In the two losses, most Notre Dame fans would agree that turnovers were the biggest causes of the two losses rather than general performance by the offense or defense. In fact, Football Outsiders valued the 10 turnovers against USF & UM at 55.3 equivalent points. In other words, in the two games we lost by a combined 7 points, we gave away almost 8 touchdown’s worth of points by turning the ball over.

I’ll now pause while we all commence smashing our heads against the nearest hard surface.

Anyway, the charts are back!…with one addition. I added in the average for the teams ranked 6-10. This gives a more realistic bar for ND to strive to achieve.

NOTE: The 2011 stats only have 7 weeks worth of data and are being compared against years with full seasons of data. So there can still be wild variation between week to week. The stats will be more accurate and become more reliable as more games are played and more data about each team is available. But they are interesting enough to look out now.

Offense

Quick overview: 2011 ND = very light blue and all the way to the right. Also, higher = better

As you can see, across the board, Notre Dame has been fairly exceptional on offense. The Irish have been better than not only the 6-10 mean but also the 1-10 average in ever category. Most impressive (or importantly) is the Rush O S&P+. The running game has performed about 23% better than average running game of a top 10 team. Think about the last time we could say that! Another stellar showing for the offense has been the performance on passing downs.

Passing Downs are defined as:

• second down with 8 or more yards to go
• third or fourth down with 5 or more yards to go

The Passing Down S&P+ of 177.4 is the 2nd highest of any top 10 team since 2005 and beaten only by the Cam Newton led Auburn team of last season. It’s a damn impressive stat and one of the biggest reasons ND has been successful on offense. Success on passing downs keeps drives alive which in turn keeps our defense off the field and rested.

Defense

Just sit back and look at that rush D. It’s damn impressive. That Rush D S&P+ of 189.9 means that so far, through 6 games, our rushing defense has been ~29% better than the best rushing D of top 10 teams since 2005. However, I was surprised to realize that ND is actually the 2nd ranked rush D so far during 2011 with Alabama at 241.1 (!) while LSU is 3rd at 174.4. Bob Diaco’s defense has kept up it’s strong play against the run that began in the Tulsa game last season.

On the other hand, as the S&P+ shows, the Pass D hasn’t been ideal. If I had to guess, I’d have to say that a majority of that is from our performance in Ann Arbor. Allowing 300+ yards passing to Denard Robinson given his standard performance in every other game this year severely impacted the numbers. ND’s pass D S&P+ dropped from 138.8 to 123.2 over the bye week as Denard stunk the up joint against Michigan State. Additionally and more worrisome going forward, the Passing D on Passing Downs has not been that good. Some of that could be from Diaco’s ‘Bend but don’t Break’ philosophy that allows works to prevent big plays. And the red zone defense has been extremely stout. Still, it’s an area that the Irish need to do better over the last 6 games. Improving on Passing Downs allows the D to force more 3 & outs and put our explosive offense back onto the field.

Conclusions
Statistically, Notre Dame has been one of the top 10-15 teams in the country on offense and defense. Against Purdue & Airforce, we’ve seen how good the Irish can look when cutting out the turnovers. So while this doesn’t give solace to any of us regarding the USF and Michigan losses, it should give some hope and provide some excitement about the team going forward the next 6 weeks. Then again, if we lay an egg on Saturday night (which isn’t going to happen), none of this matters and I’ll look like more of an idiot than I usually do. But hopes of a BCS game start Saturday night with our asswhooping of Southern Cal. Remember #BeatSC

All stats via of Football Outsiders. Explanations of the stats can be found there too. (Link)

The post Midseason Check-In: To BCS or Not To BCS appeared first on Her Loyal Sons.

After the strong end to last season on the field coupled with he strong numbers of returning players and the outstanding recruiting class of 2011, plenty of Notre Dame fans are excited about the upcoming season. Perusing the variety of blogs, message boards, and twitter, Iâ€ve seen plenty of fans hoping (and some expecting/demanding) a BCS game from the Irish. As we all know, Notre Dame has never won a BCS game and we havenâ€t even been to a BCS game since Rick Minter and the Irish D help Jamarcus Russell earn $40 million dollars in the disastrous Sugar Bowl after the 2006 season.

With that in mind, I decided to look back and see what type of offense and defense Notre Dame will have to field for us to hope for a BCS game appearance at the end of the 2011 season.. I started with the Top 10 teams in the BCS rankings from the week before the bowl games from 2005 through 2010. I used the week before the bowl games as that is the rankings used to select the BCS game participants. I decided to look at advanced stats (Football Outsiders FEI & S&P+) and more common stats (Passing YPA, Rushing YPA, Points Per Game, etc.) Given the numerous amounts of data, I decided to take the minimum, the maximum, the mean, and the median for all the of the data sets. I also added in 2010 Irish to see how we stacked up last year and the area we will need to improve.

The first group of statistics I looked at were Football Outsiderâ€s S&P+. As always, all explanations and definitions of the stats can be found at FootballOutsiders (Link)

For quick reference:
O S&P+:Total Offense S&P+
Rush O S&P+: S&P+ on Rushing Plays Only
Pass O S&P+: S&P+ on Passing Plays Only
Std Down O S&P+: S&P+ on what FO considers Standard Downs
Pass Down O S&P+: S&P+ on passing downs (2nd and 8+, 3rd and 5+)
An S&P+ of 100 is an average performance and S&P+ is weighted so that a S&P+ of 110 is 10% better than average.

Part 1 – Offense

The top 5 offenses over the period were 2010 Auburn (They represent the top team in 4 of the 5 stats), 2008 Oklahoma (the best Passing O), 2008 Florida, 2005 Texas and 2005 USC. All teams that most would consider some of the best offenses weâ€ve seen in awhile. They all also played for the national title during those seasons. But since we are looking reaching any BCS game this year, we want to focus on the mean/median offensives performances as those are the better barometers of how ND has to perform in the upcoming season.

Looking at the 2010 Notre Dame offense versus the mean performance from the past 6 seasons, we can see that we need an improvement of around 15% across the board to have a BCS-caliber offense. To the possible surprise of many of you, ND will need to improve itâ€s passing game more so than itâ€s rushing game.

Overall, the biggest improvement needed will be execution on passing downs. ND was barely average last year. Most BCS teams actually performed better on passing downs than on standard downs. Performing better on 2nd & long or 3rd down keeps the chains moving and keeps your offense on the field. As we all remember from last year, there were way too many 3 and outs (see chart below)

The other set of stats from Football Outsiders is FEI (Fremeau Efficiency Index). The definiton of FEI, OFEI, etc can also be found on Football Outsiders (link) Essentially, FEI measures how efficient your team performs over the course of the season. (One note on the FEI, Football Outsiders only has FEI calculated back to 2007 so this includes only 2007-2010)

Notre Dame was not efficient on offense during 2010. Something Iâ€m sure most fans would agree on. Too many wasted possessions, too many three and outs, tons of turnovers. Itâ€s something that ND will have to seriously improve upon if our expectation of a BCS game is to come true. Additionally, given Brian Kellyâ€s lack of concern regarding Time of Possession, being an efficient offense is essential for success. When he took Cincinatti to a BCS game in 2009, BKâ€s offense has an OFEI of .547, which is clearly above the BCS average and was the 4th ranked OFEI for all teams during 2009. Hope Abounds!

And if you are a philistine who prefers more “traditional” stats, then do I have charts for you!

As with the Football Outsiders stats above, the 2010 Notre Dame offense was below the average of BCS caliber offenses across the board. Additionally, the passing numbers were also worse by comparison.

One little tidbit from this chart, the team with the highest Passing YPA? 2009 Georgia Tech! Granted, they only threw the ball 168 time the entire season but when they did, man did it work well.

Now if we bring in a chart that compares yards per game, the issues with the Notre Dame offense seems to flip.

If you compare this chart to the one above, you‘ll notice that how Notre Dame went from below the BCS average in Passing YPA to above average in Passing YPG. So, while the counting stat (YPG) looks good, ND was not efficient in obtaining those yards. It took us more passing attempts to inflate our total passing yards and thus increase our passing yards per game.

On the other hand, looking at our rushing yards on a per game basis makes them look even worse. There are several possible explanations why this occurs. The most likely reason, in my opinion, is the type of offense Brian Kelly runs. The slip screens, middle screen, and shovel passes that will be counted as passes are extensions of the running game to Kelly. While this belief causes many ND fans to whine and moan, itâ€s true. Disagree in the comments, yell to your followers on twitter, post threads on NDNation or ISD about how much this annoys you, it wonâ€t change what will happen on the field in September. Brian Kelly will still call the offense the way he’s always done it. We can hope he follows the script from the last 4 games and the rushing game performs as well as it did over that span. That said, ND absolutely must improve the running game in 2011. If they want to go to a BCS game the 3.98 YPC wonâ€t cut it in the fall.

To wrap this up, Notre Dame must improve in all facets of the game on offense  if our hopes of a BCS appearance in January of 2012 are to come true.

Stay tuned for part 2 regarding the defense which should appear sometime after July 4th and before Labor Day!

The post To BCS or Not To BCS? That is the Question. appeared first on Her Loyal Sons.