Watching UM’s offense evolve over the past 5 weeks and comparing what we’re seeing to their effeciency stats reveals a disconnect:
UM’s offense ranks 20th in the country in offensive efficiency, ahead of perceived juggernaut offenses such as Clemson, Texas Tech, Colorado, Missouri, etc. Beyond just offensive stats, advanced analytics love UM overall; Football Outisders rate them 9th, ahead of Wisconsin, PSU, and LSU. So why does an offense that struggles to put 20 points on the board vs NW continue to stack up well in terms of efficiency analytics? Or, more succinctly, why doesn’t this highly efficient offense score more points?
Before I get into that I want to address the beaten-to-death complaint: WHY DON’T WE RUN SLANTS!!!!
For the record, I don’t care like, at all that we don’t utilize slants. This isn’t my issue but I want to address it since I see it brought up about 200 times here ever Saturday. First off I want to dispel the myth that slants somehow destroy our defense. We are spoiled to death when it comes to that side of the ball. We’ve lost all perspective on what being gashed actually means (ironic considering we lived through Rich Rod...and it wasn’t that long ago). I don’t care that an offense may hit four or five 8 yard slants against us every week. They’re not going to beat us that way so why in God’s name is it brought up constantly? I’ll never understand...
Anyway, as I’m sure many have noticed, Jim is fairly risk averse offensively. We do not often test the middle of the field, preferring instead to stay outside the hash marks. Rather than the seemingly highly efficient slant pattern, we instead incorporate a lot of WR screens, skinny posts, and shallow crossing patterns. All of those things match the production of a simple slant pattern without the perceived risk. A slant is a timing based route that leads the receiver to the middle of the field where there’s a lot of congestion; tipped balls in that area of the field tend to be intercepted. LB’s can also blend in underneath and can jump the route. It happens.
The slow developing crossing routes we run stretch the defense and pull people out of the middle where we can then find a receiver crossing through the middle of the field while reducing the risk of a defender jumping the route. WR screens obviously create a momentary 3 on 2 for the offense with the WR then needing to break a tackle or make someone miss in order to turn a 3 yard gain into something bigger, with, again, very little risk of turning the ball over.
So that’s our version of the seemingly (according to this place at least) irresistible force known as the slant pattern. Love it or hate it, it doesn’t really matter. We avoid the middle and with that we avoid turnovers which in turn feeds into the actual topic of my post...our highly rated efficiency stats.
Before I go further, let me summarize the methodology behind efficiency stats. Basically it’s a stat that measures how often you’re staying on schedule. ‘On Schedule’ means gaining 50% of necessary yardage on 1st down, 70% of the necessary yardage on 2nd down, and 100% on 3rd. And before anyone says it, yes explosiveness is also factored in as more weight is applied to a team’s success rate while inside the opponent’s 40 yard line. So our efficiency stats make sense when you think about. It seems like we’re always in manageable situations. Yes we’re conservative but we’re not spending a lot of time moving backwards in the form of tackles for loss or sacks.
So, again, why don’t we score more points? To me, it comes down to two factors: penalties and pace. We are 8th (or 122nd, depending on how you look at it) in the country in penalty yards, averaging 84 (!) yards per game. This doesn’t effect efficiency since, again, it’s really only measuring staying schedule. 1st & 20 is the same as 1st & 10, though the bar obviously changes in order to achieve a successful 1st down play. But it’s not the penalty yardage that seems to kill our drives as much as the timing. The Higdon ghost-hold obviously comes to mind and almost certainly took points off the board.
Secondly, pace is actually a bigger factor than the penalties. We are 106th in the country in offensive pace. When a team is limiting themselves to so few plays and drives per game, the ramifications of the penalties are even more severe because we have fewer opportunities to dig our way out of our mistakes. Watching the NW game, it was apparent that our most formidable opponent in that game was the clock; the longer the game went on the more it favored UM. If we played a 5th quarter we probably win by three scores. The best way to mimic the effect of elongating the game is to quicken the pace and gain extra possessions within the game.
A quickened pace would certainly lead to our defense giving up more points since they would also be defending more plays and possessions, but our 3 phases combined are among the most efficient in the country, so more possessions per game will only increase the chasm between every team on our schedule other than OSU. There may come a time when you want to slow the pace and limit possessions and hope to kick a FG to win the game, but not against NW or ND or MSU or Wisconsin.
Avoiding slants and deep posts isn’t what ailing this offense. The OL has come along quickly; as has Patterson and the receivers. We just need to keep doing what we’re doing, only do it faster so we can do more of it.
UM’s offense ranks 20th in the country in offensive efficiency, ahead of perceived juggernaut offenses such as Clemson, Texas Tech, Colorado, Missouri, etc. Beyond just offensive stats, advanced analytics love UM overall; Football Outisders rate them 9th, ahead of Wisconsin, PSU, and LSU. So why does an offense that struggles to put 20 points on the board vs NW continue to stack up well in terms of efficiency analytics? Or, more succinctly, why doesn’t this highly efficient offense score more points?
Before I get into that I want to address the beaten-to-death complaint: WHY DON’T WE RUN SLANTS!!!!
For the record, I don’t care like, at all that we don’t utilize slants. This isn’t my issue but I want to address it since I see it brought up about 200 times here ever Saturday. First off I want to dispel the myth that slants somehow destroy our defense. We are spoiled to death when it comes to that side of the ball. We’ve lost all perspective on what being gashed actually means (ironic considering we lived through Rich Rod...and it wasn’t that long ago). I don’t care that an offense may hit four or five 8 yard slants against us every week. They’re not going to beat us that way so why in God’s name is it brought up constantly? I’ll never understand...
Anyway, as I’m sure many have noticed, Jim is fairly risk averse offensively. We do not often test the middle of the field, preferring instead to stay outside the hash marks. Rather than the seemingly highly efficient slant pattern, we instead incorporate a lot of WR screens, skinny posts, and shallow crossing patterns. All of those things match the production of a simple slant pattern without the perceived risk. A slant is a timing based route that leads the receiver to the middle of the field where there’s a lot of congestion; tipped balls in that area of the field tend to be intercepted. LB’s can also blend in underneath and can jump the route. It happens.
The slow developing crossing routes we run stretch the defense and pull people out of the middle where we can then find a receiver crossing through the middle of the field while reducing the risk of a defender jumping the route. WR screens obviously create a momentary 3 on 2 for the offense with the WR then needing to break a tackle or make someone miss in order to turn a 3 yard gain into something bigger, with, again, very little risk of turning the ball over.
So that’s our version of the seemingly (according to this place at least) irresistible force known as the slant pattern. Love it or hate it, it doesn’t really matter. We avoid the middle and with that we avoid turnovers which in turn feeds into the actual topic of my post...our highly rated efficiency stats.
Before I go further, let me summarize the methodology behind efficiency stats. Basically it’s a stat that measures how often you’re staying on schedule. ‘On Schedule’ means gaining 50% of necessary yardage on 1st down, 70% of the necessary yardage on 2nd down, and 100% on 3rd. And before anyone says it, yes explosiveness is also factored in as more weight is applied to a team’s success rate while inside the opponent’s 40 yard line. So our efficiency stats make sense when you think about. It seems like we’re always in manageable situations. Yes we’re conservative but we’re not spending a lot of time moving backwards in the form of tackles for loss or sacks.
So, again, why don’t we score more points? To me, it comes down to two factors: penalties and pace. We are 8th (or 122nd, depending on how you look at it) in the country in penalty yards, averaging 84 (!) yards per game. This doesn’t effect efficiency since, again, it’s really only measuring staying schedule. 1st & 20 is the same as 1st & 10, though the bar obviously changes in order to achieve a successful 1st down play. But it’s not the penalty yardage that seems to kill our drives as much as the timing. The Higdon ghost-hold obviously comes to mind and almost certainly took points off the board.
Secondly, pace is actually a bigger factor than the penalties. We are 106th in the country in offensive pace. When a team is limiting themselves to so few plays and drives per game, the ramifications of the penalties are even more severe because we have fewer opportunities to dig our way out of our mistakes. Watching the NW game, it was apparent that our most formidable opponent in that game was the clock; the longer the game went on the more it favored UM. If we played a 5th quarter we probably win by three scores. The best way to mimic the effect of elongating the game is to quicken the pace and gain extra possessions within the game.
A quickened pace would certainly lead to our defense giving up more points since they would also be defending more plays and possessions, but our 3 phases combined are among the most efficient in the country, so more possessions per game will only increase the chasm between every team on our schedule other than OSU. There may come a time when you want to slow the pace and limit possessions and hope to kick a FG to win the game, but not against NW or ND or MSU or Wisconsin.
Avoiding slants and deep posts isn’t what ailing this offense. The OL has come along quickly; as has Patterson and the receivers. We just need to keep doing what we’re doing, only do it faster so we can do more of it.
