Football Stats the MAC Should Keep, But Does Not, Part II

So, moving on.  When we evaluate passing games, we have a tendency just to look at gross numbers.  Oh, that team must be good at protecting the QB because they don't allow sacks.  Similarly, that team is good at avoiding INTs.

I'd like to propose that sometimes that's because they don't pass very much.  If you pass a lot, these things are going to occasionally happen.

Also, I'm interested in knowing what the benchmarks are--what is a low, typical, and high percentage of passes, sacks, and combined sacks/passes in the MAC.

Let's take a look.

First, the details.

These are sack-adjusted passing stats, which means sacks and yardage have been moved from running to passing.
They are conference games only.

OK, let's start with interceptions.  As you can see, the average for the MAC was just under 4%, meaning that 1 in about 25 passes was intercepted.  Kent was very good, and WMU was very good given that I perceive they played a much more vertical and therefore risky passing attack than most teams do.  Meanwhile, on the bottom end, you can see some of the MAC's worst teams, and OU, who managed to thrive for other reasons.

Bowling Green was almost exactly on the league average.

Now, let's look at the same type of measure for sacks.  The average is 6%, which means one in about every 17 passing attempts ends in a sack.  There seems to be a lot less variation here than in INTs.  NIU, BSU and UT clearly excelled, but there are five teams right around the mean.  For a good team, Temple gave up a bunch of sacks.  Once again, BG was almost right on the mean.

The main caveat here is that it isn't a full measure of pressure. A team could have low sacks simply because their QB is good at getting rid of the ball or bailing out to a check down, each of which might or might not have been productive.  Still, sacks is what we have, and it appears that sacks are more evenly distributed than INT.

Now, let's look at negative passing plays together.  INTs represent inherent drive-killing plays, and sacks are often drive-killers.  So, which teams did the best at preventing bad things from happening when they passed the ball?  As you can see, 1 in 10 passing plays end up in a negative play in the MAC.  BG is, once again, right on the average.  NIU is so far ahead of the next team as to be ridiculous.  This is a team with a great running game and a passing game that did not lose them games and often helped.  UT shows nice results here, as does Kent, but really, there is not a lot of variability here either.  Buffalo and Akron clearly brought the house down on the negative side, but they are closer to the MAC than NIU by a lot.

Quick homer analysis.  I was surprised BG was near the mean in all these measures.  It was my feeling that we would be below average.  The conclusion I think is that while we did reasonably well taking care of the ball, our lack of running game and being tied for 11th in completion percentage did their part to bring the rest of the offense down.