A little more on the McIllece Sports data

I don’t know if you spent any time looking at the data from McIllece Sports I linked to yesterday, but if not, there’s something I wanted to follow up with.  The site calculates a power ranking for each program, based on the following:

Power, Offense, and Defense Ratings

These are the three primary ratings that measure the quality (or predicted quality) of a team, in terms of points scored and points allowed. They are all schedule-adjusted, meaning that the quality of opposition faced is factored into the calculations.

• Offense = The points scored value of a team’s offense (high is good)
• Defense = The points allowed value of a team’s defense (low is good)
• Power = Offense – Defense. Conceptually, this is the expected margin of victory (or defeat, if negative) versus an average FBS opponent on a neutral field. An average FBS team has a power rating of zero.

Therefore, for a simple estimate of how many points Team1 would score against Team2, add the Offense rating of Team1 to the Defense rating of Team2. This would be equal to the expected Points Scored (PS) for Team1. Analogously, to estimate how many points Team2 would score in that same game against Team1, add Team2’s Offense to Team1’s Defense.

Based on that, here’s what the numbers for Georgia over the last ten seasons look like.

YEAR	POWER	OFFENSE	DEFENSE
2006	12.8	17	4.2
2007	19.9	22.2	2.3
2008	14.5	24.3	9.8
2009	11.6	20.8	9.3
2010	14	20.7	6.7
2011	15.9	22.1	6.2
2012	24.8	27.8	3.1
2013	18.1	29.2	11.1
2014	29.7	32.5	2.7
2015	12.3	16.1	3.8

(If you want a little context for those numbers, consider that since 2010, besides Georgia, there have been a total of five seasons when SEC East teams had power ratings in the twenties:  Florida in 2012, Missouri in 2013, South Carolina in 2012-3 and Tennessee in 2015.)

Look at what Georgia’s numbers track.  You can see the fall of Willie Martinez from 2007-9 and the immediate improvement Grantham brought.  Then you can see what a disaster Grantham was in 2013 and how good Pruitt was as his replacement.

There’s also the Bobo to Schottenheimer transition, the less said about which, the better.  Also, Bobo detractors need to check out that 2013 offensive power number that came despite all the key injuries.

As for Richt, he deserves credit for taking a mediocre 2011 squad to the SECCG and deserves an equal amount of blame for failing to do the same with his best team over the decade in 2014.

All in all, it paints a pretty good numbers picture of what I subjectively feel about the last ten years of Richt’s work.  Given that, it’s probably worth noting that not much improvement is projected for Smart’s first season, with a 16.8 offensive value and a 4.1 defensive value netting a 12.7 power rating.  Kirby would seem to have his work cut out for him.  At least he’s got a friendly schedule.