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Introduction

“I have lived seven lifetimes tonight.” – Me

Though my fingers will clack clack away for a dozen or so paragraphs, I don’t really have words for what happened on the first day of September in the year 2022 A.D. (or C.E. or whatever we’re doing these days). I do know this, though: all Penn State fans aged exponentially this week, lower our life expectancy at least ten years. Talk about a rollercoaster. We went from Sean Clifford starting poorly, to being really good, to leaving for Drew Allar, to coming back and being awful, to leading one of the most impressive drives this side of Iowa City in 2017. We watched a Purdue receiver who had 500 yards in 3 seasons at Buffalo and Iowa roast the “vaunted” Penn State secondary for 153 yards and a touchdown. The Penn State defense looked suspect on some drives but came up huge in the last two Purdue possessions to give the Nittany Lions a chance and lock up the win, respectively. The run game had 77 yards in the first half, which was on pace for “pretty good,” only to finish with 98. We’ll do some fun stat-y stuff below, but there is absolutely zero that can be taken away from this game in terms of trends. This game was like the AMC stock of college football.

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Introduction

From Tuscaloosa to Los Angeles to Pittsburgh and all points in between, now is the time when every college football fanbase throws probability out the window, plugs their collective ears from listening to the voices of reason, and mentally crafts a path to the College Football Playoff…no matter how absurd or unlikely the route. Of course, the same applies in State College. The ho-hum mood that hung over Nittany Lions loyalists for the summer months has given way to unbridled optimism following the cliché grab-bag of media day and the release of that one clip where Kaytron Allen snatches Mehki Flowers’ soul (poor guy). For now, it’s OK to close your eyes and dream of spending early January fighting the traffic hellscape that is Inglewood, California at 4 pm on a Monday. Ahh, glorious isn’t it?

(Snaps Fingers)

Unfortunately, today’s ABC entry isn’t tailored for those with their head in the clouds. No, it’s rooted in reality and a bunch of math. Like we did around this time last year, we used our proprietary algorithm to calculate the win probability and a consensus final score of Penn State’s 12 regular season contests in 2022.

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Introduction

In the spring we looked at offensive explosivity from a new lens as the rate a team score touchdowns from outside of the red zone. We referred to that new metric as TORZ. Today, we flip the script and look at a defense’s ability to prevent opposing offenses for scoring beyond the red zone.

Defensive explosivity allowed is something that is not often discussed as a common statistic and metric. But, just as some offenses are more explosive than others, as we outlined in our TORZ post a few months ago, and that this offensive explosivity is reproducible for the best team (see: Ohio State), we would expect that a defense’s ability to PREVENT or LIMIT explosivity is also a repeatable skill. Teams, like Iowa for example under defensive coordinator Phil Parker, have garner big-play-prevention reputations over the years. Which leads us to the $64,000 question: Just because a defense can stop big scoring plays from happening, does that mean they’re actually a good defense?

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Introduction

With the dead skin from our July 4^th sunburns fully peeled, and as we sit a few short weeks away from preseason camp beginning, now is the time where optimism runs wild. Watch out for (insert team). Call me crazy, but (insert team) is poised to make a run. And, of course, if things break right (insert team) is going to win the Natty.

Ah, that sweet symphony of hope.

Now, leave it to us – and our proprietary rating system – to either pump more sunshine into your veins or rain on your parade as we lay out a preseason Top 25 and Big Ten power rankings. This forward-looking view of the season will show which teams have the best chance to win it all and which may see dramatic falls. Now, attempting to rank teams going into the season based off previous performances is a fool’s errand, and if there’s a fool running around the college football analytics world it’s this guy (thumbs pointed inward). So enjoy!

Before diving in, a quick note: All of the “rating” numbers below represent an actual expected points scored or allowed (offense or defense) a team would generate against an average opponent (after adjusting for conference strength). The overall rating is the offensive expectation minus the defensive expectation.

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Introduction

For years now, broadcasters and other football pundits have stressed the importance of converting Red Zone opportunities into points, especially touchdowns. But rarely is a word uttered about how well teams score on explosive, home run chunk plays from OUTSIDE the Red Zone…which doesn’t make a ton of sense considering evolution of modern quick-strike offensive football.

In analytic circles, measuring an offense’s explosivity has become an often used metric when evaluating college offenses. Until now, measuring a team’s explosivity has consisted of a combination of points per play and yards per play and while I believe that is a good indicator of explosivity, it is also somewhat incomplete.

So today we’re introducing a new metric to assess explosivity – Touchdowns Out of the Red Zone (TORZ or as it’s sometimes labeled in the graphs, TD-PORZ). TORZ is as simple as it sounds — take a team’s total TDs, subtract the number of red zone touchdowns scored, and multiply by 7. This gives us the total TORZ for the season. From there, we divide that number by the number of games played to give us our final metric.

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Introduction

In Part 1 of our introduction to Manny Diaz, we used basic and advanced metrics to outline what immediate statistical impact he’s delivered in Year 1 as defensive coordinator throughout various stops in his coaching career.

Today, we’re gonna put Diaz’s body of work under a different microscope lens and compare how his teams have performed vs. past Penn State defenses and FBS defenses, at large. Coach Diaz has served as Defensive Coordinator or Head Coach in FBS since 2010 (2010 and 2015 Mississippi State, 2011-2013 Texas, 2014 Louisiana Tech, 2016-2021 Miami) and has commanded groups that have been above average in virtually every category in every year. But how did he stack up against Penn State – a program that has some incredible defenses and legendary players in the last decade-plus? How much should we temper our expectations (or not)?

Let’s find out…

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Introduction

Now that Penn State’s first spring practice is officially in the books, the bitter, lingering aftertaste of the way up then way down 2021 season has been chased by our first shot of hope. This year, a key ingredient mixed in the collective Kool-Aid we all seem to guzzle around mid-March is the hire of new defensive coordinator Manny Diaz – The Father of the Turnover Chain and the former DC and Head Coach of Miami. Manny Diaz comes to Penn State with an impressive pedigree as a defensive coordinator that includes various stops at places like Middle Tennessee (2006-2009), Mississippi State – twice (2010 and 2015), Texas (2011-2013), Louisiana Tech (2014), and Miami (2016-2018 as DC; 2019-2021 as Head Coach).

Diaz’s lengthy resume got us wondering, “How have Diaz’s Year 1 defenses compared to what the departed DC did the previous season?” Well, we found out.

Because our tracking only dates back to 2009, we’re gonna start our analysis during Diaz’s first of two pit stops at Mississippi State (to FTB’s loyal Blue Raider readership, sorry). As always, we’re going to look at everything – from basic stats to more advanced stats — to determine Diaz’s immediate impact on a defense.

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Introduction

Cue Sarah McLachlan singing, “I Will Remember You” as we watch Brent Pry walk out the door towards Blacksburg. An Altoona man with an Alabama accent, Pry orchestrated steady, reliable and occasionally dominant defensive units throughout his six-season reign as DC in Happy Valley. That level of consistency on defense was the Yin to the offense’s erratic Yang – explosive in 2017, plodding in 2020, one-dimensional in 2021. For his final act wearing blue and white, Pry and his talent-rich defense compiled one of the best statistical defensive performances in recent history…which we’re about to explore.

Our format for this Penn State Defense Year-in-Review will mirror what we did earlier this week with the offense: basic stats first, more complicated advanced stats second. Unlike the offense blog post from Monday, however, the stats/numbers in this defense article won’t need a NSFW warning. In fact, you might gain a newfound appreciation for Pry after reading this one.

As always – all data herein is only against FBS competition (sorry Villanova) unless otherwise noted.

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Introduction

Same deal as last year: we put the much-hyped (in the preseason, anyway) 2021 Penn State offense under the microscope and examined every data point available. It’s funny, because in the Jan. 2021 edition of this blog post we spent close to a dozen paragraphs whining and complaining about how Kirk Ciarrocca’s offense underperformed versus expectation. Twelve months later, man, what I wouldn’t give for some ho-hum 2020 offensive output.

Penn State obviously took a step or two back this year (to be polite). You don’t need us or the numbers we’re about to present to tell you that. But what these basic and advanced stats DO reveal is a clearer picture of how and why Mike Yurcich’s Happy Valley debut was a bit of a flop. So with out further ado let’s all hold our breath, pinch our noses, dive face-first in this mess and analyze Penn State in various offensive metrics compared to the rest of FBS and Penn State squads from the recent past.

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Introduction

Coincidentally, Penn State’s 60-minute trajectory in the 2022 Outback Bowl mirrored most every red-blooded eater’s typical experience at game’s title sponsor.

Much like the Nittany Lions did in the first half, you roar into the place looking to devour every calorically-dense morsel in sight. Then, about halfway through (like the start of the second half) you slow down and eventually hit a wall. Finally, when the waiter comes and asks if you’ve saved any room for dessert (late stages of 4th Quarter) you puke all over yourself.

Arkansas completely dominated Penn State in the 2^nd half, outscoring the Lions 17-0 and lapping them in total yards. Following an initially sweet turned super sour 2021 campaign, we go into the off-season with a lot of uncertainty on both sides of the ball. We will have lots to write about in the off-season, but before we get there, we have one last very exciting and not at all grueling (cough), postgame wrap-up.

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