With the Big Ten kicking off this Friday night with Illinois at Wisconsin, and then a full slate of games on Saturday, we thought we’d look at each team’s position heading into Week 1 (Week 8 for everyone else). Below are the rankings from 1-14 based on preseason Elo rating.
As you can tell, Ohio State really are in a league of their own this season. Now, Penn State may be able to change that early on when they face-off in Week 2, but it’ll be a tall order with the Lions looking at just a 27% win probability. Not terrible, but they definitely will have to play their best football early on, especially without the usual home-field-advantage effects of the White Out.
You can really see the tiers of the Big Ten make themselves clear by looking at the above table. There is Ohio State, and then everyone else.
Can clearly make out several tiers in the Big Ten:
If you’re looking for games to mark on your calendar, you’re in luck. The best game in terms of strength-against-strength comes early on in Week 2 (Week 9 – wow, that’s gonna be annoying to keep up all season). Outside the OSU-PSU game, most of the big matchups take place later in the season.
Strength of Schedule
So who plays the toughest opponents each week on average? Since there are no nonconference games, it’s going to be hard to have a winning record for a lot of these lower-tier teams. Nebraska will be up against it, with an average Elo deficit of 258 points. That equates to an average win probability of 18.5% if they played the same opponent each week with that disadvantage.
Ohio State have the easiest schedule (partly because they can’t play themselves), while Penn State manages a middle-of-the-road strength of schedule, which would make their ability to win-out all the more impressive if it were to happen.
Difficulty of Schedule
When you look at difficulty of schedule, it paints a slightly different picture. Despite facing tougher opponents on average than 6 other teams, Penn State still manages the 2nd least difficult schedule based on their ability to outmatch even the toughest of opponents.
Rutgers and Maryland, unsurprisingly, will be the most likely to struggle against their opponents, despite Rutgers having only the 6th-toughest opponents on average. Their Elo rating is just so low that they will struggle regardless. On average, they would have a 7% win probability if they played their average opponent each week.
For some context on just how bad Rutgers is rated going into 2020, the average Elo for Power-5 schools is 1500. For all other D-I teams, it’s 1200. So they would be considered a below-average Group-of-5 school right now. Even against the 2nd-worst team in the Big Ten, Maryland, they would only have a 33% win probability right now.
Ok, enough harping on Rutgers. The point is, this season is going to be brutal for some, disappointing for others, and an absolute breeze for one: Ohio State. With the shortened season and a lot of turnover, opt-outs, injuries, and eventually three-week COVID-ineligibles, it is going to be a major challenge for any team to get up to speed with Ohio State in time to keep up with their level of talent. And when their biggest challenger plays them Week 2 in an empty stadium and loses that home-field-advantage, it looks all the more likely that OSU is able to run the table.
We’ll see, but either way, it’ll be great to have one-play-at-a-time, blue-collar, hard-nosed, disciplined Big Ten football back on Saturday. Let’s be thankful for that.
Five games into the season Penn State is sitting comfortably ranked #10 with an undefeated record and potentially the best defense in the Big Ten. There is undeniably enough talent in the locker room to win a championship and the players and coaches are hungry for one. Nittany Lion fans are just as hungry if not more. Every little detail over the past five games has been observed under a microscope and scrutinized by the anticipatory fan base because they know, just as well as the team knows, what Penn State is able to accomplish this season.
Penn State has had a dominant start to their season regardless of what you read on the internet. Above all else, through the first five games, Penn State has outscored opponents 235-37. They haven’t allowed two touchdowns to be scored by an opponent yet this season. Penn State is averaging (though be it a skewed) 47 points per game and it isn’t even wrong to feel more comfortable with the defense on the field. Sure, there are things to clean up after every game — that’s a given with every team ever… but this 2019 Penn State team is special.
The next three games can tell a wide array of stories. There is a road trip to Iowa, a night-time white-out battle versus Michigan, and a visit to Michigan State. Penn State will be favored in all 3 of these games. They can realistically go 3-0 and surge to 8-0 on the season with Rutgers, Minnesota, and Indiana on the horizon. They can also realistically drop to 5-3 if they don’t step up to the competition and they lose all confidence in themselves for the remainder of the season.
The next three games are against similar opponents, who match up to Penn State fairly well and forecast some close, fun contests ahead. Like Penn State – Iowa, Michigan, and MSU all have elite level defenses but with offenses that can be hit or miss. The competition has taken a major step up; no more are the days of Iowa and Maryland. To win these games, PSU will have to have excellent QB play, solid blocking, and for their defense to play as they have this whole season.
To prepare for the upcoming Saturdays, and to anticipate
emotions, here is how I think we will be feeling Oct 27th with every
scenario:
3-0: Penn State is a national championship contending team. They are top six in every poll and are going to be heavy favorites for three of the next four games. Going 11-1 is nearly guaranteed, and if they can pull off a win in Columbus, this young Penn State team will finish the regular season 12-0. At this point fans will be scoreboard watching OSU games and hoping that Michigan or Wisconsin can get a win against the Buckeyes so Penn State can be Big Ten East Champions again.
2-1: Dropped a tough game during this
stretch. Can still be a national championship contender if PSU can go to
Columbus and pull off a win. Likely sitting top 12 in the nation right now.
10-2 is the safe regular season record prediction which would be really solid
for such a young team. Even with no Big Ten Championship, Penn State is sitting
in a great position to make a New Years Six bowl game. Exceeding most
expectations for the year.
1-2: Tough stretch of games, lost at
least one road game against a tough opponent. More or less dropped from Big Ten
Title contention and now the focus has shifted to winning out and hoping to
steal a game from the Buckeyes. Likely ranked in the top 22. 9-3 is a safe
season record but could easily go 8-4 if they drop both remaining road games to
Minnesota and Ohio State. Winning the games that they are favored in will put
them in good position to go to an upper level bowl (like the Citrus Bowl) and
with some help from higher ranked teams, maybe a New Years Six. It’s scoreboard
watching season.
0-3: Yikes. Brutal three games have knocked
Penn State out of the rankings for the first time since 2016. Penn State’s
offense couldn’t find a way to score versus tough defenses and the season has
been basically wasted. Best case scenario Penn State goes 8-4 but at this point
the fan base is so defeated that they feel anything can happen. Will we win
another game ever? James Franklin hot-seat/USC talks are up in the air, and
fans are upset when AD Sandy Barbour announces that she will not be firing him.
Let’s just go somewhere warm this December for the bowl game.
The difference in optics and the overall excitement for this
program for the 2019 season hangs in the balance of the next three games. The
scary part is that Penn State has the talent and the inexperience to win-out or
lose-out. These games will be a must watch and fans should celebrate every
single win we can get because each one makes a humungous difference for this
program not only this year, but in terms of momentum and recruiting for years
down the line.
There is a real shot at championship level football in Penn
State’s horizon and everybody knows it. The only thing we can do is wear white,
head to the games, and watch the Nittany Lions tear it up. We are.
Finally, football is back. After an earlier-than-expected playoff bid scare for Penn State, our heart rates have collectively settled and we can get back to the business of what has become an annual tradition of crushing Pitt (2016 excluded. Wiping it from my memory).
The other week I talked about Trace McSorley’s upcoming Heisman campaign, but I also talked about the defensive efficiency of each conference. This week, with the college football season in full swing, I’m going to take a look at the offensive side of the ball. We’ll also find out who is the most balanced on both sides. This data is from the 2017 season, so keep checking back here as I will be updating these rankings for each week of the 2018 season.
Now, Big Ten fans: shield your eyes. This one isn’t pretty. When I found the offensive efficiency scores of every team and averaged them out by conference, the Big 10 was dead last. Make sure to check the appendix at the bottom to see in detail where these stats came from.
Worst Offensive Conferences in College Football?
The Big 10 has 11 and 8 teams below the mean offensive efficiency score for the FBS (my version of the FBS – the Power 5 conferences and the American) on offense and defense respectively, where the PAC 12 has 8 teams above the mean on both offense and defense, which leaves only 4 teams under the mean. The Big 10 particularly struggles on offense. Intuitively this would make sense if the Big 10 is the strongest defensive conference; you would expect their offenses to struggle with tougher opposition. However, with the new version of defensive efficiency or DAD’s, the PAC 12 is actually the conference with the highest average ranking on defense too!
So now I’m really thrown off. The Big 10 is actually just the 2nd best defense, and their offense is last by a mile. So what’s going on? The Big 10 is brought down by a lot of teams being under the mean, but also by a few outliers that are dramatically worse at offense than the rest of college football. Illinois falls 2 standard deviations below the average, and Rutgers is close behind (ahead? Not sure how to phrase this) at 1.93 standard deviations, also known as the bottom two teams in college football in offensive production. You could’ve guessed this if you watched any of their games: they combined for a hard-to-watch 15 passing touchdowns last year, each with a completion percentage under .500. On the other side of the ball, Nebraska is also 1.8 standard deviations below the mean on defense. The Pac 12 doesn’t have as drastic of outliers. The standard deviation for each conference backs this up. The Big 10 is the 2nd most spread out conference on offense behind the Big 12, while the Pac 12 has the lowest standard deviation, meaning all of their offenses are similarly balanced.
The average Z score for offenses and defenses of each conference
Most balanced teams
To figure out who the most balanced teams were on both sides of the ball, I took the Z score of their offense and subtracted it from the Z score of the defense to find the range, then took the absolute value so they were all positive. This results in what I’m calling Offensive/Defensive Balance. A low score is *sometimes better (note: a team can be balanced by being great on offense and defense, but they can also be equally crappy on both sides of the ball). So who were the most balanced teams? Well, bad news Penn Staters:
The most balanced teams in the FBS
The good news is, as indicated by red, Pittsburgh (and others) are the bad kind of balanced, meaning both their offense and defense are equally bad (within .001 for Pitt), which is an accomplishment in itself. Notice that Clemson and ‘Bama come in at number 3 and number 17 (the good kind of balanced). Penn State is down at number 29: just about average. Now for the bottom 20:
The least balanced teams in the FBS
Now, this one isn’t color coded because it’s all bad. And who’s on top, none other than Oklahoma straight outta the “defense optional” Big 12. Also rounding out the top 10 is Georgia, who beat the slightly more unbalanced Oklahoma but went on to lose to the much more balanced Alabama. Now anybody who watched that game knows it was Georgia who looked the better team for most of it, so I’m not saying that balance wins games. But, it is an interesting trend and definitely looks like it pays off down the stretch to have strength on both sides of the ball. For you Eagles fans, think how vital it was to have that wild-dog defense in the playoffs when the offense sputtered against the Falcons. And then how key it was to have the offense pick up the slack when Tom Brady tried (and failed) to play receiver.
Offensive Powerhouses
The top of this one should come as no surprise:
The top 20 teams on offense
What is a bit surprising is lower down the list. Navy, a rushing powerhouse, sneaks in at #13. They are right above Wake Forest, an underrated team in the ACC. Clemson and Washington show up a bit lower than we’d expect, but they make up for it in having really balanced teams as we saw above. We’ll have to see how the ACC looks this year as the season progresses. Virginia Tech, who came in at #39 for 2017, looked pretty good against Florida State.
Also need to shout out PSU for being #9 in the FBS. Anybody that lived through the Hackenberg years knows that our current offense is looks about as different as possible from the one John Donovan and guys before him ran. When I look back on those years, I think of grey clouds, muddy fields, and WR screens being thrown into the dirt. Now I think of sunny skies and T-McSorley guns-out, heaving bombs that only our guys can get to. We’ve come a long way.
Best all-around teams
So who are the best overall teams, determined by summing up each team’s offensive and defensive Z scores? Penn Staters can finally rejoice for once during this article. Here’s the top 20:
The top 20 teams on offense and defense in the FBS
Surprisingly, the least represented conference here is the SEC, followed by the Big 10. Penn State comes in at a solid #6, right next to their Big 10 East rivals “The” Ohio State. UCF and Memphis are helped by their inflated numbers by playing some truly god-awful teams. I talked about unbalance in the Big 10 with Rutgers and Illinois… well the American conference has two even worse teams in East Carolina and Cincinnati, both 2 standard deviations below the FBS mean total team Z score. UConn is also 1.7 standard deviations below average. They’re reflected in the bottom 20:
The bottom 20 teams on offense and defense in the FBS
The Big 10 isn’t as good as people say it is
I mean, seriously, look how many Big 10 teams are in the bottom 20. SEVEN! Some of them you expect, but Michigan has seriously got to pick up the slack. They were plagued by seriously bad quarterback play this past year (9 passing TD’s, 10 INT’s). Hopefully it gets better for all of our sakes.
This paints a different picture than what you will hear in the media: that the Big 10 is the strongest conference out there; they may be ONE of the strongest defensively, but overall having half of your conference in the bottom 20 of teams is not a good look. I think the Big 10 gets its reputation from its low scoring games (in part due to good defense, in larger part due to bad offense), which football savants respect as “better, hard-nosed, how-the-game-is-meant-to-be-played” football. In reality, it’s PSU, OSU, and Wisconsin that are lifting up the conference. Now, these are 2017 numbers. Like I said, I’ll be updating this as the 2018 season goes on. Hopefully some influx of new talent and quality coaches will start to see a shift. We already have some hope with Maryland taking down Texas yet again in their season opener. Should we Penn State fans start to *gasp*… root for Rutgers and Maryland to get better? Time will tell.
Appendix
Here is a list of the stats I used to find offensive and defensive efficiency ratings, as well as explanations for other metrics that I reference:
Offensive Efficiency Score Per Game
This is similar to the QB score I had last week, except at a team level. It looks at the following stats (if it is scaled that is in parentheses):
First Downs
Penalty Yds (-1)
Pass Yards
Completion Pct
Pass TD (7)
INT (-4.35)
Sacks
Rush Yards
Rushing Yards Per Attempt
Rush TD (7)
FG Made (3)
FG Pct
XP Made
XP Pct
It is summed up for the season and divided by the number of games that the team played, to control for different season lengths.
Defensive Efficiency – DADs Per Game
Defensive Actions Distressing QB’s, the stat you know and love from my last article, is back and better than ever. It is now improved to provide a raw score rather than just comparing conferences to the top conference. I also calculated it for every team individually instead of on a conference level. Once again, controlled for games played. Stats included with scales in parentheses are:
Total Tackles (0.1)
Sacks
Passes Defensed
Interceptions (4.35)
Fumbles Recovered (4.65)
I will continue to tweak this as the season goes on to include more variables like yards allowed, points allowed, etc. Right now this is all ESPN offers.
Converting Raw Scores to Z Scores
In order to be able to add, subtract, and otherwise compare these offensive and defensive efficiency scores, they have to be standardized. This is because the average offensive score per game was 408 while the average defensive score per game was 19.5. To compensate for this, I used a Z score. This takes each raw score, subtracts the average score of the entire FBS from it (so 408 or 19.5), and then divides that by the standard deviation of the FBS scores. This normalizes the scale so that the most average team will have a score of 0. The entire league will be distributed on a normal curve with a mean of 0 and a standard deviation of 1. Now, we can add a team’s defense that scores a 1 (meaning 1 standard deviation above the average team) and their offense that scores a -2 (meaning 2 standard deviations below the average team) to say that their total team Z score is a -1.
Off/Def Balance
Takes the absolute value of the range of offensive and defensive Z scores. This tells you who is the most balanced between offense or defense. Low score is *sometimes better (note: a team can be balanced by being great on offense and defense, but they can also be equally crappy on both sides of the ball).
Team Total Z Score
Sum of offensive and defensive Z scores. Tells you who is the best on both sides of the ball. Higher is better, meaning they are above the mean on both offense and defense.
Staturdays 