Sports Math

Bobby D vs BVG: The Early Years

February 8, 2016 by Moons

With Signing Day in the rearview mirror, the offseason scab picking can accelerate to greater heights. Perhaps the area of greatest frustration for many looking back on the 2015 season was the continued struggles on the defensive side of the ball. Injuries certainly had a meaningful impact. From Jarron Jones, to KeiVarae Russell, to the way the season ended for Jaylon Smith, it seemed like just about every defensive player had to deal with a substantial health issue. Yet, when juxtaposed with ...

Courtesy of Fansided.com

Breaking Down the Offense – ND v Bevo

September 10, 2015 by Moons

This week has sure flown by awash in the glory of Notre Dame's destruction of Texas last week. It's been an equal part concern over the number of media outlets who are suddenly all about the Fighting Irish. Before we move on entirely to the Virginia Cavaliers, let's take a long, hard, glorious look at Notre Dame's offensive performance. Tex brought me aboard because of my unhealthy love of #SportsMath. Bayou is reluctantly accepting it. I can appreciate both of these perspectives.To be clear, ...

Via Neon Tommy on Flickr

Notre Dame Offense: The Cost of Turnovers

September 29, 2014 by Ryan Ritter

Typically, when Notre Dame has has five turnover game, we pull our hair out because it cost the Irish a win. This week, we pull our hair out because it cost the Irish a blowout against Syracuse. After updating my drive chart this weekend and again taking some calculations on available yards gained, I am even more certain of this fact. This past Saturday's game should have had a storyline of Brian Kelly's adjustments leading to one of the best offensive nights of his era. Instead, the ...

Notre Dame Offense: Feast or Famine

September 25, 2014 by Ryan Ritter

With the first bye week of the season, I finally got some time to crack open the spreadsheets (and populate the whole thing because CFBstats.com is now charging an arm and a leg for their drive/play charts) and do a dive into some stats. Originally, this was going to be an exercise into show the available yards gained by Notre Dame in each game. It was an idea planted in my head with Michigan fans crying about total yardage gained. I figured this would more or less show just how well ND's ...

via BCF Toys

Notre Dame’s Strength of Schedule Visualized

August 6, 2014 by Ryan Ritter

Strength of schedule is by far one of our favorite topics to discuss here at HLS. With conference's becoming more insular in their scheduling, the need to trumpet the gauntlet of a schedule that Notre Dame plays in becomes incredibly important to break the conference narrative. Enter Brian Freamau, member of the advanced statistics site, Football Outsiders, who came up with the efficiency rating, FEI, that is an essential competent of the F/+ rating, which is another favorite of ours to use ...

Checking the Narrative Part 2: Notre Dame and Field Turf

February 12, 2014 by Ryan Ritter

Yesterday, I decided to put the numbers against the narrative in regards to the argument that Notre Dame Stadium's grass field hinders the defense. I found that there really wasn't much of a difference at all, despite the fact that the grass field quite visibly disintegrates by November. So today, we will look at the defensive side of the ball and see if there is any noticeable differences there. After all, perhaps Notre Dame may want to tilt their home field advantage towards their defense, ...

Image Credit: University of Notre Dame

Checking the Narrative: Notre Dame and Field Turf

February 11, 2014 by Ryan Ritter

After the Crossroads Project for Notre Dame Stadium was revealed, most fans were rather disappointed that no clear answer was given by Jack Swarbrick on whether or not field turf was coming. Today, Swarbrick is still sticking to that story and we won't get a final answer until May. In that article though, Jack mentioned how he didn't have a clear consensus on the matter at all -- even from the players on the team. For me, this seemed a bit shocking. Has Jack not seen the team faceplant every ...

Notre Dame is also undefeated when Cam loses his helmet AND we have fun with the resulting meme in the Roundup.

Can We Please Stop Using Stats Like These?

November 25, 2013 by Ryan Ritter

Excuse the mini-rant, but I just can't help it. Look, I love stats, they are great for determining trends and trying to dive deeper into games and a season. But can we stop using ones like this? https://twitter.com/BGI_DanMurphy/status/404980582074941440 I got nothing against BGI or ND Rivals or any of their reporters who do solid work, but this kind of stat is beyond worthless. No, I'm not saying this because it breaks my narrative/agenda or anything other ridiculous claim. There are ...

Notre Dame Offense: Checking the Balance

November 20, 2013 by Ryan Ritter

As I wrote yesterday's piece on Tommy Rees, I couldn't help but dive into some numbers. I felt that another unfair criticism of Rees is the claim that he audibles out of running plays far too often. The corollary of course is that Brian Kelly puts Notre Dame in a position to fail by putting far too much on the shoulders of Rees as well. AKA, the "RUN THE DAMN BALL!" argument. Of course, deciding to check out some stats led me into a rabbit hole that started at Tommy Rees and led me to ...

Credit: MGoBlog via Flickr

Dismantling the Defense

September 9, 2013 by Ryan Ritter

In last week's Irish Blogger Gathering, I got a question about Notre Dame's defense and if their performance against Temple was cause for concern against Michigan. I had the following to say: [Notre Dame] played a lot of man and press coverages, mixing in blitzes often, throughout the entire game. Even when the defensive play calling did get more conservative when the game was well in hand, the Irish were often blitzing and bringing five or more rushers on third downs to force Temple to ...