… but this ain’t good.
Sadly, and unlike the Toppers bullshit, this is news. And I’m afraid we’re not done with the news yet.
Daily Archives: March 1, 2023
Turnover luck
Bill Connelly ($$) has a good piece up about college teams’ turnover luck last season. Turnovers per se aren’t entirely a matter of luck of course. But their frequency (or lack thereof) usually is.
Every football coach in existence preaches the importance of turnovers and turnover margin. But while you can impact your own turnover margin to some degree with how well you teach ball security and ball pursuit, how aggressively you go after the opponent’s quarterback, how aggressive your own offense is, et cetera, there’s still a massive amount of fortune involved here. And USC’s fortune meter was turned all the way up.
No shit.
In the first five USC games of 2022, there were nine fumbles, and the Trojans recovered all nine. Fumble recoveries revert to 50% over a long enough period of time, but USC got to an 11-1 record by having recovered 18 of 23 (78%). While a team typically intercepts about one pass to every four pass breakups, their regular-season ratio was 1-to-1.9, and their interceptions total was seven higher than national averages would suggest.
The Trojans were mediocre in every sense of the term defensively, but they bailed themselves out with turnovers. That’s not a sustainable formula for success. (Although I have to mention those absurd Pete Carroll USC teams that managed three straight seasons of >+20 turnover margin, something I doubt we’ll ever see again.)
Anyway, there’s a lot of stuff to glean in his piece. He ranks D-1 teams in order of how much their turnover luck generated in points per game, so it’s a handy chart if you’re looking to get a handle on 2023’s teams most likely to regress to the mean.
Georgia, by the way, is a middle of the pack 54rh.
Filed under Stats Geek!
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