At his site, College Football by the Numbers, Scott Albrecht’s done some stat crunching I found of interest.
You’ll find a table here that breaks down a bunch of offensive information per possession. Here’s the story on Georgia:
- 16th nationally in points per possession
- 17th nationally in plays per possession
- 13th nationally in yards per possession
- 86th nationally in starting field position
- 25th nationally in touchdowns per possession
- 8th nationally in field goals per possession
- 78th nationally in possessions per game
- 61st nationally in points per red zone trip
Basically, outside the red zone, this was an offense that was quite effective when the rest of the team managed to stay out of its way. The problem was, as indicated by the starting field position and possessions per game stats, that didn’t happen as much as it needed to.
The most impressive part of that, of course, is how much Georgia was able to do on offense despite all the injuries. With the walking wounded hopefully returning to full strength, it lends support to the argument that the most important part of Hutson Mason’s role this season is to be a good game manager. Now if something can be done about that whole rest of the team staying out of the offense’s way thing…
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Very interesting numbers. And Bobo really did an impressive job last year adjusting the offense. So many games where he was consistently facing long fields, and with less and less home run threats as the season wore on. He and Murray both will probably never get the full credit they deserve for what they pulled off from the Mizzou game forward.
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I don’t know what corollary there is between starting field position and points per possession. But I’m going to go out on a limb and say that if you start farther back from the end zone, it’s harder to score. That we had an 86/16 spread in field position/points per possession seems to be really impressive to me. It also explains some of why we were so low in possessions per game.
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I thought that what the offense did last year against Tech was the best indication of just how far Bobo has progressed. With everyone hurt and Gurley still hobbled the offense was able to overcome the 20 point defecit using swing and screen passes. I think that the offense will likely regress a little without Murray but that the defense will make up for it by knowing where to line up and hopefully tackling.
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Red crayons are the worst.
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“A man can be an artist… in anything, food, whatever. It depends on how good he is at it. Bobo’s is the art of play calling . He’s about to paint his masterpiece.”
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86th in starting field position – When you don’t force turnovers, play lousy 3rd down defense, and don’t return kicks, here’s where you end up. I would like to see the points per possession and the starting field position combined as a statistics sort of like total driving on the PGA Tour where they combine the rankings of driving distance and fairways hit. I bet we’re below the 50th percentile in that statistic and would show what a good job the “man who haz a crayon” did last year.
I bet the points per red zone trip statistic would improve if we improved starting field position. Sudden change in field position due to a turnover, blocked kick, or return immediately puts a defense on its heels. When you can defend the whole field, eventually an offense is going to make a mistake that bogs itself down in the red zone.
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The red zone stuff confounds a little, because that seemed like a problem that the Georgia offense had largely solved in recent years. (It certainly was better than the aesthetic nadir of 2006.)
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in your best rex harrison …..damn it all man! that woeful excuse of an offensive line cost us dearly too! blast and damnation on the lot. Had the performance been more optimum then then is no telling where this grid iron group have taken us! blast and damnation!!
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