This doesn't have quite the urgency it had before, because we were always looking to how we were going to improve under the same system. Now that we have a new Coach, things are obviously going to change at least a little.
The basic headline is that, for all the bluster about our offensive team and the offensive prowess of our coaching staff and our offensive playmakers, this offense underperformed. In the end, most of the talk about our offense was reputation.
Obviously, the key stat is scoring. I ranked the teams in the MAC based on offensive scoring--meaning that I looked at scoring only from the offense, and not the stat the MAC publishes.
Bowling Green was sixth in the MAC in scoring. That's the middle of the pack in an average conference.
To say it again: our self-image of our offense is not consistent with what we actually accomplished on the field.
Based on many measures, the results were even poorer.
I think you can make the case that we suffered most of all from a lack of firepower. Our biggest problem was that we just didn't get the yards per play that other teams in our league got.
Here are the numbers. Note that for the numbers below, I adjusted the sacks and moved them from rushing to passing, both as attempts and yards. Falcon numbers are below:
- Eighth in the MAC in running yards per play.
- Tenth in the MAC in yards per passing play.
- BG and Miami were the only MAC teams to be below the league average in both running and passing yards per play. Even the most anemic offenses like Toledo managed to do one of the two things at an above average level.
I know I was really surprised to see this. I hadn't realized it had gotten quite this bad. I think all Falcon fans had a sense this was the case. We were so cautious in our spread, really, since Omar's injury. Our playcalling was just so different than it was under the Meyer and early Brandon regime. And, the key element to the Meyer spread was that as you were dishing the ball around was that you were opening up lanes for big running plays.
I read a post on AZZ.com that suggests that a balanced offense doesn't mean that you have the same numbers of running plays as passing plays, but rather that you always maintain the ability to do both, which keeps the defenses off balance.
An example would be the deadly draw plays PJ Pope ran when the defense was backpedaling to cover Charles Sharon and Cole Magner. On the other side of the coin, when we played NIU, they would batter us with Garret Wolfe and then go over the top to one of their WRs. That's what balance means.
We really had neither. We didn't move the ball well either way, and it caused us to be an average MAC offense.
You can see this revealed a number of ways in the stats for the year.
One thing I thought was that the single thing that seems to be important for an offense is making first downs. Each play is really designed to help the team get a first down. So, I thought it would be interesting to look and see what percentage of a team's overall plays were first downs.
In fact, Bowling Green made first downs on 29.3% of its plays, seventh in the MAC. As a comparison, BSU was 35.3%. We will see later that we were very good on first down, so the only logical conclusion here is that we underperformed on first downs because we were not consistently making yardage with each of our plays.
It also seemed to me that really good offensive teams stay out of third down all together. They are making first downs on first and second down. You can measure this too. More than one in five plays BG ran (21.3%) was a third down play. This was 10th in the MAC.
Also, counting only our first and second down plays, we made a first down on 24.7% of them, also 10th in the MAC.
For comparison purposes, Ball State ran third down plays only 17% of their total plays, and on first and second down, they made first down on 32.6% of their plays, a percentage that is higher than Bowling Green's rates for all plays.
So, you can see the trend. On every measure I have just spelled out, we were below the league average and often near the bottom. The question here is, how did we end up 6th in the MAC in scoring?
The answer is that for all of the problems above, we did deliver on football's key plays: on third down, and in the red zone. And this was enough to lift us up to the middle of the league in scoring.
While the Falcons had more third downs than they probably should have, when they were in that spot, they converted on 46% of them, third in the conference.
Looking at the red zone, I don't believe in looking at red zone percentage, because it ranks field goals the same as touchdowns. I like to look at average points per trip, because it incorporates both general success and the need for touchdowns.
Bowling Green was good in the red zone. The Falcons scored 4.57 points per red zone trip, which was also 3rd in the conference.
Now, we were not as strong in terms of red zone opportunities per game (7th) or red zone points per game (5th), which both reflect back on the offense's overall inability to move the ball effectively.
Just two more things. Another test of firepower is how many points your team scored that did not come from within the red zone. Bowling Green was 10th here, too, reflecting an inability to score on big plays, again, something you could clearly observe as well.
Finally, there is always the question of turnovers. Bowling Green turned the ball over on 2.6% of its plays, which was seventh in the conference.
But I digress. To me, the evidence is clear. The idea that Gregg Brandon was presiding over some kind of offensive juggernaut is debunked. We were average to below average in our own league, and it was a league which did not have a ton of really good offensive players.
I look forward to seeing how this might improve. Dave Clawson had some absolutely sick offenses at his previous stops. I'd love to see us climb up into the top of the conference. In 2008, if we had been able to get more yards per play, we would have played for the MAC Championship.
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