Phil Steele has his own YPP metric, although in this case, it stands for yards per point. The higher a team’s defensive YPP, the stingier the defense has been, and the more likely it is that the team’s record will either regress or remain the same the following season. Since 1990, 84.7% of the teams with a defensive YPP of 21.35 or higher have followed with a weaker or same record the next year.
There was only one team in college football which managed a defensive YPP higher than 21.35 last season. That team? Georgia (26.4).
Get The Picture 
Between this one a nugget no. 2, you’re not making me feel any better about this season. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m done with stats. Do these people have nothing better to do than come up with this stuff?
LikeLiked by 2 people
To get stats, ya gotta have good play calling, plus scheme, iron sharpening iron…”and old lady luck saving us”…GO DAWGS!
LikeLike
Well… considering we went 14-1 last year… regardless of how good this team is or any of these metrics, I’d say there’s a pretty solid chance our record ends up equal to or weaker. Equal to would still result in a hell of a year
LikeLiked by 8 people
Is this team going to give up more points than last year? Probably so. Are they going to become a sieve that would make Marion Campbell, Richard Bell, Todd Grantham, Willie Martinez, and Kevin Ramsey blush? No way.
If that metric drops to 22 or 23, does that spell disaster? No. I look at stats through the lens of the bell curve. We were on the right tail (2 1/2 to 3 standard deviations from the mean). That means you’re in the 97th+ percentile of the population over time. The probability of staying at that point is low. Just like the probability of a sliding to the 50th percentile is extremely low.
StatGal can probably articulate this better than I, but this defense is going to be fine. By November, they will be rocking and rolling.
LikeLiked by 3 people
By the way, Yards/Point also has some hidden rings built into it that can influence the statistic – net starting field position for one. If a team gets a non-offensive TD or points from a short field, it drops the yards per point. Teams that manage field position thrive in this statistic because they force teams to drive the field’s length to get points and create shorter field opportunities for their own offense. That sounds like complementary football … something we’re really good at.
LikeLiked by 2 people
things not rings – stupid autocorrect
LikeLike
You need to write this with a thick Chinese accent so it’s as complex as the stat class I had to take back in the day with professor Wu (?).
LikeLike
LikeLike
With Kirby, Boom, and the rest of the staff evaluating positions and personnel, the defense is in very good hands. It may regress slightly, but those coaches will work tirelessly to get every ounce of fight out of our defensive players.
LikeLike
I mean, unless Georgia goes 15-0 and wins the national title, the “trend” will hold. I’d guess most of the teams who played defense at that level were 1 or 0 loss teams, so it’s kind of a self-fulling prophecy.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Steele’s analysis on this sounds to me a lot like “today, we found out that water is wet.”
LikeLiked by 1 person
“…teams with a defensive YPP of 21.35 or higher have followed with a weaker or same record the next year.”
Glenn Schumann, that sounds like a challenge. I’ll settle for the same record as last year, but 15-0 would be a mite better. 😉
LikeLiked by 1 person
all these analytics strike me as ridiculous. If i score a 98 on a test, odds are my next test will be the same or worse. The odds of improving on a 98 are pretty low.
Same as a 14-1 season. I don’t need to count draft picks etc to know the odds of the same or worse record are higher than improving.
LikeLike