Analytics, Basic Stats, and Recent Historic Context: The ABC’s of Penn State Football – Week 12, Michigan State
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Introduction
We’ve reached the conclusion of Penn State’s 12-game 2022 regular season slate, marking the end of an era in Happy Valley. (I told myself I wasn’t gonna cry. Hold it together, Nate). Barney Amor will never kick another punt in Beaver Stadium. As almost-canceled author Dr. Seuss once said, “Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.” The unofficial mascot of this weekly blog post ended his storied career with another signature performance, booming balls for a 50 yards-per-punt average – just how a legend should go out. #RE96ECT.
According to my notes, another era ended on Saturday, too – The Sean Clifford Era. More polarizing than the epic “yanny” vs. “laurel” debate of 2018 (when Sean was actually a sophomore academically), the 6th-year senior and 4th-year starter graced the Beaver Stadium stage for the final time on Saturday. He, and the 2022 team, went out with a 19-point win over “rival”(?) Michigan State, closing the season on a 4-game win streak during which the average margin of victory was 31 points. All things considered, it’s a good way to go out for Clifford but instead of focusing our attention solely on No. 14, today we’ll talk about this game and this season from a 30,000-foot perspective and put it in context of Penn State’s entire football history.
Quick Hitters
- Sounding like a broken record at this point…another week, another dominant performance by the defense. Against Michigan State, Manny Diaz’s destroyers allowed only 25 rushing yards. With that tiny total, the Nittany Lions finish the regular season as a top-20 rush defense. And to be honest, I was surprised Penn State didn’t rank higher in that metric – guess the Michigan 418-yard paving skewed the season average. Still, only 4 teams rushed for over 100 yards against the Nittany Lions defense all year. During the preseason, several pundits mentioned how Diaz’s defenses were traditionally susceptible to getting absolutely gashed on the ground because of the complexity of Diaz’s exotic pressures. Other than one afternoon at the Big House of Horrors, that wasn’t the case this year.
- One area where the Penn State offense struggled a bit against Sparty was pass protection and run blocking – allowing 3 sacks and 8 TFL, which is one of the worse performances of the season. A similar thing happened against Rutgers (2 sacks and 5 TFL) last week. The glass half-full look at this is that Penn State is still down several starters up front. Injuries are a big part of the recent struggles, but the fact that the team still won makes this an easier pill to swallow.
- Your surprise MVP against Michigan State was none other than WR KeAndre Lambert-Smith who had 83 yards on 5 catches (including a fantastic touchdown catch) and, as a thrower, was 1/1 for 48 yards and an in-stride touchdown to Theo Johnson. For a moment, KLS looked A LOT like the previous WR to wear #1 for Penn State (KJ Hamler, if you’re stumped). Very much looking forward to seeing him, with Parker Washington and the other young pass catchers, next year.
- One game left in the season, a still unknown bowl game, and I just want to say “thank you” to those who regularly read the ABC’s of Penn State Football this year. Love bringing you guys this unique, number-heavy perspective for each game.
Basic Statistics
For the second week in a row, the offense started off sluggishly, like a wet sponge. The defense got a takeaway on the first Spartan possession, setting Clifford and Co. up with a short field, only for the offense to squander it by going 3-and-out and missing a field goal. After another short drive, the Penn State offense finally got things in gear and took their 3rd possession 90 yards, capped with the first of two Theo Johnson TDs. At that point, you would have thought a blowout loomed on the horizon as Penn State raced to a 21-3 advantage and was a near pick-six away from ballooning the lead to four possessions. Then, on a wave of remarkable catches, Sparty came back to make it 21-16 before Penn State put it away with a 4th-down TD and a 1-play TD drive off a turnover.
Sean Clifford, in his last regular season start, completed 79% of his passes (19-for-24) for 8.4 yards/attempt, which is one of the more efficient performances of the year and a very solid way to go out. Throw in 4 TD passes and you get a 204.0 quarterback rating which ranks top 3 for his whole Penn State career.
The run game struggled a bit, managing 3.6 yards/rush — the worst average sinceWeek 1 at Purdue. The youngsters, Kaytron Allen and Nicholas Singleton, totaled 160 yards on 38 carries but didn’t have as many explosive runs as we would’ve expected against a really bad MSU run defense. Oh well, that’s probably picking nits in a 19-point win where the offensive line was out several key contributors. 2023 prediction: the sophomore running backs total 2,500 yards and 35 touchdowns combined next season.
Defensively, please pray that Manny Diaz comes back for 2023 and isn’t tempted to live amongst the Boca Raton elderly now that the FAU head job is vacant.. This unit got better as the season went on and really only had one “bad” game (Michigan). The Lions defense ranks in the top 20 team nationally. Yes, they will have some pieces to replace next year depending on who declares, but a lot of younger players got good experience this season. Even with a few early departures, this defense should be one of the best in college football next season. Against FBS opponents, the Penn State defense ranks: 11th in sacks/game, 6th in TFL/game, 1st in pass break-ups/game, 6th in total takeaways, 14th in total yards/game, and 8th in points allowed. Man, what a Happy Valley debut for the other Mr. 305, Manny Diaz.
Advanced Stats
As the 2022 campaign concludes, Penn State has now played 129 years of football. By most measures, the 2022 season is/was better than most. Therefore, I want to examine this unfinished 10-win season and where it fits into the history of Penn State football. 2022 also marks the second time Sean Clifford has guided PSU to double-digit win seasons and (likely) a NY6 bowl appearance. But how does this 10-win season sit in the context of the whole?
First, let’s just look at the total wins. The histogram below shows bins of 2 wins (0-2, 2-4,… 12-14) and the count of seasons within those bins. Now, 100 years ago, teams didn’t play 12+ games so it’s a bit skewed (we’ll do win-% later) but only 25 times in 129 years did Penn State teams win 10+ games. That puts this season in the top-20% of Penn State seasons. Twelve of those seasons have come since 1990 so the share of 10+ wins is higher over the last 30 years but this is still very good. And for those clamoring for 12+ wins, it’s happened 3 times (1973, 1986, and 1994) so Clifford not delivering an undefeated or one-loss season doesn’t make him “bad” or underperforming.
Switching to overall win-% now, we see that Penn State has had very few really bad seasons — only 14 seasons with <45% win-%. The current 10-2 record puts Penn State at 83%, placing the 2022 Nittany Lions in the higher “16” bin below. Again, this makes them a top quartile team in the history of Penn State football. Nine teams have had win-% of 88-94% and 7 finished without a blemish.
In the graph below, we have the best PSU seasons on the horizontal axis and win-% on the vertical. The label inside the dot is total wins that year. Penn State hasn’t broken 90+% win percentage since 2005 although the Lions have had 5 seasons (2008, 2009, 2017, 2019, and 2022) of 83+%. Oddly, the most accomplished team of the James Franklin Era — the 2016 Big Ten championship squad — was at 79%.
We’re going to end this one with SRS (Simple Rating System), a metric that is found at sportsreference.com. It’s a rating system that looks at point differential expected vs. an average opponent. An SRS of 0.0 means that you are average. A positive number indicates a team is above average, and negative below average. The bigger the number the better (or worse, if it’s negative) the team. Below is a histogram of PSU SRS by year. Again, Penn State fans, back to the 1880s have been blessed with very few below average (<0) teams. The 2022 team currently has an SRS of 16.7, which ranks them the 26th best Penn State team ever and 3rd best under James Franklin (2017 was 21.6 and 2019 was 17.3). The best PSU team of all time according to SRS? The undefeated but uncrowned 1994 juggernaut.
So, Sean Clifford, for all the venom flung his directions over the years, has led 2 of the best 26 teams in Penn State history and two of the top 5 of the 2000s. Therefore, he probably deserves more credit than he gets. He deserves respect for everything he’s given to the university and the football program over the last 6 years. Has he been perfect? No. Did we want him (and the team) to win more games than they did sometimes? Yes, of course. But he has been a positive influence on the team and program and has been a professional the entire time. He now passes the torch to Drew Allar, a 5-star freshman that had the privilege to learn under Clifford for one year – an experience that should aid the youngster greatly in 2023 and beyond.
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