Analytics, Basic Stats, and Recent Historic Context: The ABC’s of Penn State Football – The 2022 Offense Year-in-Review
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Introduction
Operating a bit in the shadows, away from the main stage, away from the spotlight that felt more like an interrogation lamp in 2021, with all the burdensome hype and fanfare now piled on Coordinateur du Jour, Manny Diaz, Penn State offensive playcaller Mike Yurcich cobbled together a stealthy bounceback campaign in 2022. Dare we say it…Mike Yurcich’s offense actually looked like a Mike Yurcich offense! More points, more plays, more explosivity, more formational diversity, more of the stuff that was promised when we – among another media outlets – sunshine-pumped Yurcich’s surprise hire 24 months ago.
The 2022 Penn State offense saw tremendous improvement in virtually EVERY basic and advanced stat versus the flat-tire, low-bar-setting 2021 group. Led by a veteran quarterback that stuck around to clean up his own mess, a much-improved offensive line, and an injection of young but mature skill position players, the 2022 offense was something to remember. So, like we do every year, let’s put a number-laden bow on the 2022 Penn State offense by examining some of the statistics that delineate the massive Year 1 to Year 2 jump – a vast improvement that fueled the Nittany Lions’ 11-win return to form.
Yardage
Sorry to excavate buried, repressed memories, but the 2021 Penn State offense finished 87th in yards per game (against only FBS competition). And honestly, if you remember back at how lost Yurcich’s group seemed at this time last year, an 87th national ranking feels surprisingly high in retrospect. Well, in 2022, the Lions finished 31st in this same metric, improving from 365 YPG to 434 YPG (22% year-over-year gain). What’s interesting is that this statistical leap was almost entirely powered by the Penn State rushing attack. The 2021 offense played 12 FBS games and had 4,386 total yards (1,323 rushing and 3,062 passing). This works out to 110 rushing yards and 255 passing yards per game which are both, um,…how to say this…not good. In 2022, the Lions generated 5,637 total yards in 13 FBS games (2,354 rushing and 3,283 passing). This calculates to 181 RYPG and 252 PYPG. So, I retract the above statement; the 2022 improvement wasn’t “almost entirely powered by the Penn State rushing attack,” it was COMPLETELY powered by the Penn State rushing attack – thanks to the emergence of Nicholas “Don’t Call Me Nick” Singleton and Kaytron “Fatman” Allen who arguably formed the best RB duo in the country…as true freshman.
On a per play basis, these additional 1,200 yards in 2022 came on only 58 more plays, resulting in a monumental improvement of 1.1 yards/play (from 5.1 in 2021 to 6.2 in 2022). This mark was good for 27th best in the country and 3rd in the Big Ten (behind playoff losers Ohio State — 7.3 and Michigan — 6.6) and was Penn State’s best performance since 2017. The red lines in the graph represent the season average across FBS. Seeing it in graph form really illustrates the 2022 turnaround for the Nittany Lions offense, halting a downward trend in this stat over the previous 4 seasons.
Scoring
Like yardage generation, scoring recovered substantially in 2022, as well. At 35.8 PPG, the Nittany Lions offense had the 15th highest scoring output in all of college football for the 2022 season – nearly 2 TDs better than the 23.9 PPG posted in 2021. As you can see in the chart below, Yurcich has Penn State back in Joe Moorhead’s PPG neighborhood when the old OC’s 2016 and 2017 attacks lit up scoreboards like the ‘HOT NOW’ sign at Krispy Kreme. Full disclosure, while scoring goes down as an offensive metric, the defense and special teams play a huge part in this success, as well (generating turnovers or scores of their own). We’ll discuss the 2022 PSU D at length next week. But, in elementary terms, if you want an increase of 4 wins over the course of a season, scoring 12 more points per contest certainly doesn’t hurt.
Sick of reading about feel-good positive improvement from Penn State’s offense yet? Didn’t think so. Next up: Red Zone Efficiency. Reminder, Red Zone Efficiency calculates the number of points a team scores per Red Zone visit (or PPRZA for short). Penn State’s 2022 offense tied for second in all of FBS in Red Zone Efficiency, scoring on average 5.8 points per trip! This was tied with Ohio State, Georgia, and Washington State and only trailed Tennessee. Conversely, the 2021 PSU Offense tied for 114th in the country in this metric, sharing real estate with UMass and Rutgers in the rankings. Red Zone Efficiency was the single biggest statistical year-to-year turnaround for Penn State and (as frequent ABC readers know) it occurred in a statistical category vitally important in determining overall success.
Again, improved offensive line play + a solid running game + a veteran QB = good things.
While the Red Zone Efficiency was extremely high, Penn State only generated 22.6 of their total 35.8 points from Red Zone attempts, which ranks 28th nationally. This means the Lions generated 63% of their scoring from red zone attempts (and therefore 37% of their scoring from explosive plays of 20+ yards, long field goals, or defense/special teams TDs). In the Big Ten, only Iowa (lots of defensive scoring) generated a lower share of points from non-RZ scoring (49%).
If we look at total non-Red Zone production – a good measure of a team’s overall explosivity on offense — we see that the 13.2 points per game for 2022 Penn State is again, like so much else, the Lions best performance since 2017. What’s also interesting here – if you check out the chart below — is how poorly the 2015 and earlier teams fared in this metric. The 13.2 non-RZ PPG this year was the 9th best in the country.
HAVOC Allowance
Besides the running game, the biggest turnaround in 2022 versus the previous few years was the improvement of the offensive line and limitation of negative plays. We start with just the number of sacks and tackles for loss allowed per game. In 2022, Penn State allowed 6.2 Sack+TFL per game, which ranked 27th nationally. The ranking may not seem that impressive but compared to how the team had performed over the last several years, this is a big improvement and marks the best a Penn State team has done in this stat since 2013. Even in the 2016 and 2017 seasons, the offense was allowing 2-3 more of these plays per game even with a generational running back and one of program’s best quarterbacks.
Bringing the other HAVOC stats into play, let’s take a look at the total HAVOC Plays per Game (sack + TFL + turnovers) allowed. Again, we see a dramatic improvement in 2022 versus the previous batch of recent seasons. The Penn State offense only had 14 turnovers all year and NINE of them were in two games (5 against Northwestern and 4 against Ohio State). This offense, led by the maligned but steady veteran QB in Sean Clifford, protected the ball as well as any Penn State team in recent memory. In 2012 and 2018 Penn State had 13 lost turnovers, marginally better than the 14 surrendered in 2022.
Finally, we’ll end by calculating Penn State’s Overall Efficiency (OE) on offense. In this metric the 2022 Penn State offense posted its best score since 2017 and 3rd best since 2009. The 38.2 OE number was good for 25th in the country and 3rd best in the Big Ten.
The entire coaching staff from James Franklin, to Mike Yurcich, Phil Trautwein, Ja’Juan Seider, Taylor Stubblefield, and Ty Howle deserve a ton of credit for this turnaround in every statistical category. Yes, it was a low bar to clear from 2021, but the 2022 group soared past it. With so much offensive production from the skill positions returning, and walk-on-waterer Drew Allar (no pressure) set to take the sticks, plus factoring in Mike Yurcich’s massive Year 2 to Year 3 leap at Oklahoma State as historical precedent, momentum from 2022 should carry over to 2023. Because of that excitement, enthusiasm and those lofty expectations, the next 8 months are going to be VERY long for Penn State fans…but in a good way.
