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

Introduction

Penn State has 2 wins in 2 weeks; that’s a streak – and a positive one at that. Not only is it two games without pain, but Penn State’s 23 – 7 win against Rutgers was the 900th win in program history. PSU joins Michigan, Ohio State, Alabama, Texas, Yale, Notre Dame, Oklahoma, and Nebraska as the only teams to eclipse the 900 mark. Congratulations to every player, coach, and staff member who’s contributed to even one of those 900 wins – it’s further proof (for those who may have forgotten) that Penn State really is in the upper echelon of college football.

Today, we will focus on this week’s game, season and what’s going well, what still needs improvement, and take a brief look back at the 134 seasons that have cumulated in 900 wins.

Basic Statistics Summary – Rutgers

Another week, another green fill for the Lions in the stat column that matters most – points. Looking beyond the score, PSU thoroughly dominated every major facet of the game. Domination is a relative term, though. Inherently it assumes something about the performance of the faction that is being dominated. And in this case, that opposing faction – i.e. Rutgers Football – isn’t very good. So while Penn State outgained Rutgers by nearly 2-to-1, outrushed them by 3-to-1, and controlled the ball for 13 more minutes, it feels as though Penn State still has a long way to go to if it intends to contend for conference and/or national titles in the near future. 

Let me be clear here –  the defense absolutely destroyed Rutgers. Except for a couple of hiccups (missed open-field tackles, the Rutgers prayer of a touchdown where two PSU defenders had real chances to knock down the ball) the defense was suffocating. Overall, they were more aggressive, they tackled better,  generally displayed more energy. Case in point – James Franklin has now coached 86 games as the head coach of Penn State, and the 3.2 yards/play allowed against Rutgers ranks 9th in those 86 games. The only other game this year that’s in that echelon was the Indiana game (3.4 YPP) and in none of the other 2020 games did the defense allow less than 4.9 YPP. This was unquestionably better.

The offense, however, is still underperforming. Simply, the 4.8 yards-per-play the the offense generated Saturday ranks 67th out of the 86 total Franklin-coached games and is in the same neighborhood of a typical PSU performance against defenses like Ohio State, Iowa, Michigan State, etc. – teams that have usually featured excellent defenses since 2014. It should be noted that this is NOT the worst Frankllin Era performance against Rutgers — that dubious distinction goes to the 2018 team that generated 4.2 YPP. 

Advanced Stats

For today’s advanced stats, I want to focus on Efficiency Per Possession. Earlier in the week, I tweeted THIS out regarding Penn State’s net differential to convert drives to yards and points. Boiled down, Penn State’s offense is outgaining their opponents on each drive but are failing to convert those drives to points. You can look at this two ways. An optimist would conclude that they’ll eventually figure out how to finish drives and start start stacking points. A pessimist will say that Penn State will continue to be mediocre because the offense can’t turn those long, clock-eating drives into point. Each drive like Penn State’s opening drive versus Rutgers – 17 plays, 0 points — is simply another data point to that end.

Note that all of today’s data is calculated solely from conference games from 2016–2020. Going forward in this column, we will only compare to previous years’ conference games.

Let’s first look at the yards gained-per-possession against the yards allowed-per-possession. In the graph below, the x-axis represents the yards gained-per-possession and the y-axis is the yards allowed-per-possession. The best teams are on the bottom right and the worst teams are in the top left. We see the typical cast of characters – any OSU team, the good Wisconsin, Iowa, and Michigan teams, and Penn State being the best in the lot for yardage efficiency. They combine good, productive offenses with typically stifling defenses. 

Another way to look at this is by taking the yards-per-possession and subtracting the yards-per-possession-allowed as in the below. The 2020 Penn State team ranks 3rd in the Big Ten in net yards in 2020, 16th overall since 2016, and only the 2017 team was markedly better for a Penn State squard (9.1 net yards).

When it comes to both generating and limiting yards – this Penn State team is really good. They’re not Ohio State 2017 or 2019 obviously, but they are clearly in the upper end of the Big Ten. But don’t get too excited…because the numbers are about to get really frustrating in a minute…

Let’s flip it to points per possession in the below graph/chart. Now, we have points scored (x-axis) against points allowed (y-axis). The 2020 Penn State team is in the black circle. No longer are they near the top of the conference and, instead, they’re just part of the mass of Nebraskas, Marylands, Purdues, and other middling or worse Big Ten programs. 

Next, let’s look at the net points per possession. Penn State is currently netting -0.39 points per possession (the average is exactly 0). This is good for 41st out of 70 teams since 2016 and 7th in 2020 out of 14 Big Ten teams. 

So what we have is a funky team that regularly outgains the opposition, but can’t (for whatever reason) turn those piles of yards into points. But why? Well, the table below shows what’s different this year compared to the previous four seasons. Perhaps our answer can found there?

Eureka! So… yeah, look at that. Since 2016, this is the first time that PSU has a negative net turnover margin — a combination of both the offense giving the ball away too often (2.1 turnovers lost per game) but also the Nittany Lions defense not generating their typical level of turnovers (0.86/game versus a previous low of 1.4 in 2018). 

Same thing in Red Zone Scoring Percentage. Fade-happy playcalling (half-joking), some missed field goals, and turnovers are the culprits to this LOW number – 15 percentage points below Penn State’s previous lowest mark. Opponent Red Zone Scoring Percentage is also trending in the wrong direction, but it’s not that much different than what the 11-win 2016 and 2017 squads allowed. Back then though, Penn State’s explosive offense overcame those Red Zone shortcomings.  This year, not so much.

Summary

Penn State is very good at both generating and limiting yards but doesn’t mean a whol heckuva lot if the Nits can’t score and keep the other guys from scoring. The aggressiveness that we saw against Rutgers on the defense gives me hope, not just for the last 2-3 games this year but going into 2021. We’re seeing a lot more of the younger guys on defense and that will pay dividends going forward. On offense, it’s a similar story with the emergence of Parker Washington (FBISD!) and Keyvone Lee, but the quarterback play going into 2021 is still a concern. I am not ready to give up on Sean Clifford, especially with a full off-season but for Penn State to get back to national relevance and contend for a conference title in 2021, he, or whoever the starting QB will be, must be much better next year.

BONUS – 900 Wins

After the defeat of Rutgers, I tweeted out a Tableau dashboard to honor those wins. It can be found here – Penn State 900 Wins Dashboard. In doing the research for that, I found a couple of cool tidbits:

1. We all know that Joe Paterno (rest his soul) is responsible for 409 of the 900 wins. But did you know that the 12 wins from 1887 to 1891 aren’t credited to a coach? “No Coach” ranks higher in total wins than 5 actual Penn State coaches: Daniel Reed (5), Joe Bedenk (5), Jack Hollenback (5), Sam Boyle (4), and Tom Bradley, interim (1). James Franklin currently ranks 5th with his 58 wins.
2. Penn State has had a total of 12 undefeated seasons out of 134 – 1887 (2-0), 1909 (5-0-2), 1911 (8-0-1), 1912 (8-0), 1920 (7-0-2), 1921 (8-0-2), 1947 (9-0-1), 1968 (11-0), 1969 (11-0), 1973 (12-0), 1986 (12-0), 1994 (12-0).
3. Penn State has finished inside the AP Top 5 a total of 14 times with the most recent being 2005 (3rd). All except for one of them were under Coach Paterno with the lone outlier being the 1947 team led by Bob Higgins.
4. Penn State has played in a total of 50 bowls going 30-18-2. Only 3 coaches have coached Penn State to bowl wins: Rip Engle (3-1), Joe Paterno (24-11-2), James Franklin (3-3).
5. Penn State’s most prevalent bowl has been the Fiesta Bowl where they’ve won 7 of 7. Other “big” bowl performance includes: Rose (1-3), Orange (4-1), Cotton (3-0-1), and Sugar (1-3).