of both. Kal had a very good scheme on defense. The rushed Falk hard and played zone. WSU's OL played poorly, and the rush got there quick. When Falk dumped it off, Kal tackled the receivers for short gains.  Normally, that won't work, because either Falk gets enough time to throw medium patterns to soft spots in the zone or somebody misses a tackle. It worked Friday because the WSU OL didn't block anybody and Kal didn't miss many open-field tackles.
On defense, WSU has been doing it with mirrors all season. They compensate for lack of size on the DL by shifting before the snap and often by slanting their rush. Kal basically ran away (opposite side) from the slant most of the night. That was possible partly because WSU seemed to always slant to the strong offensive side against certain formations. Kal killed them with weak-side runs. WSU eventually tried keeping one player wide to the weak side, but that player was usually too wide and got blocked by a receiver or the back  would run through the natural hole created by the rest of the WSU line slanting. Against balanced formations where WSU seemed to always play "straight up", Kal was blowing up the center of the defense. The WSU DL was just too small to hold their own that night. Kal's big back would get 10 yards a crack it seemed.
It wasn't that Kal was playing lights out. It was that they had a simple plan on offense that they executed well against a WSU defense that didn't adapt and a simple plan on defense against a WSU OL that wasn't blocking. WSU didn't adapt/improve, so Kal just kept doing it. End of story.

Re: Week 7 Net Yards per Play - Hulk01 - 10-16-2017

Thanks for this Goose.

It confirms the latest word on Washington State: Their OL is vastly overrated and their defense is vulnerable to the run. 

And we'll be their tenth consecutive game without a break, another plus for us.


Re: Week 7 Net Yards per Play - stupac2 - 10-16-2017

(10-16-2017, 09:01 AM)needle link Wrote:Washington State had seven turnovers against kal.

Sure, but were they all unforced errors? And even with 7 turnovers you would expect them to score more than one FG.

Although, looking at the YPP stats Boise actually held them to a similar number as Cal. Maybe WSU has just been a paper tiger all year.

Re: Week 7 Net Yards per Play - bbm233 - 10-16-2017

All is doom and gloom up here in Husky-ville. The analysis is that they really miss John Ross' exceptional speed, and that defenses have been able to play them straight up. The Husky offense has turned out to be above average, but not elite. They were behind against Rutgers until a punt return TD. They were up on Oregon State by only a TD at the half. They couldn't generate anything against ASU. Browning has reached his ceiling, which is talented between the ears, but not so much in the right arm (Ross was so wide open that any QB could look good throwing to him). Now they seem to have lost their left tackle, their swiss army knife receiver/returner and both of their season-opening CBs.

Peterson has a bye week to reassess. I expect he will figure it out.

P.S. the same talking heads are saying that Stanford has the most explosive offense in the conference

Re: Week 7 Net Yards per Play - CowboyIndian - 10-16-2017

(10-16-2017, 09:59 AM)bbm233 link Wrote:P.S. the same talking heads are saying that Stanford has the most explosive offense in the conference

Was that noise Teejers' head exploding?

Re: Week 7 Net Yards per Play - Goose - 10-16-2017

(10-16-2017, 09:47 AM)Hulk01 link Wrote:It confirms the latest word on Washington State: Their OL is vastly overrated and their defense is vulnerable to the run. 
I agree Hulk, although I think one is more inherent than the other. Against Kal, the WSU OL played poorly, in fact very poorly. There are not normally that bad. That is why The Pirate was so mad. The good thing about the Air Raid is that usually you can get the ball out quick so that the line doesn't have to be great. When we play them, they probably will not play nearly so poorly. We will for sure need to reliably make the open-field tackles like Kal did or it will be a long night on defense.
The WSU DL OTOH has inherent size problems. They try to compensate with quickness and scheme. That actually works pretty well against teams that pass a lot, and OK against spread offenses. The problem against Kal was that the Kal OC had a good scheme to work against that approach. The WSU coaches tried tweaking things a bit, but with their personnel, there were limited options. We should be able to exploit the WSU DL all night long by going right at them. We have to be prepared for their tactics, but that should be very doable.
Quote:And we'll be their tenth consecutive game without a break, another plus for us.
They could be a bit worn down by then, which will for sure help. The usual caveats apply however. They will be at home, which helps them a lot. It is also college football, where the players often don't play as expected. We can't have any kind of a "let down". In light of last year, I don't expect us to.

Re: Week 7 Net Yards per Play - bbm233 - 10-16-2017

The WSU defensive line shifts before the snap on almost every play - I believe that is to confuse the oline blocking assignments too late in the play clock for them to change their protections. I gotta think we can counter that with our ability to get into the right play at the LoS, but maybe that's harder than it appears.

I think it was the Cougs who really crashed from the edge to stifle our up the gut runs last year, and after that game, we changed from handing off to pitching the ball to the running back, to allow the QB to be an extra blocker who picks up that edge rusher. Our running game really improved with that adjustment.

Re: Week 7 Net Yards per Play - CTcard - 10-16-2017

(10-16-2017, 09:47 AM)Hulk01 link Wrote:Thanks for this Goose.

It confirms the latest word on Washington State: Their OL is vastly overrated and their defense is vulnerable to the run. 

And we'll be their tenth consecutive game without a break, another plus for us.

"their defense is vulnerable to the run."

Well, that seems likely, particularly a power-type run game, given that their front seven is relatively small. However, we shouldn't oversell the point. All those great strategies and advantages for ןɐɔ against WSU yielded them 106 total rushing yards at 3.3 yds/carry.
Overall, WSU is #4 in the conference in rush defense both yds/gm (125) and yds/carry (3.69). That appears to be a credible run defense.


"Their OL is vastly overrated"

This I think is more true, as is their offense overall - at least with respect to their own defense.
If you look at the YPP in the OP, WSU is #2 on the list in defensive YPP, but only #9 on offense.

WSU has given up a lot of sacks, 32, which is worst in the conference by 5. It's also tied with UMass for dead last in the country. Now WSU passes a lot, so per attempt this wouldn't be quite as bad, but it is still pretty bad.
Another issue for WSU is efficiency of their run game when they do use it. Last year it took a tick upwards, this year it is back down. WSU is dead last in the country in yds/gm rushing. More relevant is that they aren't very good on a per attempt basis either: at 2.84 yds/attempt they are #11 in the Pac 12 and #127 (out o 130) in the country.

All told, WSU has actually been winning more by defense this year than by offense.


"And we'll be their tenth consecutive game without a break, another plus for us."

Yep, I think that will be a notable advantage.
We'll be coming off our split-bye because of the Thursday night game in Corvallis (though at 6:00 pacific it's earlier in the evening than many of our Saturday games have been). It'll be two road games in a row, but the spacing should help out on the travel issue.

WSU will be coming back from Tucson where they will have just faced the one team in the Pac 12 ahead of us in rushing yds/game, and who is second to us nationally in rushing yds/carry. Of course Arizona does this in a very different manner than does Stanford, but it will be an interesting preview of their run defense.

Re: Week 7 Net Yards per Play - BostonCard - 10-16-2017

(10-16-2017, 10:42 AM)CTcard link Wrote:"their defense is vulnerable to the run."

Well, that seems likely, particularly a power-type run game, given that their front seven is relatively small. However, we shouldn't oversell the point. All those great strategies and advantages for ןɐɔ against WSU yielded them 106 total rushing yards at 3.3 yds/carry.
Overall, WSU is #4 in the conference in rush defense both yds/gm (125) and yds/carry (3.69). That appears to be a credible run defense.

Didn’t Oregon have the top run defense in terms of ypc?

BC

Re: Week 7 Net Yards per Play - Goose - 10-16-2017

(10-16-2017, 10:42 AM)CTcard link Wrote:WSU will be coming back from Tucson where they will have just faced the one team in the Pac 12 ahead of us in rushing yds/game, and who is second to us nationally in rushing yds/carry. Of course Arizona does this in a very different manner than does Stanford, but it will be an interesting preview of their run defense.
I don't think the Arizona game will tell us much. As you point out, their run offense is very different from ours. I think WSU will match up better against Arizona than they do us. Their quickness will be more important against the Cats, and their shifts and slants will be harder to counter. We will approach it more as "Here we come, stop us if you can". WSU will look much different on defense, I would imagine, against that than they do against Rich Rod's offense.

Re: Week 7 Net Yards per Play - CTcard - 10-16-2017

(10-16-2017, 11:40 AM)Boston Card link Wrote:Didn’t Oregon have the top run defense in terms of ypc?

I think #2.

Right now it is UW #1 at 2.17 yds/carry and Oregon #2 at 3.28.

While Stanford did have easily the best run-game performance against UO on the season (41 attempts, 6.05 yds/att) that wouldn't be enought to cause more than a whole yard per carry difference in the average.
In fact it brought their average up from 2.73 to 3.28.



Re: Week 7 Net Yards per Play - teejers1 - 10-16-2017

No, head not exploding.

Stanford clearly has the most explosive offensive player in the conference in Bryce Love, who pretty much single-handedly (with OL help) makes Stanford's explosive plays on offense.  But just so you don't think I'm getting soft, here are the concerns:

1.  Chryst was excellent on Saturday night.  But I think expecting him to perform at (or even near) that level is a fool's errand.  Generally speaking, long throws down the sideline with decent-to-good coverage are low-percentage plays.  I still don't think the receivers are getting much in the way of separation; thus, it will take perfect throws to make those plays work.  We shall see.

2.  Love needs to be healthy and break a couple long runs (30+) each game, preferably with one of those being 50+ yards, for the running game to put up the numbers (225+) needed for this O to succeed.  The fact that I'm typing this - and being serious - just goes to show how extraordinary Bryce Love's season has been.  Haven't seen anything like it. 

3.  Stanford's run D is still mediocre.  I'm wondering when some team will just say "screw the pass - we're going to run it all game long?"  You know, follow the strategy Shaw did when Stanford ground out a W over Oregon a few years back at home.  I still have no confidence that this D could effectively counter such a strategy.

4.  Stanford misses a lot of tackles on D, especially in space.  Not sure why this is the case, as I think Stanford has been a good tackling team under Shaw.

For all these reasons, I still expect Stanford to lose at WSU and home against UW (and probably at home against ND).  Stanford should beat Oregon State, even on the road, but if there is reversion to form at QB position we could see a "too close" game there.  Big Game?  Stanford remains the better team, but I think Wilcox will have his team ready to go and it will be a tough W for the Cardinal.

P.S.  As talented as SC may be, I would welcome a rematch against them in CCG - mainly because that would mean Stanford had beaten the Washington schools (which I think only happens with good QB play).  Stanford with good QB play is a formidable team, even if the D isn't up to the level we've seen from a few years back.


Re: Week 7 Net Yards per Play - hardball01 - 10-16-2017

(10-16-2017, 01:27 PM)teejers1 link Wrote:3.  Stanford's run D is still mediocre.  I'm wondering when some team will just say "screw the pass - we're going to run it all game long?"  You know, follow the strategy Shaw did when Stanford ground out a W over Oregon a few years back at home.  I still have no confidence that this D could effectively counter such a strategy.

I think Oregon tried this strategy and it didn't work so well, especially in the second half.

Re: Week 7 Net Yards per Play - CTcard - 10-16-2017

(10-16-2017, 01:54 PM)hardball01 link Wrote:[quote author=teejers1 link=topic=17712.msg206819#msg206819 date=1508185656]
3.  Stanford's run D is still mediocre.  I'm wondering when some team will just say "screw the pass - we're going to run it all game long?"  You know, follow the strategy Shaw did when Stanford ground out a W over Oregon a few years back at home.  I still have no confidence that this D could effectively counter such a strategy.

I think Oregon tried this strategy and it didn't work so well, especially in the second half.
[/quote]

Yes, but from another thread it appears that teejers means literally no passes, not virtually no passes.

And for the record, in that game vs Oregon we threw the same number of passes (13) that Oregon attempted against us on Saturday night.

I think that at full strength, Stanford rush defense has improved to the point of being mediocre (in the "of only ordinary or moderate quality; neither good nor bad" sense, rather than as a synonym for bad). While the second half versus Oregon showed the run defense can be fine, the first showed how thin we are in the front seven.

Re: Week 7 Net Yards per Play - stupac2 - 10-16-2017

(10-16-2017, 02:11 PM)CTcard link Wrote:I think that at full strength, Stanford rush defense has improved to the point of being mediocre (in the "of only ordinary or moderate quality; neither good nor bad" sense, rather than as a synonym for bad). While the second half versus Oregon showed the run defense can be fine, the first showed how thin we are in the front seven.

Well, for the season our rush defense is still #10 in the conference. Even looking just at the Oregon game we managed to hold them to a pretty good... 1.3 yards over their average. (Our pass defense is hardly better over the whole season, #9 in the conference. It looked great against Oregon but it's hard to know how much of that was us vs them.)

You could argue that with our offense averaging something like 5 points/drive it hardly matters, we can afford to let the other team derp away a few possessions with penalties or other miscues, or take chances to get turnovers. Once we have a couple score lead and they get desperate we can really dial it up and make things look very bad. It worked against Oregon! But it's hard to tell if it'll work going forward, and it very nearly was catastrophic against Utah.

EDIT: I don't really know where to put this so I'm putting it here, but browsing our S&P Statistical Profile I see one defensive stat that we're really good at: third-quarter defense. In every other quarter we're ranked in the 80's for defensive S&P+, but in the third we're #12! I have no idea what to make of that, I'd say that it could just be random (with all those stats surely one is bound to be an outlier) but to be THAT far away from the others seems a bit much for pure randomness...

Re: Week 7 Net Yards per Play - Beeg_Dawg - 10-16-2017

(10-16-2017, 01:54 PM)hardball01 link Wrote:[quote author=teejers1 link=topic=17712.msg206819#msg206819 date=1508185656]
3.  Stanford's run D is still mediocre.  I'm wondering when some team will just say "screw the pass - we're going to run it all game long?"  You know, follow the strategy Shaw did when Stanford ground out a W over Oregon a few years back at home.  I still have no confidence that this D could effectively counter such a strategy.

I think Oregon tried this strategy and it didn't work so well, especially in the second half.
[/quote]

Oregon had no choice but to run.  3rd string QB started, and he couldn't pass.  Next guy was not much better.

Re: Week 7 Net Yards per Play - Snorlax94 - 10-16-2017

Part of the difference in 3rd quarter defense is due to the fact that we have very good coaches who make good game-time adjustments.

I think it was Lou Holtz who, as a commentator, would put special emphasis on the back part of the second quarter and the front part of the third quarter as a good predictor of how the gane would end up, because it reflected how well teams and coaches were able to make adjustments based on the opponent's gameplan.

Re: Week 7 Net Yards per Play - hardball01 - 10-16-2017

(10-16-2017, 02:11 PM)CTcard link Wrote:Yes, but from another thread it appears that teejers means literally no passes, not virtually no passes.

And for the record, in that game vs Oregon we threw the same number of passes (13) that Oregon attempted against us on Saturday night.

I think that at full strength, Stanford rush defense has improved to the point of being mediocre (in the "of only ordinary or moderate quality; neither good nor bad" sense, rather than as a synonym for bad). While the second half versus Oregon showed the run defense can be fine, the first showed how thin we are in the front seven.

I think the more a team runs against Stanford with no passes at all, the less productive they will be running the ball. After Burmeister's second interception, Oregon ran the ball on 24 consecutive plays (not counting punts). The results were 9, 2, 7, 13, 6, 5, 8, 5, 4, 9, 3, 6, -1, 0, 12, 5, 6, (halftime), 6, 1, 5, 7, 0, 0, 0.

I didn't put that to a graph but it seems like it didn't work. I especially like the red runs where Stanford bowed up and forced a turnover on downs and a punt.

After typing all that out I am wondering if anyone really believes that running on every down against Stanford would produce a win or if I am just getting trolled.