PSU ABC's

Analytics, Basic Stats, and Recent Historic Context: The ABC’s of Penn State Football – Week 5: PSU vs. Northwestern

Photo courtesy of PSU Athletics

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Introduction

Calling the weather conditions during Saturday’s Penn State-Northwestern game ‘miserable’ would be a disservice to what those scattered poncho’d warriors endured inside Beaver Stadium. The steadiness and intensity of the rain – the dying, damp breathes of Hurricane Ian — was apparent through my TV (except when baseball came on and the screen size shrunk by 80%) and it absolutely looked like a place I wouldn’t want to be. But, sitting in my living room in Houston, Texas where the weather outside was 85 degrees and sunny didn’t feel much better. Not after that performance. The turnovers and sloppy offensive play made us all feel like we were sitting in a cold, heavy rain all day – even if only figuratively. Now, the silver lining is that the Nittany Lions managed to win the game. And, at the end of the day, that’s all that really matters in any given week. Penn State enters the bye week fairly healthy and with a 5-0 record. Still, like the weather Saturday, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows around Happy Valley, so let’s reflect on the ups and downs of the Nits’ 10-point escape vs. the Wildcats. Off we go…

Quick Hitters
  1. Unfortunately, I’m a dummy for myriad reasons…but, in this context, it’s because I only have tracked turnover margin – not total turnovers by team — in a game-by-game manner going back to the start of James Franklins Penn State tenure. Total blind spot on my part. On Saturday, the Nittany Lions were -2 in turnover margin for the 15th time since 2014. They are now 7-8 in those games, which is actually way better than the average 25% winning percentage that FBS teams have compiled when losing the turnover battle by 2.
  2. Against Northwestern, Penn State had 8 passes defensed according to espn.com. Incredibly, that number DROPPED the Lions average to 10.8 passes defensed per game this season. Illinois, Clemson, and Duke are tied for 2nd with 7.5/game. Until Manny Diaz’s arrival, I never really appreciated how disruptive defensed passes were and I always treated them, in my mind, as just incomplete passes. They’re more than that, though. These are proactive defensive plays. Passes defensed absolutely matter and I will start tracking them.
Basic Statistics

The basis stats table is what it is, OK? Don’t take too much stock in the numbers (but also, keep reading and don’t click away. Thanks!) Fumbles were contagious. There were some important dropped passes on good throws. There were a couple of really bad throws. There were some issues on the defense in coverage (the Northwestern TD comes to mind). Penn State was clearly the better team throughout the game, but Northwestern is always going to be a tough out — a disciplined team no matter their talent level. That, plus the miscues mentioned above, makes for a close game.

There are a few nuggets to feel good about, though, from the basic stats table (all stats FBS vs FBS only. and ranks are national).

  • The offensive production of 5.3 YPP is merely average, but on the season Penn State ranks 31st nationally, which is good and a monumental improvement from 2021.
  • The defense improved on its season average and now ranks 19th in YPP allowed at 4.7.
  • The rush defense had a great performance and is now 14th in yards/carry allowed and 5th in rush yards/game allowed. Elite stuff.
  • The rush offense now ranks 26th in rush yards/attempt (4.94) and 28th in rush yards per game (193). Compared to last year this is night and day.
  • The pass defense is 90th in allowed yards per game (262), which doesn’t seem great at face value… but this stat is very misleading. Teams are throwing on Penn State 45 times per game (most in FBS) and the defense is 14th in pass yards/attempt. Side note: I will bet my salary that in the opening sequence of the Penn State/Ohio State game FOX shows a graphic talking about how the Nittany Lions give up XX passing yards and Ohio State throws for YY yards and it’s a weakness for Penn State. I will invariably flip a table over in my house because of how stupid it is to compare total yards to total yards. That’s why the context part of the ABC’s is so important…
  • Penn State is still 17th in turnover margin despite the performance yesterday. The Lions lead the nation in fumbles recovered (7), and rank 21st in interceptions (5). The Manny Diaz Effect.
Advanced Stats – The Barney Amor Fan Club

Folks, it’s tough being a punter. There’s no glory. No fame. No sweaty guy in a suit dropping the NIL bag at your feet, begging you to come to Whatever U. Heck, there aren’t even pictures of you to post on blogs. Our normal photo service didn’t upload any Barney Amor pics from yesterday, so all we have is this Penn State photo of Amor…and he’s not even punting! He’s No. 96, the guy congratulating Jake Pinegar post-FG.

James Franklin said after the game that not enough people are talking about the most consistent weapon on the Penn State team – punter Barney Amor. He has been incredible and we’ve been talking about him as much as anyone, but we’ll go in depth this week. Anything else you’d like us to discuss Coach Franklin? I am still available for the Analytics Director role…

We’re taking punt stats from 2018 through 2022 and looking at the Penn State punters versus the rest of FBS. This data come from footballdb.com. In case you forgot, the Penn State punters were Blake Gilliken (2018 – 2019), Jordan Stout (2020 – 2021), and now Barney in 2022.

We’ll start with just average yards per punt. In this metric, we see that Barney isn’t a boomer but is still averaging a respectable 44.7 yards. This is likely somewhat misleading since so many of his punts are at/around midfield. But even with that, in 2021 Jordan Stout was only averaging 46.0 yards through the year. Through the first half of the year, though, Barney is averaging more yards per punt than Blake Gilliken as a junior or senior…which was kind of surprising.

Where Barney is 100% changing games is when it comes to gifting the opposing team with poor field position. The only stat that’s really tracked is ‘punts downed inside the 20.’ In this category, an average punter has an Inside the 20 rate of 33%. Since 2018, there have been 501 FBS punters who have stats in the database I used, and currently Barney Amor is 3rd overall in the percentage of his punts being downed inside the 20 yard line at 61%. The best Penn State Inside the 20 rate before this was 52% by both Gilliken in 2019 and Stout in 2021. Those two performances rank 16th and 17th overall since 2018, which falls in the 96th percentile of all FBS punters. Barney currently is in the 99+ percentile.

Barney has also been quite good at minimizing touchbacks. The average FBS punter gets a touchback on 7% of their punts. Amor is currently at 4% (75th percentile) and was only bested by Jordan Stout’s 3% in 2020. Compare this to Blake Gilliken, who had a rate of 16% in 2018.

As Penn State throttles down and recuperates during the bye week, resting up before the three game gauntlet that will make or break their season, there have been a lot more positives than negatives in 2022. Amor is definitely one of those positives. The Lions will need him to keep pinning opposing offenses in the shadows of the goalposts if they plan to escape October unblemished.

October 2, 2022by FTB Nathan