Offensive Efficiency Rating, Huskie Edition

Its been a few weeks since I have summoned up the energy to look at the offensive efficiency rating for one of our games. Rest assured that I have been keeping the database up to date, and, as always, you can view it here absolutely free of charge. (Its Falcon Nation socialism).

And, if you want to know what it all means, you can click here.

Basically, you get points for each play, based on the situation. On 2-10, a three yard gain is worth no points. On 3-2, a three yard gain is worth a point. Big plays are worth multiple points, and turnovers and lost yard plays are negative points.

For comparison purposes, there have been more than 1,000 plays scored so far. 48% of them are "winning plays" (worth at least one point) and .77 points per play is the standard over those plays.

The biggest story is the shift in NIU's fortunes once they decided to go straight to the ground. For the first quarter and a half, they were actually in negative territory: -.06 per play. From there on in, NIU averaged .92 points per play, which ranks as one of the best performance we have seen this year. For the second half, it was 1.02 points per play, an absolutely devastating performance.

BG had 44% winning plays for the game, and .56 points per play. The winning percentage is the lowest since the Pitt game, and the points per play is the lowest since Boise. This is made even worse by the fact that we didn't turn the ball over on offense, which means that on the merit of our plays, we were even a little worse.

Now, NIU for the game was 50.3%, which was the most since EMU, and their .61 points per play is actually not that good, and less than Miami or EMU earned. (See above for the Jekyll and Hide performance that explains this).

In entering the data, I noticed something very interesting. Do you know what NIU dominated on? SECOND DOWN. We think about all those third down conversions, but in reality, they set it all up on second down. On their key drives, we often had a good stop on first down, only to have Harnish rip off 7-10 yards on second down and set up a bunny third down conversion. NIU averaged .92 points per second down play.

The other interesting story is that, when you look at it, BG did run the ball effectively. If anything, its possible we should have continued to try and run, as opposed to passing. At .86 points per running play, it was pretty strong. Meanwhile, our points per pass play (.27) was the lowest of the season, just slightly worse than the Pitt game. NIU threw two INTs, and they averaged .3 points per play.

Again, this is all an experiment. I'm still not sure there has been too much identified that I didn't see...but maybe not. As we develop a big database, hopefully it will get even better, and give me something to play with when we have rainy summer days.