Matt’s done his annual look at yards per play, conference by conference, and has posted the numbers for the SEC’s 2021 season (conference play only, with the championship game not included).
If something seems amiss there, well, you’re not wrong. I mean, fifth in the conference in net YPP should result in something better than a 2-6 conference mark, shouldn’t it?
Since Net YPP is a solid predictor of a team’s conference record, we can use it to identify which teams had a significant disparity between their conference record as predicted by Net YPP and their actual conference record. I used a difference of .200 between predicted and actual winning percentage as the threshold for ‘significant’. Why .200? It is a little arbitrary, but .200 corresponds to a difference of 1.6 games over an eight game conference schedule and 1.8 games over a nine game one. Over or under-performing by more than a game and a half in a small sample seems significant to me. In the 2021 season, which teams in the SEC met this threshold? Here are SEC teams sorted by performance over what would be expected from their Net YPP numbers.
Ole Miss and Florida were the SEC teams that saw their actual record differ significantly from their expected record. The Rebels overachieved by winning both of their one-score conference games and posting the best in-conference turnover margin (+5) of any SEC team. Meanwhile, Florida ended the Dan Mullen era by dropping their final four SEC games. Of their six conference defeats, four came by a touchdown or less. The Gators also had the worst in-conference turnover margin of any SEC team (-8) and were done in by non-offensive touchdowns.
Being an offensive genius who develops players better than anyone only gets you so far, it seems.
Get The Picture 
As for poor ole Georgia, they once again underperformed. A 100% winning percentage sounds great, but not when you’re expected to win 103% of your games. Maybe next year.
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This does lead me to think that Napier can get it headed in an annoying direction sooner rather than later. It implies to me that they are talented, but were poorly coached, then quit.
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*were talented before the last of McElwain’s recruits left and the portal exodus occurred
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In Napier’s favor, MuLLLLLLLen did drop the bar incredibly low. It won’t take much for them to be “improved”. They will still suck, just not quite as bad as last year.
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It’s a bar even an actual gator could step over
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Gonna talk out of both sides of my mouth but the net ypp shows how much better than everyone else Georgia was. The better team won the national championship game and was upset by an underdog in the sec championship game. That being said, if your model predicts an expected winning % above 100%, it’s wrong and you need to fix it.
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Buuuutt PAAWWWLLLLLL…we ain’t played nobody with a better YPP yet…
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I never liked MuLLLLen even before he was the HC in Hogtown. But I don’t think that he was a terrible coach; I just think he is naturally an asshole. To me, those stats show that he quit on his team, and they in turn quit on him. And not just him, the team also quit on playing for UF. Dan could afford to quit because he has a bunch of money already banked. It was so bad at UF that Napier would have a hard time not making some improvement, but I can’t see any way for it to be an instant 180 degree turnaround.
Patience Gators. Meanwhile, FTMF.
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