Numbers Never Line
While the Penn State offensive line took several strides in the right direction last season, advanced run game metrics show the journey toward elite status is far from over.
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If you’ve been down on your luck and forced to eat Alpo for a month, Oscar Meyer suddenly tastes like dry-aged prime rib (don’t ask me how I know this).
If you’ve been forced to ride the bus to work, sardined between a sweaty, ripe construction worker and those flimsy, hard-to-trust mid-cabin folding doors, a ride in a 1996 Plymouth Breeze feels like cruising in a Bentley.
And, heaven forbid, if your kid’s relentless travel ball schedule monopolizes your summer, a work weekend spent alone at the Cedar Rapids Airport Econolodge might as well be a vacation in Maui.
In other words, it’s all about perception and context…which might help us explain why many Penn State followers (include us) are so giddy about the current state of the Nittany Lions offensive line. And, frankly, why the heck shouldn’t we be?
Last season, Penn State upped its rushing yards per game to 181.2 – exactly 70 yards better than the dismal 110.2 yards per game output of 2021 (ranked 113th in FBS). Additionally, despite losing its future two-comma-signing-bonus left tackle for the second half of the season and being down three Week 1 o-line starters by November, the Nittany Lions shrank their sacks allowed per contest by a whole sack, from 2.62 in 2021 to 1.62 in 2022. Points per game went up nearly two touchdowns. Total yards per play, up by more than a full yard. Explosive plays, way up. Red Zone efficiency rose to another stratosphere.
Awesome, right? Well, that depends.
If we’re judging Penn State’s offensive line based on the too-low-for-a-limbo bar set by the 2021 unit, then yeah the 2022 squad cleared that sucker with room to spare. Because of that growth, it’s not unreasonable to project that with Penn State’s returning experience (four Wk 1 2022 starters) and proven depth that the Nittany Lions offensive line could/should be one of the best units in the Big Ten this season.
But if we dig a little deeper, turn away from those traditional statistics, and instead study advanced metrics that do better job (better, not perfect) eliminating superfluous factors in order to hone in on how well the offensive line performs compared to every other FBS team, well, we find that Penn State’s ‘breakthrough’ in the trenches remains a work in progress.
Note: All these o-line numbers came from FOOTBALL OUTSIDERS.
Line Yards Per Carry – 2.73 Yards
FBS Rank: 60th
B1G Rank: 5th
Best of the Franklin Era: 2018, 19th in FBS
Worst of the Franklin Era: 2016, 120th in FBS
Essentially, the Line Yards stat cuts the fat from “home run” carries that skew traditional per rush averages while also penalizing an offensive line for negative runs by multiplying the yards lost by 1.25 (so a run for minus-2 yards counts for minus-2.5 LINE YARDS).
In Football Outsiders’ Line Yard equation, the initial 1-3 yards of a run count fully, 100 percent. Yards 4 through 8 are given half-credit (50 percent), theorizing that the initial push or hole created from an offensive line becomes less influential beyond three yards. Anything gained from nine yards to the end of the run isn’t calculated in Line Yards. So, for example, Nicholas Singleton’s 87-yard TD gallop in the Rose Bowl netted Penn State’s offensive line 5.5 Line Yards – 3 yards + 2.5 yards (5 yards x .5).
Now, while Line Yards’ hard cap on gains tries to remove a running back’s prowess from the picture – thus giving us a clearer snapshot of the o-line’s performance – it can’t eliminate greatness completely. For example, Penn State’s 2016 offensive line (oddly enough the worst performing Nittany Lions unit since 2014 in this category) still got 5.5 Line Yards for this miraculous, poorly-blocked run:
Interestingly, Penn State’s 2016 performance in Line Yards is a bit of an anomaly since this advanced stat tends to correlate with overall team success. In 2022, the Top 10 finishers in Line Yards posted an 86-38 record combined (.694 win percentage).
Standard Down Line Yards – 2.55 Yards
FBS Rank: 87th
B1G Rank: 8th
Best of the Franklin Era: 2018, 18th in FBS
Worst of the Franklin Era: 2014, 125th in FBS
Same equation, just with a slight modification.
Standard Down Line Yards calculates how well you run when defenses expect you to run. In this metric, “standard downs” means 1st down, 2nd down and 7 yards or fewer to go, 3rd down and 4 or fewer yards to go, 4th down and 4 or fewer yards to go. As bad as Penn State was in this category in 2022 it actually was good for the 5th best performance in Standard Down Line Yards of the James Franklin 9-Year Era – which illustrates how big of a sanctions-fueled mess he inherited upon arrival.
Opportunity Rate – 45.1%
FBS Rank: 106th
B1G Rank: 10th
Best of the Franklin Era: 2017 & 2018, both 9th in FBS
Worst of the Franklin Era: 2014, 124th in FBS
Often mistaken as the naming rights sponsor of the Chicago White Sox ballpark, Opportunity Rate spits out the percentage of run plays where the offensive line “does its job.” In this case, doing the job well means any run that gains at least four yards when there are at least four yards to gain (which, we think, only eliminates runs inside the opponent’s 3-yard-line).
Opportunity Rate measures consistency more than anything else since it treats a 4-yard run and a 94-yard run equally.
As you can see, Penn State was pretty abysmal in this category despite finishing 4th in the conference with 181.2 rushing yards per game in 2022. Of the teams last season that fell between 100th and 110th in Opportunity Rate, Penn State was the only squad to win double-digit games.
Power Success Rate – 64.9%
FBS Rank: 87th
B1G Rank: 9th
Best of the Franklin Era: 2018, 5th in FBS
Worst of the Franklin Era: 2014 & 2021, 122nd in FBS
For as much as we trumpeted Penn State’s revival of the dusty, century-old T Formation in 2022, it shocked us to learn the Nittany Lions were way below average when tasked with converting short-yardage situations. As you might have guessed, “Power Success Rate” registers run plays on 3rd or 4th down in which the offense needs two or fewer yards to move the chains/score a touchdown.
Couple notes:
∗ Does anyone else remember the 2018 Penn State offensive line just mashing fools up front and stealing their lunch money? Because we sure as heck don’t. But once again they’re the best of the blue and white bunch in another advanced stat category. Before we began our research for this blog post, we predicted the 2019 PSU offensive line would take home the most ribbons. Not the case.
∗ Before you freak out, the silver lining when it comes to Power Success Rate is that while it seems important to overall team success, it weirdly isn’t. Of the Top 10 Power Success Rate finishers last season, none made the College Football Playoff and only two (USC and Clemson) played in NY6 bowl games. Top 10 Power Success Rate finishers included Auburn (woof), Florida (double woof), and Indiana (the woof to end all woofs). Ohio State finished 117th in the FBS in Power Success Rate.
Stuff Rate – 16.3%
FBS Rank: 44th
B1G Rank: 5th
Best of the Franklin Era: 2019, 5th in FBS
Worst of the Franklin Era: 2014, 125th in FBS
Penn State’s offensive line jumped 72 spots in Stuff Rate from 2021 to 2022 – from 116th in the FBS to 44th — making this the unit’s biggest advanced stat improvement. Stuff Rate is limited to RB carries only (QB pulls and WR rushes don’t count) that net zero or negative yardage.
Once again, no CFP participant landed in the Top 10 in this category. TCU (31st in FBS, 15.2%) ranked the highest of the four.
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