Football Review: Mopping up, Sacks Against, Penalties

So, in our first pass through a review of the football season, we missed a thing or two.  We can take today to mop them up before a little break to enjoy the holiday.

Starting with sacks...remembering that in 2010 BG's offensive line was terrible and not healthy on top of it.  It showed up in the sack numbers, with BG allowing 20 sacks (MAC-only).  Only one team was worse, which was CMU at 22.  BG was sacked on 6% of its pass plays.

This year, BG reduced that number to 15, which was still 10th in the MAC.  (Miami gave up 37 sacks in 8 conference games!!).  That is a sack on 4.9% of passing plays.  So, a nice improvement in numbers, but relative to the competition, we stayed pretty much the same.

It also doesn't tell the whole story.  Pressure on the QB can also yield lower completion percentage, interceptions, and lower yards as team go to safer routes, and there really isn't a measure for that.

Moving to penalties, my impression has been that this has been a strong point for our team...we don't seem to get many penalties.  In 2010, BG was third in the MAC at 44 yards per game and in 2011 that strength continued as BG led the MAC with 35 penalty yards per game.  Yards per penalty fell form 9 to 8.4.

For whatever it is worth, BG's opponents had 59 penalty yards a game, the second highest total in the MAC.  BG netted out 24 yards per game on penalties.