A few statistical tidbits

[Red Five]

Bolded the important part. Riley has essentially lost games we were favored in during his first season as Bo's entire tenure.

Not exactly. Bo lost 12 by my count.

 

[Red Five]

You folks are taking this thread down the same f'ing path as all of the other threads. It's getting old

I need to take my own advice from my disclaimer and not participate in the garbage.

Every single f'n thread ends the same. Its going to be a long time to September.

 

[bhamHusker]

Carry the ball rarely, and you'll find you don't fumble it much.

You lose all credibility by saying this. This season, Nebraska averaged 37.4 and 37.7 pass and rush attempts per game, respectively (38.9 / 35.7 if you don't include the UCLA game which skews the numbers a bit). I stopped reading the other stuff you said after seeing this. The game with the highest number of rushing attempts (62 against UCLA) had only one fumble which was caused by a bullsh!t uncalled facemask penalty.

Feel free to focus on a tree for the forest. That said, NU rushed 25%+ less this year than last.

In actuality, Nebraska averaged 45.2 rushing attempts per game last year compared to 38.2 (note the correction I added to my original post), or about 15% less this year versus last year. We also didn't have the advantage of having a player like Abdullah to carry the extra load. It's irrelevant anyway, we're talking about different staffs and different philosophies.

 

[beorach]

I love the thread for how it began and those who continued in the same vein. I figured I should add something to the "carry the ball rarely" bit of misinformation above. Counting all the games before CCG weekend, the average number of rushing carries was 435. Nebraska's figure was 434 at that point. Nebraska's figure was pretty high for passing attempts, to be fair, at 439 (compared to the national average of 356 in the same stretch of games). As usual, I did not count any games played against FCS teams.

 

[Sargon]

That's about where I'm at. Year 2 is historically a "jump" year, so I expect a jump from the 60's to at least top 30 in defense. I also expect (especially if we end up with a 5th year Sr. at QB) to win quite a few more games.

I bet you are wrong with your top 30 D prediction. tOSU, Oregon, Indiana, Banker (lol). NU will not be top 30 in D next year.
Quite a few more means what? 8-4 is my prediction with TA or POB (TA would run better and POB would be higher completion % IMO).

2nd year jump? It's not true.

http://freakonomics.com/2012/12/21/is-changing-the-coach-really-the-answer/

If NU is better than 6-7 is that a "jump"? 7-6?

 

[It'sNotAFakeID]

Disclaimer: In no way am I saying that going 6-7 is acceptable. It's not. If you want to argue about that or the coaches, do it somewhere else.

2015 was the 2nd time since 2000 that we didn't lose a game by 20 or more points (2010 was the other)

2015 was the 1st time since 1999 that we didn't lose a game by more than 10 points

2015 was the 1st time we have gone 3-1 in our last 4 games since 2009 (we last went 4-0 in 2008)

We are currently 8th in rush defense, allowing 108/game. We were last that high in 2009 (finished 8th, allowing 92/game)

We averaged 0.8 fumbles/game, which is currently 6th. That is lowest that I can find since 2003 (can't find stats before then). Our previous best from 2003 to 2014 was 1.5 fumbles/game in 2009.

Carry the ball rarely, and you'll find you don't fumble it much.

As to all the "margin of loss" arguments, in how many of those close losses should NU have been a big winner? Per Vegas, here were the spreads going into the losses:

Opponent -- Spread at game time

• BYU - NU (-7.5)
• Miami - Miami (-3)
• Illinois - NU (-7)
• Wisconsin - NU (-1.5)
• Northwestern - NU (-7.5)
• Purdue - NU (-7.5)
• Iowa - Iowa (-1.5)

So, Nebraska lost 5 games this season where they were the favorite, including 4 where they were the favorite by more than a touchdown, which is a wide spread by FBS P5 standards. For example, a much more highly ranked and successful MSU team was only a 4.5 point favorite against the Huskers this year.

People bemoan the blowouts of past seasons, and I get that, but at least those losses were often against teams that were favored to be Nebraska (e.g., Wisconsin last year was -4). I wish there was an easy way to compare NU's records against spreads across each year.

Isn't home field advantage something like +3 to the home team? Let's readjust our numbers here to reflect this:

If Nebraska played all their games at a neutral site

BYU-Nebraska (Nebraska -4.5)

Nebraska-Miami (EVEN)

Nebraska-Illinois (Nebraska -10)

Wisconsin-Nebraska (Wisconsin -1.5)

Northwestern-Nebraska (Nebraska -4.5)

Iowa-Nebraska (Iowa -4.5)

Michigan State-Nebraska (Michigan State -7.5)

So only 2 of your referred to games was Nebraska more than a touchdown dog or favorite after taking out home field advantage which is just assumed to make a difference; probably does in some games, but not every game. But I think looking at ATS records is pretty silly. Vegas doesn't set the line so that they can say "look how right we were!" Vegas sets the line to generate an even amount of bets for both teams.

Perhaps a better analysis would be looking at the spread behavior/trend for each of the games. What was the opening line? Did it increase or decrease as game day approached?

 

[Sargon]

Vegas line is the best performing predictor. Home field advantage is real but irrelavent to Vegas line talk since whatever is used in any game is never published. I will just say I'm positive they don't use 3 points or any single number as a plug for all games.

 

[StPaulHusker]

You folks are taking this thread down the same f'ing path as all of the other threads. It's getting old

Participation is optional in all threads. It's important to note that you are in this one because you choose to be. For example, I rarely poke my head into recruiting thread because it is unimportant to me, and I am not interested in any potential player until he becomes an actual player. But rather than comment in every recruiting thread my thoughts, I mostly don't read them and post in them even less. See how that works?

"We folks" are just looking at statistics from both sides, bringing up other statistics, points and counter points, "what ifs ?" etc. I don't know if there is a "right f'ing path" or a "wrong f'ing path", is there?

I didn't say whether the path is wrong or right. I just said it was the same and it is getting old.

And you aren't "looking at statistics from both sides" when comments start to pop up about what a blowout is or other sh#t like that.

 

[beorach]

Vegas line is the best performing predictor. Home field advantage is real but irrelavent to Vegas line talk since whatever is used in any game is never published. I will just say I'm positive they don't use 3 points or any single number as a plug for all games.

That may very well be but I use -3.5 as a plug number to come up with my numbers (after using stats to derive neutral field spreads) and am not far off.

This week's NFL games, for example, look like this:

Atlanta -6.5 (mine, rounded to the nearest half-point) vs. -4

Buffalo +1.5 vs. +3

Chicago -6 vs. -1

Cinci -12 vs. -9

Cleveland +11 vs. +10

Miami +12 vs. +11.5

New York -4 vs. -3

Houston -8 vs. -6.5

Denver -11 vs. -9.5

KC -12.5 vs. -7.5

Arizona -7 vs. -7.5

San Francisco +5 vs. +3

Carolina -12.5 vs. -11.5

Green Bay -2 vs. -3

I *only* like the Jets, the Bengals, the Steelers, the Pats, the Chiefs, the Rams (I know), and the Bucs ATS, though. The way the NFL site does its stats isn't so clear to me as the college version, too. I don't mess with the pros' data as much.

 

[teachercd]

Close losses!

 

[NUance]

That's about where I'm at. Year 2 is historically a "jump" year, so I expect a jump from the 60's to at least top 30 in defense. I also expect (especially if we end up with a 5th year Sr. at QB) to win quite a few more games.

I bet you are wrong with your top 30 D prediction. tOSU, Oregon, Indiana, Banker (lol). NU will not be top 30 in D next year.
Quite a few more means what? 8-4 is my prediction with TA or POB (TA would run better and POB would be higher completion % IMO).

2nd year jump? It's not true.

http://freakonomics.com/2012/12/21/is-changing-the-coach-really-the-answer/

If NU is better than 6-7 is that a "jump"? 7-6?

That depends on our offense, to some extent. This year we were tied for 117th worst in turnovers among all FBS teams. The more we give the ball back to the other team, the harder it is to have a good defense. If we can reduce our turnovers by 1/3--a reasonable goal--our defensive stats will improve considerably. I'm not saying that alone would put us in the top 30. But it would bump us up quite a few spots from where we are now.

 

[Dr. Strangelove]

Crazy how you can go from having a pathetic rush defense and a dominant pass defense to the complete opposite of both in a single year with essentially the same personnel. Anyone that still thinks Pelini's issues with run defense were anything but scheme is out of their minds. That was never going to work in this league. Jury is still out on Banker's pass defense, but at least we aren't getting driven into the ground for 7 yards a carry anymore.

The entire Pac 12 (and any program with a decent passing attack) disagrees.

 

[Elf]

You folks are taking this thread down the same f'ing path as all of the other threads. It's getting old

Pretty much just one guy instigating it.

 

[Elf]

Carry the ball rarely, and you'll find you don't fumble it much.

You lose all credibility by saying this. This season, Nebraska averaged 37.4 and 37.7 pass and rush attempts per game, respectively (38.9 / 35.7 if you don't include the UCLA game which skews the numbers a bit). I stopped reading the other stuff you said after seeing this. Incidentally, the game with the highest number of rushing attempts (62 against UCLA) had only one fumble which was caused by a bullsh!t uncalled facemask penalty.

Cm lost credibility ages ago.

He never had any on Huskerpedia either.

 

[Elf]

You folks are taking this thread down the same f'ing path as all of the other threads. It's getting old

And one bright ray of sunshine is conspicuous by his absence since NU won the bowl game.

If we are thinking of the same person, he should be here jumping up and down for joy considering how much we ran the football.