Yesterday I took a look at some punting stats from last year's college football season, but I couldn’t compare them relatively because I didn’t have information on how many drives each team had.
Well, I did my best to approximate how many drives everyone had by adding up punts, lost fumbles, interceptions thrown, field goal attempts, failed fourth down conversions, and offensive touchdowns.
That leaves out drives ended by halves, but there are only two of those per game and they often are just teams kneeling to run out the clock anyway. It also leaves out safeties, but I can’t find any stats on those and they’re pretty rare anyway.
All stats came from the NCAA, except field goals which curiously aren’t kept in a nice list. Those I got from ESPN.
Out of that, I calculated the percentage of drives a team scored on using offensive touchdowns and field goals made. The top ten are as follows:
1. Florida - 57.43%
2. Navy - 56.94%
3. Kansas - 52.63
4. Texas Tech - 52.20%
5. Missouri - 52.00%
6. Boise State - 51.76%
7. Oklahoma - 51.67%
8. LSU - 51.40%
9. Hawaii - 50.57%
10. West Virginia - 48.80%
The bottom ten are as follows:
119. FIU - 17.54%118. Army - 20.37%117. Notre Dame - 20.65%
116. Duke - 20.78%
115. Baylor - 20.96%
114. Syracuse - 22.82%
113. Temple - 23.53%
112. Iowa - 23.97%
111. Iowa State - 24.83%
110. Louisiana Tech - 25.44%
I don’t think the occupants of either list are that shocking other than Iowa. What happened to the Hawkeye offense? It used to be pretty good not that long ago.
This just goes to (further) show that great offense alone won’t get you contending for the title. Florida, Navy, and Texas Tech were 1, 2, and 4 on the list, with all scoring on over half of their drives. They finished 46, 108, and 50 in the scoring defense rankings though, which is why none of them won more than nine games.
Also, at 6-6 Iowa serves as the answer to the question of which was the lowest bowl-eligible team. The lowest bowl participant? None other than Sylvester Croom’s Mississippi State Bulldogs, 102nd with a 27.71-percent scoring rate. How a team won eight games while scoring on just a shade over a quarter of its drives is a mystery, though timely turnovers and defensive scoring are part of it.
UCLA, our punting champs from yesterday, finished 99th, having scored on just 28.87 percent of its drives.
The two lowest ranked 10-win teams were Boston College (#66, 34.97%) and Virginia Tech (T-54, 36.90%). That says a lot about the ACC, since those two teams met in the conference’s championship game. I also find it funny how the Hokies were No. 3 in scoring defense and went 11-3 while Georgia Tech was tied with VT in this list, but was 21st in scoring defense and finished 7-6.
Furthermore, congratulations to the Atlanta Falcons, who just drafted a quarterback who scored on just 35 percent of his drives last season.
Other notables:
14. Georgia (45.22%) - Sugar Bowl champs
16. UCF (44.81%) - Conference USA champion
18. Ohio State (44.52%) - Big Ten champion
23. Kansas State (43.71%) - Highest team with a losing record
36. USC (41.42%) - Pac 10 champs; not a vintage year for the Trojans’ offense
43. Central Michigan (39.68%) - MAC champions
49. Troy (38.86%) - Sun Belt champions
51. BYU (38.75%) - MWC champions; third-lowest 10+ win team
77. Florida State (34.10%) - So much for Jimbo Fisher turning things around immediately
105. Miami (26.53%) - Where have you gone, Ken Dorsey?
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2 months ago
Great article. I'd love to see avg. points/ drive for all the top teams. I also wonder if anyone keeps track of average yard line for the start of drives?
from 2 months ago
That's a good point, Chris. FL's % is probably so high because Brandon James was so dangerous on the return. FL often started near midfield.
from 2 months ago
I'd love to see some stats on average starting position, but unfortunately I haven't seen any and I don't have time to compile those stats myself.
The rankings in average points per drive is almost the same as in the scoring drive percentage list. The top 10:
1. Florida - 3.73
2. Navy - 3.55
3. Texas Tech - 3.35
4. Oklahoma - 3.29
5. Kansas - 3.25
6. Hawaii - 3.24
7. Boise St. - 3.24
8. Missouri - 3.19
9. West Virginia - 3.10
10. LSU - 3.02
Also, that's good idea Tim, but I don't know how to prove it. I ran the correlation for ranking in scoring drive percentage and the ranking in both punt and kick return average. The correlation of this scoring drive percentage rank and punt return rank was just 0.105, while the correlation with kick return rank was 0.355.
Not a terribly inspiring relationship. Florida was 7th in average punt return, but just 77th in average kick return. That kind of noise is all throughout the punt and kick return rankings.
2 months ago
Good stuff. I'd love to see Troy's percentage against other Sun Belt teams. I'd be willing to bet it goes up at least 10-15 percentage points. You have to respect Troy for playing the big dogs of the SEC and Big 12.
I definitely thought BYU would be higher.
2 months ago
Excellent write up and research. I'm also surprised BYU was that low
from 2 months ago
No kidding, I was too.
2 months ago
good way to look at it. i would've thought Navy was high but had no idea they were that high.
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