More interesting stuff from Connelly’s play charting project:
If you combine the previously-discussed 99 big plays that went for touchdowns with the additional 73 big-play drives that eventually resulted in a touchdown, 172 of 214 charted drives that involved big plays ultimately finished in the end zone. Simply put, from the games we charted during the 2012-13 college football season, if an offense had a drive that contained a gain of 40 or more yards, 80.8% of those drives resulted in a touchdown. [Emphasis added.]
If you dig a little further, you’ll see there were 17 field goals that concluded drives including big plays. If you add the 17 field goals to the aforementioned number of drives ending in touchdowns (172), you’ll find that 189 of the 213 total drives (88.7%) that included a big play this past season resulted in some sort of scoring for the offense.
Now I don’t know if Mike Bobo had any direct knowledge of that correlation, or if he was just lucky, but let me take a moment to remind you which offense was second in the country last season in plays of 40+ yards from scrimmage.