it's points per drive.

Hear me out. For every possession you have, the opposing team also gets a possession (generally). So if you score more points per possession than the other team does, you win the football game (assuming an equal number of possessions for each team). This is a mathmatical fact and is not debatable.

Again, assuming equal possessions, whoever has the most points per possession at the end of the game wins the football game. Period.

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Let's say we want to compare two offenses to see which one is better, and by better, I mean which offense contributes most to winning a football game, because that's what matters most, right?. How about LSU and Texas Tech?

From what I've seen, most of the rant will point to the Scoring Offense rankings:

quote:
23. Texas Tech .... 34.4 ppg
76. LSU ............... 27.2 ppg

Well shite, that's a pretty big disparity, if all things are equal and both defenses are the same for the sake of argument, Texas Tech obviously has a better offense and will win this game right? Not necessarily, because scoring offense (and total offense) fails to account for two important factors:
1. possessions per game
2. style of play (which is directly related to possessions per game)

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This is where Points per Drive picks up where Scoring and Total Offense fall short. It allows you to compare apples and oranges of offenses (LSU and TT) by equalizing the number of opportunities for each offense affected by their style of play (pro-style ish vs. air raid HUNH).

Points per Drive rankings: link (under OPD 2nd column)

quote:
44. LSU .............. 2.35 ppd
48.Texas Tech .... 2.30 ppd

So based on this, I can reasonably say that despite the big difference in Scoring Offense, LSU's offense was at least as good or better than Texas Tech's offense this year given that starting field position, strength of schedule, and special teams/defensive scores were about the same.

So why am I posting this? Because rantards on the t/Rant and Coaching Changes board have recently been egregiously and blindly judging and comparing offenses and O-coordinators solely based on how many points or yards were put up without taking into account how much style of play affects those stats.

Things I am saying:
- Scoring and Total offense alone should not be used as a measure to judge how good that offense is
Things I am not saying:
- That LSU had an elite offense this year (we were good, but not great, and probably somewhere in the 25-35 range after adjusting for SOS and kicking woes.)
- That an air-raid offense who scores more will automatically be the answer to all of our problems (as our defense would likely be giving up proportionally more ppg as well).

/ rant

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TLDR:

Only using Scoring and Total offensive rankings alone without taking anything else into account is bad and you should feel bad.

Points per Drive is GOAT.

This post was edited on 1/8/18 at 12:36 am