Behind The USC Trojan's Scoring Decline - Part I

Quite disturbingly turnovers forced by USC have fallen the past two years while turnovers by the offense spiked in 2007.

For USC the turnover differential has been extremely small now for two consecutive seasons. That may sound insignificant but remember that the average field position after a turnover is the opponents 40-yard line for USC.

From 2002 to 2005 that meant 38 to 42 drives per year that started *on average* inside the opponents half of the field. From there USC is highly likely to score roughly 70% of the time by my calculations.

When there is no turnover forced by the defense USC or any team instead gets the ball back via punt for example and loses 40 or so yards of field position and starts around or inside its 20 yard line.

Conversely when USC commits a turnover it in turn gives the opponent a shorter field to work with as well. That net effect is large and troubling when I look further at the data.

Of course even where there is not a turnover USC often gets a nice kick off return, punt return or the occasional shanked punt, etc. to help field position.

Those instances all can provide USC with short field position in a variety of subtle ways. I calculated those effects separately as Category 3 instances from the table above.  Adding up rows one through three above now provides a complete total of all short  scores (i.e. less than 50 yard drives), as well as points after turnovers, and points directly scored by the defense.

The trend now starts to become somewhat alarming when these three components are added together. As you can see below the USC offense the past two years clearly has not benefited from short field scoring opportunities as much as it has in previous years.

(Note: I sampled four games for 2002 and it was roughly the same picture.) 



Next here is what is left over when you strip away the first three categories and see what the offense can do when it starts on its own side of the field and has to travel at least 50 yards to score and does not have the sudden momentum change advantage stemming from a turnover. 

The following chart reflects Categories 4 and 5 put together and shows what the Trojan offense has done in terms of points production when starting on its own side of the field.

In my opinion this is the most accurate measurement solely of offensive points capability since it nets out most of the help often provided by special teams or defense. The result is surprising flat across four of the years and of course still spikes upward for the amazing 2005 USC offense.

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