Pizza Bowl Benchmark Report

So catching up...here are the benchmarks for the Little Caesar Pizza Bowl.

No terrible surprises here...BG gave up a negative result (in this case, sacks) on 18% of its passing attempts, and that's going to make it difficult to win.  When you back out the sacks, the rushing game goes from really, really bad to just just 2010-awful.  BG only ran the ball 40% of the time in a close game and that's not a winning formula for the 2013 Falcons.

On defense, it was pretty much a nightmare scenario as well.  Pitt averaged 7.2 yards per rush, which makes you hard to beat on the surface...and then Pitt took big advantage over the top,  They didn't pass that much, but 17 yards per completion shows you are taking advantage of packed boxes.

In fact, BG kept the game close with strong 3rd down and red zone defense.  Based on that stats, this game should not have been this close.