PSU ABC's

Analytics, Basic Stats, and Recent Historic Context: The ABC’s of Penn State Football – Iowa Recap

Introduction

By now, I hope you know what we try to do here. We look at the stats of the latest Penn State football game loss from a statistical and contextual analysis and compare it to years gone-by. And now, with each passing week, the historic nature of this team is starting to add up for all the wrong reasons. 

Basic Statistics – Summary

In the basic stat table, we highlight the team that won each category and, week over week, Penn State has had something good to hang their hats on despite always failing in the most important row – the score. Whether it was winning the yardage battle or controlling the ball, there was something positive. Against Iowa, there was nothing that gives hope. Yes, Penn State had more passing yards than the Hawkeyes (280 to 186) and completed a slightly higher percentage of passes but this didn’t matter. After scoring on their 2nd possession to take their first lead since Indiana (which was game 1 in case you forgot) Iowa thoroughly dismantled the Lions and this game wasn’t close. Even after Clifford subbed in for an ineffective Will Levis and threw two touchdowns in two plays to cut the lead to 31–21 the game was never really in doubt. Any existing doubt about this week’s outcome was erased when Penn State chose to punt down by 13 with just over 3 minutes remaining. What also may have been erased with that punt was any faith that this team might have the skill, organization, will, and heart to gain anything positive from the 2020 season.

This week, rather than go through the detailed graphs, analytics, and statistical breakdowns, we’re going to focus on historic context. In honor of the first Penn State team to start 0-5 in the 134-year history of the program, let’s see how far we need to go back to find other points of futility in the storied history of this once gloried program. Here are the Top 10 shocking, depressing, and embarrassing stats of your (not my – I’m a Coastal Carolina fan now) 2020 Penn State Nittany Lions.

  1. 2020 Penn State is the first team ever to start the season ranked in the Top 10 and start the season 0-5.
  2. Penn State is riding a 5-game losing streak. The last time the team had a losing streak of 5 or more games was in 2004 when they lost 6 in a row. Over that stretch, they scored a total of 44 points (7.3 PPG) and allowed a total of 93 (15.5 PPG allowed). In 2020, they’re scoring 24.6 points per loss but allowing 36.0 points-per game. 
  3. Since 2009, and including 2020, 18 Big Ten teams (out of 164) have allowed at least 36 PPG including this year’s Nittany Lion squad who is currently tied for 12th in the conference with Michigan at 36.0 and only ahead of Rutgers who is allowing 36.8 PPG.
  4. Sticking with the defense, the Nittany Lions have allowed over 25 PPG several times this century
  • 2016 – 25.4 
  • 2013 – 26.2
  • 2001 – 25.5

A Penn State defense has never allowed as many points per game as the 2020 version is currently surrendering. The defense is allowing 1.38 points for every minute they’re on the field (this includes all the offense’s pick-sixes and scoop-and-scores) and would rank 1347th out of 1383 teams between 2009 and 2019.

  1. Penn State currently has a -1.8 per game turnover differential (13 turnovers allowed to 4 takeaways). This currently ranks #124 (out of 127 teams in FBS). The 2.6 turnovers allowed per game is the highest turnover rate of the 21st century by a Penn State team and only the 2004 team was close giving up 2.5 per game.
  2. The offense is currently averaging 5.2 yards per play. Since 2009, only two Penn State teams have been worse (2014 – 4.6; 2011 – 5.0). Coincidentally, or not, Kirk Ciarrocca’s first years at Western Michigan and Minnesota were his other lowest marks to date in YPP – 4.7 and 4.9, respectively.
  3. Penn State’s offense has an average Time-of-Possession of 32.3 min per game which ranks 2nd in the last 11 seasons – only behind the 2009 squad which averaged 32.8 – and in the top 10% of the last decade. This is a staple of Kirk Ciarrocca offenses. As an offensive coordinator, he has averaged over 32 min TOP in 5 of 7 years before 2020. Unfortunately, the offense isn’t producing points at an acceptable rate and their 0.76 points-per-minute TOP ranks ~1030/1383 since 2009 and will almost certainly go down as one of Ciarrocca’s worst years aside from, again, his first seasons at WMU and Minnesota.
  4. The offense has allowed 11.2 sacks plus tackles-for-loss per game which will go down as the worst PSU team since at least 2009 and is only better than 52 FBS teams in the same time period. This is somewhat misleading, though, because Penn State runs so many offensive plays (averaging 80.2 per game; an average college offense runs 70/game). When you add up the ineptitude, we come back to Havoc Avoidance from a couple of weeks back and the current team sits at 82% HAR (18% of their plays end in some form of negativity).
    This remains below the typical average of 85% HAR and will rank right up there in PSU history with the offenses of John Donovan (82% and 81% in 2014 and 2015 respectively).
  5. The offense still lacks explosivity with an explosion rate of 1.28 point*yard/100-plays/game. It’s not historically bad in recent Penn State terms – that honor goes Galen Hall’s 2011 team that had a per game average of 0.87. This year’s team ranks in the bottom 1/3rd of modern college football.
  6. In my WAR analytical system, we calculate the offense and defense overall effectiveness values and subtract them for the overall team performance. A value of close to zero (-0.35) would be a perfectly average team and the range since 2009 is from -46 (the 2018 UConn Huskies who went 1 – 11 and scored 22.2 PPG while allowing 50.8) to a rating of 50.8 (2013 Florida State Seminoles, National Champions, my pick for best team of the 2010s). This year’s Nittany Lions, through 5 games, have a rating of -14.51 which puts them FAR below average and a far cry away from even the 2010 Penn State team which, by my rating, was the 2nd worst in  the last decade or so with a rating of -1.7 and was basically average. That team finished 7 – 6 and went to the Outback Bowl. No other Penn State team has been below average since 2009. Not the teams of Paterno’s last years, not the sanction hampered teams led by Bill O’Brien, not even in the first two years of James Franklin’s tenure with inept offenses but really good defenses has a Penn State team been this bad. For the rest of the 2020 season there are likely no answers either. 

As fans, we need to find ways to endure what’s left of this year. There will almost certainly not be some in-season change – coaching, players, or otherwise – that will change who this team is or the near-term trajectory of where they’re going. There will be time for that in the winter and spring and if something big doesn’t happen during the offseason, we should likely worry. But for the rest of this year – #TEALNATION!

 

November 23, 2020by FTB Nathan