[CTcard]

A few thoughts:  for "robustness," I'd think PPG (by the offense) and YPG are good metrics,

Just to keep the infinite cycle going, whenever you post this I post some version of ...

Per game stats are a terrible way to compare between teams that operate at drastically different pace, and most teams run at a different pace than Stanford. It is essentially the same as comparing teams on total yards in a season when they have played different number of games.

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And by itself, yards and points are not good measures of fragility (or robustness), merely have being bad (or good).

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Somebody earlier post some ideas/definitions of successful plays.

...Still, we had too few successful plays this year.

Successful plays is a core ingredient of the S&P+ stat that is reported on footballoutsiders.com.
The FEI stats others have been noting are per drive stats - what jacketree says is all that matters.

By S&P+ Stanford's offense rates lower: #29 in the country rather than #16.

I tend to go with FEI because I agree with jacketree that is the most important thing (and note that in basketball it is quite normal to consider per possession stats, but for some reason these are far less common for football).

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He rates Stanford's offensive performances thusly:
WSU: .616 percentile
Washington: .922 percentile
59ers: .867
ND: .882
SC: .773

The one that surprised me here was the WSU game. I viewed that as a poor offensive performance, but .616 percentile isn't horrible. Obviously that is largely because WSU's defense is good.

Though, still it was Stanford's third worst offensive performance of the season. The offense versus OSU was the eighth worse of any team in any game this season (percentile 0.005). The offense vs SDSU was second worst, 0.349 percentile. I guess it is really those two games, coming from an offense that averages to 16th best in the country, that might constitute being fragile. 

So, while I certainly do not think a fragile offense means poor or inconsistent quarterback play, it could be the primary cause.

[CTcard]

A few thoughts:  for "robustness," I'd think PPG (by the offense) and YPG are good metrics,

Just to keep the infinite cycle going, whenever you post this I post some version of ...

Per game stats are a terrible way to compare between teams that operate at drastically different pace, and most teams run at a different pace than Stanford. It is essentially the same as comparing teams on total yards in a season when they have played different number of games.

--
And by itself, yards and points are not good measures of fragility (or robustness), merely have being bad (or good).

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Somebody earlier post some ideas/definitions of successful plays.

...Still, we had too few successful plays this year.

Successful plays is a core ingredient of the S&P+ stat that is reported on footballoutsiders.com.
The FEI stats others have been noting are per drive stats - what jacketree says is all that matters.

By S&P+ Stanford's offense rates lower: #29 in the country rather than #16.

I tend to go with FEI because I agree with jacketree that is the most important thing (and note that in basketball it is quite normal to consider per possession stats, but for some reason these are far less common for football).

-----------------------------------------

He rates Stanford's offensive performances thusly:
WSU: .616 percentile
Washington: .922 percentile
59ers: .867
ND: .882
SC: .773

The one that surprised me here was the WSU game. I viewed that as a poor offensive performance, but .616 percentile isn't horrible. Obviously that is largely because WSU's defense is good.

Though, still it was Stanford's third worst offensive performance of the season. The offense versus OSU was the eighth worse of any team in any game this season (percentile 0.005). The offense vs SDSU was second worst, 0.349 percentile. I guess it is really those two games, coming from an offense that averages to 16th best in the country, that might constitute being fragile. 

So, while I certainly do not think a fragile offense means poor or inconsistent quarterback play, it could be the primary cause.