Saturday, October 22, 2005

Hard-Fought Yards | by Jay

One thing I noticed in looking at the NCAA offensive rankings is the way we're grinding out the yards this year. Despite having the 12th-best offense in the country, we rank only 36th in yards per play (5.77).

How does that happen? Well, seeing as we're #2 in the country in plays run per game, it sort of makes sense.

Plays Per Game, best 20 teams

O-Rank Team Games Plays Plays/Gm Yds
Avg
Yds/Gm
14 Missouri 6 516 86.00 2858 5.54 476.33
12 Notre Dame 6 509 84.83 2938 5.77 489.67
4 Northwestern 6 496 82.67 3172 6.40 528.67
28 Oregon St. 6 490 81.67 2572 5.25 428.67
38 Indiana 6 490 81.67 2464 5.03 410.67
13 Oregon 7 555 79.29 3411 6.15 487.29
15 Houston 6 474 79.00 2843 6.00 473.83
17 Purdue 6 469 78.17 2747 5.86 457.83
5 Arizona St. 6 468 78.00 3112 6.65 518.67
29 Nevada 6 468 78.00 2566 5.48 427.67
11 Minnesota 7 545 77.86 3432 6.30 490.29
25 Boise St. 6 467 77.83 2597 5.56 432.83
85 Tulane 5 387 77.40 1671 4.32 334.20
70 Georgia Tech 6 464 77.33 2159 4.65 359.83
2 Texas Tech 6 463 77.17 3437 7.42 572.83
31 Boston College 7 538 76.86 2964 5.51 423.43
1 Southern Cal 6 458 76.33 3678 8.03 613.00
50 Western Mich. 6 458 76.33 2353 5.14 392.17
60 Illinois 6 458 76.33 2254 4.92 375.67
3 Michigan St. 6 457 76.17 3288 7.19 548.00

In comparison, check out USC: best offense in the country, and also the best yards-per-play average. Reggie Bush will do that for you. We, on the other hand, have no gamebreakers at running back; as Pat mentioned below, our longest run of the season is backup QB David Wolke's 22-yard scamper.

We're not a quick-strike offense, and I think a lot of that is by design. Occasionally we'll hit on a long pass, but mainly, we just grind it out, control the clock, move the chains, and punch it in the end zone when we get down close. We're a yardage- and time-eating machine.