Matt Kartozian-USA TODAY Sports The Buckeyes were excellent in spots during the 2015 campaign, but not in every game. We have a tendency to divide teams in to tiers when we look at rankings — whether preseason polls and schedule analysis or when you’re picking games in the middle of the season. For instance, last season it would have been fair to say that Alabama, Clemson, and Ohio State were more or less in a league of their own, with Oklahoma, Ole Miss, Michigan, Florida State, Notre Dame, LSU, and Stanford in the next tier. The point is, even though we rank teams both in the traditional sense — like the top-25 polls — and using advanced stats like the S&P+, the teams are often grouped in tiers rather than there being an equal distance between each ranked team. The difference between the third- and fourth-ranked teams isn’t necessarily the same as the difference between the tenth- and the eleventh-ranked teams. David Wunderlich, over at Team Speed Kills, recently looked at peers of SEC teams. For instance, he finds that Alabama’s only SEC peer was LSU, while Ole Miss has seven peers on their schedule for next season. That’s a pretty big difference. Naturally, you’d expect Alabama to have a much easier time with their schedule than Ole Miss, just because they should have more contentious games. So what happens when you look at Ohio State’s 2015 schedule? Who were the Buckeyes’ peers in 2015 according to the end-of-season S&P+ rankings? One way the S&P+ is presented is…
Continue Reading: Where Ohio State over-performed (and under-performed) in 2015
