It’s Halftime, Let’s Take A Look At The Stats

We’re halfway through the season (time flies, doesn’t it?), which makes this a reasonable time to take a look at some statistics. It’s always interesting to compare what we think we know about the team with what the statistics indicate. Stats don’t give a complete picture, but you don’t have to be Malcolm Gladwell to recognize that your perception might not match reality. So let’s take a look at some stats and see if we can draw some conclusions about this team.

What the Buckeyes Do Well
Punt and Return Punts
The team is eighth in the country in net punting, averaging 40.08 yards per punt. Michigan is at the top with 42.09 yards. To be fair, though, they get more practice than the Buckeyes do: A.J. Trapasso has punted 25 times, Zoltan Mesko has punted 34 times. Across the 1-A subdivision, teams are averaging 34.87 yards, meaning the Buckeyes pick up 5.21 yards every time they punt that your average team doesn’t receive. That means that on average this season, Ohio State opponents have had to drive 21.71 yards further to score than they would against a team with mediocre special teams.

The Buckeyes are 33rd in punt returns, averaging 13.13 yards per return, tops in the Big Ten. They have 16 punt returns on the season; 1A is averaging 10. Their average of 13.13 yards per return is 2.84 yards better than average. It’s not a whole lot, but it averages out to 7.57 extra yards per game over your average team. All told, the Buckeyes’ punting competency makes them about three first downs a game better than the average 1A team. When you consider that the Buckeyes average 18.5 first downs per game, that’s not a negligible difference.

Run the Ball
Duh. Beanie Wells and Terrelle Pryor. The only reason the Buckeyes aren’t better than 33rd in the country is Beanie’s traitorous toe. Give him and Pryor time, and this number could rise from 186 YPG to 200+.

Play Defense
I know, I’m kind of surprised, too. The Buckeyes are 32nd in rush defense, 14th in pass defense (21st in pass efficiency defense), 18th in total defense, and 22nd in scoring defense. The pass defense mark is the only one that’s best in the Big Ten, but all of them are in the top half of the Big Ten. Let’s break these down one by one:

• Rush Defense
  The Buckeyes give up 109.17 rush yards per game, good for 4th in the Big Ten (Penn State leads at 80.17 yards). Is this a function of the opponents? Not entirely. Buckeye opponents average 159 yards per game, which would be good for 52nd in the country if this imaginary average team actually existed. So the Buckeyes have taken opponents that are a bit better than average at running the ball and held them to fifty yards below their average. Of note, however, is that the Buckeyes give up 3.76 yards per carry. No team above them in the rush defense rankings gives up more, and most are at or below the 3.0 YPC mark. This would suggest to me that, while the Buckeyes aren’t bad against the run, teams are giving up on the run because of necessity more than a lack of success (i.e., they fall behind and have to pass to stay in the game).
• Pass Defense
  This is where Jim Heacock’s conservative defense pays dividends. OSU opponents are averaging 229.91 yards per game on the season through the air. The Buckeyes give up 155 passing yards per game, a difference of 74.91 yards per game. The Buckeyes are best in the Big Ten at limiting passing yardage, but fourth in pass efficiency defense. This suggests to me (and if anyone has other ideas, please share) that the Buckeyes give up short, easy passes that annoy us fans and boost efficiency stats, but that they don’t allow much downfield. When teams try, the Buckeyes punish them. Their nine interceptions are eighth best in the country.
• Scoring Defense
  Ohio State opponents average 28.63 points per game. The Buckeyes give up 16.17 points per game, a difference of 12.46 games per game. Some of this is due to Youngstown State, Ohio, and Troy improving their PPG against crappier competition, but everyone has opponents doing the same thing, so that’s not all of it. I think a look at red zone defense will provide some answers. The Buckeyes are, by the NCAA’s measurement, pretty bad in the red zone, allowing opponents to score 85% of the time. But as Brian has pointed out, 3 points does not equal 7 points, and a field goal isn’t as good as a touchdown. Scoring percentage doesn’t matter near as much as the number of points given up. The Buckeyes have had to defend six drives in the red zone, more than the national average of 5.2, but have given up 62 points, better than the average of 81.88 points and 39th best in the country. This fits with my idea of Heacock’s defense, too. If you’re going to sit back and make a quarterback fit the ball into a window, that window gets smaller as teams get into the red zone and the seven players defending the pass have to defend smaller areas. So while the Buckeyes aren’t playing an especially aggressive style of defense, we shouldn’t confuse that with a crappy defense. It’s not great, and it’s not quite up to what we’re used to from the Buckeyes, but it’s not bad.

What the Buckeyes Don’t Do Well
This part should be simultaneously slightly depressing and very obvious.

Pass
The Buckeyes are 105th in the country and last in the Big Ten in passing yards per game at 151.33. Part of this is the quarterbacks: Todd Boeckman never really had time to pass before either getting swallowed by blitzers or throwing the ball to the other team, and Terrelle Pryor hasn’t been asked to throw that much, and when he does drop back to pass, he’s likely to either take off running or hold on to the ball until the defense finally chases him down. Some of it’s by design: why pass when you can run with Beanie or Pryor? Pass efficiency is of some comfort: the Buckeyes are 54th in the country and 5th in the Big Ten, suggesting that this could be a decent passing offense if it needed to be. Hopefully it improves enough to be considered a real threat from play to play. Nobody wants to see nine guys in the box.

Not Get Sacked
If watching Notre Dame last season taught me anything (and it didn’t), it’s that satuesque quarterback + porous offensive line = sacks. And if it taught me anything else (and it didn’t), it’s that freshman quarterback = sacks. So this one is kind of a no-brainer. The Buckeyes are 106th in the country in sacks allowed at 2.67 per game. I expect that number to drop, though, as the offensive players get more comfortable with each other and Pryor learns to get rid of the ball faster.

Return Kicks
Argh. At least they’re better than last year: 99th in the country at 18.71 yards per return. Does anyone have any idea what the problem is here? The returners can’t be uniformly bad, can they? This has to fall on the coaches, doesn’t it?

Tackle People Behind the Line of Scrimmage
When it comes to getting sacks, the Buckeyes are bad: 77th in the country and last in the Big Ten at 1.5 per game. But when it comes to just tackling anyone behind the line of scrimmage, they’re even worse: 103rd in the country and last in the Big Ten at 4.5 per game. If there’s a flaw in Heacock’s game plan, it is this. Not blitzing anyone is fine if the defensive line can create pressure, but they can’t. That’s not really a problem against the Allen Everidges of the world, but USC showed what a good quarterback could do against this defense with time to throw. Unless the front four discover a way to start winning battles at the line of scrimmage, I think the defense is going to have to start bringing pressure from the back seven. I think the corners are good enough to be left in man coverage from time to time, and I don’t think the defense can be successful against the best teams if quarterbacks have all day to throw and running backs aren’t touched until they cross the line of scrimmage.

So there you have it. There are plenty of other stats I could have pointed out, but I think these paint a pretty accurate picture of the team. It’s pretty Tresselian: solid rushing attack, solid punting and punt returns, solid on defense. The lack of pressure is cause for concern (Penn State worries me even more now), but there’s plenty of reason for optimism. The defense seems designed to maintain leads, and as Pryor gets better and Beanie (hopefully) gets healthier, there should be plenty of leads to maintain.

Go to Source