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  • Bowl Watch Season

    Things are looking hopeful for the end of this Penn State Football season after Tuesday’s rankings sat the Nittany Lions at 10th in the nation following a tough loss against Ohio State. Penn State played this historically good OSU team better than anyone had in the nation to this point and that clearly sat well enough with the committee to keep them in the top 10.

    We have all now crossed over into bowl watching season since PSU’s chance at a playoff berth is dead. That doesn’t mean that Penn State can’t compete in an elite bowl, and with the recent rankings – their chances of doing just that have increased dramatically. Being ranked ahead of Florida, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Oregon at this point in the season are huge indicators that a New Year’s Six bowl is on the horizon.

    NY6 bowl selection is a little complicated but this should help break it down. It is worth mentioning that bowl selection committees technically have their own private rankings but they have been very consistent with the CFP rankings so I am going to act like they are the same thing for the purpose of not confusing everyone.

    There are 6 elite-level bowl games in College Football and they are as such: Rose Bowl, Orange Bowl, Cotton Bowl, Fiesta Bowl, Sugar Bowl, and Peach Bowl. These are what is known as the New Year’s Six and outside of the playoff, the most impressive landing destination for a football team after a season is over. Two of these bowl games every year (cycling randomly) are what makes up the playoff. 1v4 in one game and 2v3 in the other. The remaining 4 games are decided by conference tie-ins or at-large bids. Conference tie-ins mean the champion of the conference or the highest ranked team in said conference that isn’t in the playoff. Here are what those games look like when they are not part of the playoff:

    Rose Bowl: Best Big Ten vs Best PAC 12

    Sugar Bowl: Best SEC vs Best Big 12

    Orange Bowl: Best ACC vs Next Best Big 10, SEC, or Notre Dame

    Peach/Cotton/Fiesta Bowl: At-Large vs. At-Large

    This year the Fiesta and Peach Bowls will make up the playoff so that leaves the Rose, Sugar, Orange, and Cotton bowls to make up the remaining spots for teams to fill. The one other stipulation to remember is that the highest ranked Group of Five team (team not in a power 5 conference) gets an automatic bid to a NY6 bowl. This year the only non-conference tie-in bowl game with a possible spot for a Go5 team would be the Cotton Bowl. This leaves only one at large bid left to go to a NY6 game (the other team in the Cotton Bowl) and that would be the highest ranked team that doesn’t already have a NY6 slot.

    This leaves Penn State with three different possibilities for NY6 destinations (because the Sugar Bowl has SEC and B12 tie-in’s). Disclaimer – this is all assuming PSU handles Rutgers Saturday.

    Rose Bowl: For Penn State to go to this game they would need to be the B1G champion or be the highest ranked B1G team not in the playoff. The B1G Championship game is off the table so they would need to be the next highest ranked. For this to happen we would need a few games to go our way. First, Wisconsin would need to beat Minnesota and OSU would need to beat UM this Saturday. This would push UM further down in the rankings and Minnesota would drop below us. Regardless of the fact that Minnesota beat PSU head to head, the committee would still favor a 2-loss Penn State over a 2-loss Minnesota as seen when both teams had 1 loss. Wisconsin would propel ahead of PSU likely after a win at Minnesota and would head to Indianapolis to face OSU in the championship game. Here we would need OSU to beat Wisconsin, sending them back down in the rankings. If all that is the case, OSU would make the playoff and PSU would be the next best in the B1G. It is a possibility for sure, the biggest game to watch is Wisconsin v Minnesota because I expect OSU to handle their business regardless of their next two opponents.

    Orange Bowl: This bowl game goes to the second highest ranked B1G, SEC, or Notre Dame vs the best ACC team. Should PSU not go to the Rose Bowl and another B1G team is ranked ahead of us, this would be the next option. This game is why being placed ahead of Florida is such a big deal. For this game to be our destination, PSU fans would be rooting for two SEC teams to make the playoff. If not, because LSU/Georgia/Bama are all ranked ahead of PSU, one of those teams would make the Orange bowl ahead of us. One would make the playoff, one the Sugar, and one the Orange. For two SEC teams to get into the playoffs we would need either Georgia to beat LSU and the committee to put both in, or for the committee to put Bama as their 4th team if LSU takes down Georgia. The issue is #6 Utah and #7 OU have a chance to win their respective conferences and could hop Bama for that 4th spot.

    Cotton Bowl: If I had to take a guess, this is where I would think PSU will land. This game has one final spot for an at-large team – meaning the highest ranked team not already in a NY6 bowl game. Because we are currently ranked 10th, and don’t really have any real reason to assume we will drop below this, (Rutgers is bad) even if the Rose or Orange bowls don’t play out the way we would want them too, this would be the spot PSU would land assuming there isn’t chaos.

    Chaos: Michigan beats OSU and/or Wisconsin wins the B1G and/or VA Tech beats Clemson and so on and so forth. Nothing is set in stone yet but a lot of crazy things could happen over the next two weeks that could shake things up in the rankings in a major way and send PSU to likely the Outback Bowl in Tampa. A good game, but not an elite NY6 bowl.

    So, we know our bowl options and we know to root for OSU and Wisconsin next week. It is a bit of a nervous time but also exciting. There will be a much clearer vision of our bowl outlook Sunday morning but for now we can all get amped up for a crazy week of football ahead. And if you’re bored maybe check out the PSU v Rutgers game this week … should be a fun one. We Are.

    9-2

  • Another Look at the Penn State RB Position: Success Rate, Yards Gained Distribution, and Standard Deviation

    With Noah Cain out the last two weeks, we’ve seen a lot more of Journey Brown in the run game as the official RB1 — he’s handled nearly 50% of the workload in the past two games. It’s been exciting at times, given Brown’s big-play ability in both the run and the pass game. However, he’s always felt like a boom-or-bust back to me. I wanted to see what the data showed and see if my impression was true.

    While Brown has been leading the RB committee most of the season in yards per attempt both on the ground and in the air, the fan consensus has been for Noah Cain to be RB1. I have been wondering why this has been the case, given that both Brown and Devyn Ford have better YPA than him. The only conclusion I could draw, given the eye-test and feedback from loyal PSU fans, is that Cain is the more “reliable” back. Some people call this “success rate”: the percentage of plays that are deemed “successful”.

    In essence, this looks like:

    • gaining 5 yards on 1st and 10
    • 70% of the yardage to go on 2nd down
    • all the remaining yards to go on 3rd or 4th down.

    Success rate is factored into PPA (Predicted Points Added), the cousin of EPA. At a glance, justifying the majority opinion is the fact that Noah Cain leads the RB committee in PPA (Data is courtesy of CollegeFootballData.com, and you can see this data for yourself here).

    Noah Cain leads all PSU RBs with .261 average predicted points added in the 2019 season.

    I decided to look at it in two additional ways: the distribution of yards gained on each run, and the standard deviation of run plays. Let’s take a look at the graph first.

    Distribution of yards gained on run-plays only, for the Penn State rushers.

    This graph shows us how many yards each runner gains, bucketed into groups of 5 yards. I limited the graph to 20 yards so we can compare everyone easily, but this doesn’t do Brown justice in terms of just how explosive he can be. Even from this graph, we can see that he has a higher percentage of rushes of 10+ yards than any of the other feature backs. What the graph doesn’t show is that he also has five runs of greater than 20 yards, the most of any RB. Noah Cain has the fewest.

    With all that being said, we can quickly see that Noah Cain (top right) is the most consistent in short-yardage situations, which is why so many fans love him. Quite simply, he gets first downs. Cain has the largest proportion of his runs that go for 5-10 yards. He doesn’t get many gains of larger than that, but he also doesn’t lose yards too often. While more explosive, both Brown, Ford, and Slade have a considerably larger portion of their runs going for less than 5 yards.

    Finally, let’s look at the standard deviations of these backs’ yards per play. This will give us an idea of how much variation there is in their yards per attempt. For a simple example, if a running back ran for 5 yards every time, his mean would be 5 and standard deviation would be 0. If a running back averaged 5 yards per attempt, but only ran for either 10 yards or 0, his standard deviation would be 5, indicating more of a boom-or-bust style back (this is a rough estimate).

    Average yards per attempt (mean) and standard deviation of rushing attempts for Penn State rushers.

    So from this very exciting chart, a smaller standard deviation implies a more consistent back with less variation in each individual run play. Cain’s is considerably lower, at 4.7 yards, than the rest of the top backs. Ford and Brown, unsurprisingly, lead the way in terms of variability in their run plays. This chart further validates what the histogram above was hinting at.

    While Brown (and Ford) are certainly the undisputed backs with big-play ability, when you need a first down and a reliable few yards, Noah Cain still appears to be the guy. His status for Saturday is still up in the air, but Lord knows we’re going to need plenty of both to have a shot at the upset against #2 Ohio State.

  • Podcast: Week 11 Preview + College Football Playoff Rankings, Penn State vs. Minnesota, and ESPN Coaches Poll

    23. 2019 Wk 11. Penn State is ranked #4 ahead of Clemson and Georgia! We give our predictions for the CFP Committee rankings, then give our live reactions once we find out the true order. We get into the Penn State vs. Minnesota game, break down the offenses, defenses, and QBs, and make our picks. Then, Drew talks a bit about the best RBs in the Big Ten and some of the stats we can use to measure them. He also explains Line Yards, which is a cool metric used to give value to the offensive line separate from the running back. Finally, we get into our Week 11 picks including the biggest game of the week, 1 LSU vs. 2 Alabama. Thanks for tuning in and remember to follow @staturdays on Twitter and Facebook, and subscribe to us on Spotify and Apple.

    Listen to the latest episode here!