2018 Football: The Offense

When the 2018 football season started, the proposition for success was simple.  The defense would probably not be much better, but hopefully not worse with a regime change, and the offense was going to be a powerhouse...our offensive genius head coach would put all the pieces together and BG might end up in some wild shootouts but they might also be able to win their share of them.

As noted already, the defense got better.  Not a lot, but it did improve.  The offense did not come anywhere near delivering on its end of that proposition--which was nothing less than it would carry the team.  The offense ended up doing no such thing.

As you can see, BG's scoring was way down.  The Falcons were in the middle of the MAC in 17 and you figured they needed a top 2 or 3 to make the overall proposition work, and it just didn't happen.  BG fell to 9th in scoring.  (These stats are all MAC games only).

The yards per play was OK...falling just .1 yards and one place in the standings.  Again, though, with most of the guys back and an improving line, you expected to take a jump.

Furthermore, the culprit is clear.  The passing game was better, but probably not where it needed to be.  BG was #3 in passing efficiency, which is a formula based on different stats.  TD passes were down in the MAC....BG went from 18 to 19 but 19 was the tops in the MAC.

In the spread/air raid offenses, completion percentages are really important.  For reference, in 2015 when BG had the top offense in the MAC, BG completed over 70% of its passes.  By comparison, the 2018 Falcons had 61.6% completions, up from 57% the year before.  Relative to the conference, BG stayed 5th in completion %.

The next thing you want to look at is yards/completion.  You can up your percentage pretty easily by throwing the ball behind the line of scrimmage on high percentage passes, but it normally impacts yards/completion. As you can see, BG went from 12.3 per completion to 12.2, moving from 9th to 6th but still not an elite MAC offense.

Similarly, BG went from 11th in INT rate to 5th.  Better, but not the jump we would have needed to have the offense carry the team.

So, the passing game went from below average to above average.

The real culprit was the running game.  BG's yard per rush went from 4.8 to 4.0...from 3rd in the MAC to 9th.  In other words, the running game got worse where it had to get better or at least stay where it was.  Rushing TDs were also down.

There are a couple of ancillary stats.  For example, BG gave up sacks on 6.5% of its passes the year before and it was essentially the same this year.  Put that with the rushing and I think that one thing is clear.  Coach Jinks created unrealistic expectations for the offensive line, which was returning largely intact but was still young.

So, the passing game is the same or a little better and the running game gets much worse and you have an offense not able to fill the role that was expected.

One last note:  the offense was the last part of the team still coached by the original assistants.  That's the last thing about that.