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1. magnusbleuveigner said:

   October 23rd, 2009 at 4:13 pm

   I get it, depressing from a numbers (Greg Davis futility) standpoint. But surely you gained enjoyment from the victory?

   Along with our known offensive woes, this illustrates that OU has had some really good defenses. The fact that we gain less than average against them when someone other than VY is our qb is as condemning as it gets pertaining to GDGD. Also, OU gets up to play us.

   Take solace in the fact that tide has unmistakably turned despite these figures.

2. Gate_of_Horn said:

   October 23rd, 2009 at 4:44 pm

   That’s an interesting graphic. Would you care to add the same figures for all of Texas conference opponents in each year too? If those were added next to the figures for Oklahoma, then arranged in ascending order, I wonder if a trend would emerge. Common sense suggests that any conference foe with a top 25 D would have a similar effect, where there is a significant negative margin between the average YPG allowed vs. what Texas could produce against them.

   Conventional wisdom says throw out the record books in rivalry games. So, what happens when you do? Does the evidence expose a predictable positive or negative gap between the YPGA vs. produced for all opponents in a year? All opponents in a 3, 5, or 10 year stretch?

   You could tie it into Mizzou and Okie State by including them in the picture. Late sub or not, that’s an interesting addition, thanks.

3. Poor Aggies said:

   October 23rd, 2009 at 5:22 pm

   Congrats. You’ve tortured the numbers, and they’ve confessed.

4. Jimmy Rimmer said:

   October 23rd, 2009 at 6:59 pm

   Yards per game is a stupid way to rank an offense. If your offense gains 1,000 yards and puts up 21 points, it isn’t worth a damn. What’s more, when you take points allowed/scored per game into account, one must also take into account the strength of the opposition.

   I have an algorithm which does exactly that: http://rimbosity.com/ncaa/

   The number you want to look at in these reports is the “Factor.” For offense, a higher number is better; for defense, a lower number is. What that number represents is the percentage that a teams offense scores (or defense allows) versus what their opponents typically allow (or score).

   By those numbers, OU’s defense is the best in the nation. What’s more, our offense outperformed expectations — scoring exactly one field goal more than was expected based on our offensive output and their defensive total.

   What’s more, if you look at our offensive factor, our offense is one of the most prolific in the nation.

   If there’s something to complain about, it’s that our offense’s propensity for turnovers has hampered the numbers for both.

   What you and the other BC bloggers are doing in your little circle-jerk is picking out MEANINGLESS stats that defend your pre-chosen point of view. The simple fact of the matter is that throughout the Mack Brown era, the offense has been bailing out the defense — not the other way around.

   Yards per game. IDIOTIC. Rubbish. Stupid. Dumb. Lame. You wasted your time in producing this graph and we are all stupider for having read it. I can feel my IQ points drain out my ear as I look at your inept graph.

   Dumbasses.

5. Nordberg said:

   October 23rd, 2009 at 7:35 pm

   “What’s more, our offense outperformed expectations — scoring exactly one field goal more than was expected based on our offensive output and their defensive total.”

   Yay. How many possessions did we get starting in OU territory, thanks to the defense?

   OU turned the ball over 5 times, and we converted that into 16 points.

6. ghostofagroundgame said:

   October 23rd, 2009 at 8:17 pm

   Rimmer –

   Historically, PM (pre-Muschamp), there were some times when we flat out-scored some teams. But not many good teams.

   I’m not sure how you can defend the giant turd our offense laid against OU. Not sure why you want to either. I’m sure what you’re saying means something — and I can think of plenty of time when a team could win big, based on turnovers, and not dominate yards per game. But leaving the numbers to the side, it is impossible to contest that we occasionally DID a few things differently — like throwing a tailback screen, running counters, etc. — that were effective. This shows that there were some things we COULD have done to move the ball against OU. But we did not do them consistently. What we did consistently was very predictable and very direct. And very unsuccessful.

   So congratulations on being an asshole (the ad hominem shit is juvenile) and not really proving anything. We completely underperformed as an offense, had no game plan, played uninspired, did not play our best personnel, and failed to continue the few things we did right. That doesn’t seem arguable.

7. Joe Pfäffikon said:

   October 23rd, 2009 at 10:35 pm

   Jimmy Rimmer, your gay!

8. Gate_of_Horn said:

   October 24th, 2009 at 3:36 am

   Jimmy, you’ve gone full nerd rage on this one. Perhaps you could put down the Mountain Dew Game Fuel and try to add something constructive to the class?

   In any case, what is the value of a stat where you have to accept the premise that claims an offense is prolific when it’s measured against what the defense ALLOWS it to gain compared to average? If the starting point for expectations begins by first conceding what the opponent insists on shutting down, and then measures performance as a margin above or below that, then your plan of attack will likely begin to rise or sink with the perceived strength of the opponent. You won’t spend precious downs testing a perceived strength when you could opt for a perceived weakness. Eventually you will box yourself into taking the scraps that way, and miss opportunities because you failed to challenge that particular pre-chosen point of view. The outlook becomes deterministic, and the evaluation of self-potential becomes skewed.

   A football game is not won only by optimizing your take of what is easily available, it must be won by also challenging what is available in the first place. How many times in football has a statistically strong defense like Oklahoma remained strong until an opponent suddenly imposes it’s will, and the defense finds itself suffering a so-called “collapse” as future opponents also actively seek to exploit what was previously thought inefficient or ineffective strategy?

   I see your numbers, but I don’t think that they support the conclusions you describe. In a game of 11 vs. 11, if you want to laud Greg Davis for maximizing his take of what the defense leaves open, then I would agree that is fair enough praise. However, if Texas outperforms the standard, then they might only be doing so by more efficiently gobbling up what the defense drops on the floor than the rest of the competition. Then, along comes a USC, a Kansas State in Arrowhead, a West Virginia, a Boise State (who shouldn’t have expected OK to concede any points or field position to them) or even a Reggie McNeal lead Aggie team that decides to stop fighting for the scraps and kicks Oklahoma out of their place at the table for a game, or even sends them careening into a series of struggles from being exposed.

   It’s not a good idea to use a deterministic approach to evaluate the Texas offense. Whatever previous offenses did to arrive where they did vs. an opponent, Texas should expect to be the ones to change everyone’s expectations. You can’t do that by following an established numerical trend, you have to fuck up the grading curve. This is especially true if you have a down year, and you walk into a game overmatched according to your “factor”. It’s a bitter pill to come out of a game saying “well, we lost the game, but we outperformed the expectation and lost by 3 instead of 10 points, which is not merely a standard deviation but a statistically significant margin of performance, yay.”

   Texas output in points or whatever other offensive stat chosen is going to be driven up or down by the one area that your numbers and analysis chooses to dismiss, which is the underlying scheme for opposing offenses and defenses. Your numbers only look at the output, and then disregard the scheme that delivered that product. I just don’t see how that does anything more than predict a likely outcome given the same exact offensive approach. If your only rooting interest is gambling, then maybe that’s fine. But if you want to have any discourse on whether or not Texas can do more in a game than it has previously demonstrated on the spreadsheet, then at some point, you have to treat the Texas offense as the experimental group instead of the control group during discussion/evaluation.

   The interesting thing is that for whatever reason, the Texas coaches tend to make strides in this direction after difficult contests with big opponents, and not often before. Now that we’ve had a dogfight with Oklahoma, who in point of fact does have arguably the best defense in the nation, Texas has made some bold adjustments instead of very minor ones. What the writers of Barking Carnival have dared to suggest, is that perhaps those adjustments could have been tested or perfected other than in the middle of the RRS itself, when the risk was more manageable. Another lament was why the risks we did choose to experiment with (such as the WildHorn package) seemed poorly conceived, incompletely implemented, or ill-chosen when the experiment faltered.

   The one area where Texas coaching has made a significant attempt to change and deserves a little more credit is with personnel. Partially, the coaches have been forced to do some moves due to injury among the TE’s, to some extent among the RB’s, and some loss due to graduation. However, it still took a bit of commitment to throw Buckner into the mix when he’d previously been an afterthought or in some doghouse. It seems every running back in the stable but Berryhill has started a game at this point. We’ve trusted underclassmen in key roles such as kick return, leading to a Texas record, and a track schollie is catching ten yard outs from the opposite hash in a red zone play. The O-line has seen some significant substitution and rotation, and our starting WR corps has just had an overhaul. If that mentality, which seems both proactive and rational, can extend to the evaluation and application of scheme, then I think a number of people are willing to give credit for the effort. As it is, we have to sit and argue the merits of the status quo with Davis as our only example, unlike comparisons that can be drawn from Robinson, Tomey, Akina, Chizik, and Muschamp.

9. batate said:

   October 24th, 2009 at 5:20 am

   ghostofagroundgame, a few of the teams we outscored were pretty big games. Bowl games, the MNC game. We’ve been remarkably consistent on offense through the years.

   We’ve developed quarterbacks (except Sims) including a couple that we thought would not be developed, beat most of the teams we should beat, and taken care of the ball most years. We’ve adapted offensive philosophy to talent and the defenses in the league. For what it’s worth, I do count the Young years in my evaluation of Davis, just as I would count other transcendental players for other teams like Bush, TEBOW, and Bradford.

   My complaints about Davis are two:

   1) He doesn’t consider much context when he calls a game or builds an offense. Everything is in isolation. As a result, our offenses will not do as well against superior talent, except when they are fresh. (See offenses have a shelf life comments by Scipio.)
   2) Glaring problems sometimes take a long time to address. We’re turning the ball over too much this year. We’ve taken too long to adjust to the defensive changes in philosophy since OSU/Tech last year. This is a recurring theme.

   Still, Davis is good enough, and his strengths are important ones. When you have a good quarterback, a scheme that is refreshed periodically, you have a shot.

   Personally, I think we’re building toward a bruising running game with a downfield passing game based on the defenses in the big 12, thus the big backs and huge numbers of tight ends and the style of offensive lineman we’ve been recruiting. I think we were going to start rolling it out this year, but tight end injury doomed the effort.

   This year, the offense has underperformed. I think the biggest reasons are the adjusting defenses, high turnovers, and penalties. That’s mostly on coaching, but some is on the talent in the system now. But we do a pretty good job of making effective changes in the offense midstream even if they are slow to come.

10. ghostofagroundgame said:

    October 24th, 2009 at 5:51 am

    Batate –

    I left the Rose Bowls out of my analysis because I consider VY to have been a freak of nature abberation of the sort that can’t be attributed to any coach. And I wouldn’t say we developed Simms. My point is that we struggle offensively against talented teams and always have. We score tons of point against teams we overwhelm with size and speed.

11. Travis said:

    October 24th, 2009 at 6:54 am

    Vince was a freak of nature and I will have a man crush on him till the day I die, but we do have to remember that he he didn’t have a winning record against OU and he lead our offense when we lost 12-0 , so we can’t put all blame on GD and ALL credit on Vince, for the years he was at qb, it has got to go both ways.

    Greg davis is a moron that takes way to long to adjust to what is happening around him, there is no excuse to wait until half time because he is to busy eating pudding in the press box to notice we are getting our ass kicked , but none the less we are a very good 2nd half team no matter what the reason – our talent edge , the fact that colt says “fuck it” and runs his own plays, whatever it is … we get the job done in the second half.

    I think that sometimes we don’t look at the whole picture, does anyone ever think that maybe the difference from OU 04′ to OU 05′ was that their defense went from down right nasty to just down right bad?

    The only way I can make myself sleep better about our chances at winning a title this year are simply this- if that game had been last year’s team we lose, we should have been to far behind to catch up in the 2nd half, it was as bad as the 1st half in lubbock .. This team’s offense has regressed for whatever reason but our Defense is SOOO far ahead of where it was last year, that no matter what greg davis does or what colt does we will be in the game. This team as Scipio has made me admit too is built around our defense and special teams it doesnt matter what our high powered offense or lack there of is doing, this team has made a full turn around into being a full blown SEC team. – In Will we trust -

12. p said:

    October 24th, 2009 at 10:01 am

    Travis-

    It doesn’t work totally like that. OU has typically had both a great defense, and good offense. Those blowouts occurred due to the inability to move the ball consistently, and the inability to get their offense off the field. Without the combination of the two(see 2005,2006,2008,2009), OU has lost.

    While I am not a huge fan of Greg Davis, it stands to reason that these figures only apply to OU.

13. j.r.69 said:

    October 24th, 2009 at 10:07 am

    But it was AFTER the 12-0 loss to OU in ‘04 that GD was told to leave VY alone and let him play. GD was trying to force a square peg into a round hole, and would have persisted had he not been warned off. This is when VY started blooming. GD can take no credit.

14. BrickHorn said:

    October 25th, 2009 at 6:30 pm

    Rimbo,

    The number you want to look at in these reports is the “Factor.” For offense, a higher number is better; for defense, a lower number is. What that number represents is the percentage that a teams offense scores (or defense allows) versus what their opponents typically allow (or score).

    I don’t understand why your post was so vitriolic. If you had read my post carefully, instead of launching into a poorly conceived tirade, you would have recognized that my statistic of choice is very similar to yours (percentage of yards above OU’s YPGA vs. percentage of points above OU’s PPGA).

    I appreciate the analytical weakness of focusing on total yards per game, but in my opinion it is a far better measure of the offense’s contribution independent of defense and special teams than is the PPG measure. For example, applying your measure, our offense would get credit for 3 points on a drive that went for -6 yards after the defense recovered a fumble at the 18. By my method, the offense’s performance is measured by what they add – in this case, -6 yards.

    In any case, because YPG ignores pace, I’ve gone back and recalculated the numbers in terms of yards per play. This gives another, possibly more accurate, measure of the offense’s performance independent of the other units. In all honesty, I would prefer to measure the offense’s performance in terms of expected value of a drive as a function of drive starting position. This requires a lot more research than I have time to do at the moment. So the YPG and YPP will have to do. The results for each are essentially the same, although the Horns’ performance against OU in 2006 is not nearly as bad on the latter measure (only 1% off OU’s average YPPA, as compared to 20% under OU’s YPGA).

    Have you run similar numbers for scoring offense?

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