Analytics, Basic Stats, and Recent Historic Context: The ABC’s of Penn State Football – Bye Week: The Manny Diaz Difference
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Introduction
Chips are for cookies. Chips are for dip. Chips are for overheating inside my outdated iPhone the millisecond Apple releases a new iteration (I’m onto your little scheme, Bono).
The object fastened to Penn State defensive coordinator Manny Diaz’s shoulder this season isn’t a chip – it’s a damn boulder. Sedimentary? Igneous? Metamorphic? Who knows, and honestly, who cares. All that matters is that the jilted former head coach (seriously, have you read the details of his ugly estrangement with Miami??!?!) is pulling levers and pushing buttons with an edge capable of cutting diamonds after administrators snatched away Diaz’s dream job and hired an overpaid replacement who Aqib Talib’d his Turnover Chain and tossed it in the trash.
Mix together all that disrespect with a young, talented, and perhaps underrated defensive roster and what Diaz has concocted thus far is a wicked brew bubbling in a caldron of chaos for opposing offenses. Purdue QB Aidan O’Connell – the All-Big Ten dynamo with the 71.8 completion percentage in 2021 – barely connected on half of his 59 attempts against Penn State’s ‘If It flies, it dies’ secondary. Two weeks later, Auburn’s terrifying backfield tandem of Tank Bigsby and Jarquez Hunter – they of fabled SEC Speed – couldn’t muster more than 4 yards a carry vs. Diaz’s D, ending a coach-killing afternoon by posting a yawn-worthy 55 yards on 14 carries combined. And most recently, Penn State’s defensive ends made future NFL millionaire Northwestern LT Peter Skoronski look incredibly mortal.
Through 5 games, Manny Diaz’s defense hasn’t just been good. It’s been historically great in several of the advanced metrics that got former PSU DC Brent Pry a head coaching job in the same conference from which Diaz was shown the door. So while the miserable huffers and puffers continue to recite, “Well, let’s see if all this man coverage and exotic pressure works against Michigan, rabble, rabble, rabble,” we decided to take a deep breath and used the bye week to reflect on what Diaz’s has put on tape thus far.
These 2022 Lions are doing things that no Penn State defense has done in recent memory, and, by golly, it’s time to talk about them in this very special edition of the ABC’s of Penn State Football.
Advanced Stats
No sizzle, all steak here. So let’s jump right into our advanced metrics for the defense. As always, we’re only using data from FBS vs. FBS games (sorry FCS schedule-fillers) from the 2009 through the 2022 seasons. For the newbies, I’ll do my best to explain any unique stats as we go.
First up, HAVOC. This stat is the sum of interceptions, recovered fumbles, tackles-for-loss, sacks, and pass break-ups a defense has as a function of total plays. HAVOC was invented by Bill Connelly currently of espn.com. In the graph below, I’m comparing the 2022 Penn State team’s HAVOC plays per game to those of every other Penn State defense since 2009. The color shades represent one of the five stats that collectively make up total HAVOC. As you can see, Diaz’s PSU defense is racking up 21 total HAVOC plays per game, which is higher than any previous Penn State team in our dataset. That mark is also a full 7 HAVOC plays more per game than the FBS average of 14.2.
Here’s the bold-font headline for in-house Penn State’s graphics team to plaster on social media edits: As of right now, Penn State’s HAVOC creation would be tied for the 4th most of any FBS defense since 2009.
As you might expect, Penn State’s inflated HAVOC numbers are strengthened by the unusually large amount of PBUs tallied — currently 10.8/game, which is insane and a consequence of Diaz’s aggressive coverage schemes and Penn State’s loaded secondary. For comparison, the current PBU/game average is twice as many any previous Penn State team posted and is the best mark in all of FBS football since 2009 (2nd place is the 2010 Oregon team at 7.7…so Penn State is in a different stratosphere in this category). In other areas, TFL and sacks are down versus some recent Penn State teams but still respectable at 5.4 (FBS TFL average – 6.1) and 2.4 (FBS Sack average – 2.4).
Not fully content with these surface-level HAVOC numbers, I dug a little deeper and calculated what I call the “HAVOC Index.” What’s the HAVOC Index? Glad you asked: this metric weighs various plays differently based on impact. A turnover (INT or recovered fumble) is weighted as 1, a TFL or sack is 0.5, and a PBU is 0.25 (since it’s basically just an incomplete pass, albeit a forced incomplete pass). An average FBS team registers a 5.8 HAVOC Index score – marked with a horizontal line in each column below. So far in 2022 the Nittany Lions have accumulated their highest HAVOC Index score since ever (well, for the years we have info, at least) and are currently on pace to be 24th-best FBS team (out of 1,771) since 2009. That’s pretty damn good and a metric directly attributable to Manny Diaz’s style of defense.
Another area we looked at was Scoring Efficiency. Again, in this metric we pitted the 2022 Penn State defense versus other Penn State teams. In our chart, we have the points allowed per drive (y-axis) and the %-of drives in which a defense gives up points (the lower (better) the number, the darker the shade of blue). Both datapoints are labeled. Through 5 games, Manny Diaz’s defense is allowing 1.2 points per drive (FBS average is 2.3) good for the 2nd best performance by a Penn State defense since 2009, trailing behind only the 2009 squad. Additionally, the 2022 PSU defense is only allowing opponents to score on 21% of their drives, which is also 2nd best among Penn State teams since 2009. On average, an offense possesses the ball 10-12 times a game. The FBS average for percentage of drives ending in points is 38%. Therefore, using simple math, we can conclude that 2022 Penn State is giving up a full 2 scores less per game than a standard FBS defense.
Up next…yards-per-possession (x-axis) versus the points-per-possession (y-axis). In this chart, we see how spoiled Penn State fans have been, blessed with quality defenses, for the last 15 years. Here, lower and to the left is better and, as you can see every Nittany Lion logo is positioned deep in that lower-left territory. As we discussed previously, the trend-line says that a certain amount of yards-per-drive should yield a certain points-per-drive result. Above the line means a defense is giving up more points than they should and below the line means a defense is giving up fewer points than expected. There are many other factors that contribute to this – like a punter who pins the opposing offense deep causing drives to require more yards to get into scoring position (see: Amor, Barney).
I circled the 2022 team to assist your eyes. The yards they’re allowing per drive is basically middle of the pack compared to other recent Penn State squads, but the points-per-drive they’re allowing is the 2nd-fewest since 2009.
We end with the overall rating of all defenses since 2009. Again, the year-by-year FBS average is marked by the horizontal line in each column. Every Penn State defense since 2009 has been better than average in this metric. The 2022 squad is no different.
This 2022 Penn State defense currently has the 66th-best overall defensive rating in FBS since 2009, which is the top 4% of all defenses over that time. Conversely, PSU’s 14.3 rating currently ranks 6th in the Big Ten behind Minnesota, Illinois, Michigan, Iowa, and Ohio State…so yeah, it’s still early. But if Penn State can keep creating loads of HAVOC plays like they’ve generated thus far, and maintain their current defensive efficiency metrics (points-per-drive, yards-per-drive) then I would venture they will pass most of those teams and end up as one of the best defenses Happy Valley has seen in over a decade.
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