Rolling the analytic dice

Bill Connelly ($$) has an exhaustive piece up about how analytics are seeping into college football playcalling.  Check out this chart for one example of that:

It’s slow, but it’s coming.

College football’s most visible believer is Lane Kiffin, whose first real exposure to the strategy came at Alabama, believe it or not.

He quickly concluded that if or when he got another head-coaching opportunity, he would commit to innovation in two ways. First, he would combine a lot of pro-style concepts and present-day bells and whistles (motion, et al) with what he called “Baylor tempo,” reminiscent of the 85-plays-per-game Baylor offenses of the early 2010s. Second, he would go all-in on the math. He would quickly become CAI’s most vocal client.

After winning two Conference USA titles in three years at FAU, Kiffin earned a trip back to the SEC as head coach at Ole Miss, and he has remained committed to those initial tenets. Over the past two seasons, his Rebels have averaged more snaps (78.9) and more fourth-down conversion attempts per game (3.6) than anyone else in the FBS. Sometimes it works beautifully, as when Ole Miss went 4-for-4 on fourth downs against eventual national champion Alabama and had the Tide on the ropes deep into the fourth quarter. Other times, it fails for all to see, as when the Rebels went a Chargers-esque 2-for-5 against Bama in 2021, failed on the first two drives of the game and got blown out.

I sort of liken this to how spread offenses started out as a way for programs with less resources to level the playing field against the bigger boys, only to find it become a dominant strategy across the board.  We’ll see if analytics follows a similar course.