SEC Football Analysis: What Is the Correlation Between QB/RB Stats and Wins?

I thought I'd take a look back at the 2007 SEC football season and analyze some stats.  I was wondering in particular how much the starting quarterback's production matters, and how much the main running back counts toward winning football games.

You can click on all of these graphs to make them more clear in a new window.

First, let's take a look at the relationship between games won and how many interceptions and touchdowns a team's quarterback threw.  The red dots are interceptions.  The blue dots are touchdowns.

There seems to be no real relationship between games won and interceptions thrown.  LSU's Matt Flynn threw 11 interceptions, and LSU still won 12 games.  On the other hand, Ole Miss threw just six interceptions and only won three games.  Looking at this graph, it almost seems like throwing more interceptions relates to winning games.

When it comes to throwing touchdowns, there is a direct correlation between throwing touchdown passes and winning ball games.  All of the upper-echelon SEC teams had their QBs throw 20-30 TDs, while the lower-tier teams were in the 9-18 range.

The next graph shows us the starting QB's TD/INT ratio in comparison to how many games his team won.
















There is an obvious upwards trend, but the slope of the line is not that big. There is a clear outlier at eight wins, and that is Kentucky QB Woodson with a TD/INT ratio of 3.64.  The TD/INT ratio clearly plays a factor in winning games, but due to the small slope of the trend line, it is not that big of a part of winning football games in the SEC.

Finally, let's take a look at how many yards the best QB and best RB on the team produced compared to how many games his team won.  The red dots are how many yards the QB had and the blue dots are how many yards the best running back on the team had.

The QB's yards don't mean to seem a whole lot.  If anything, you'd like a passer around 2,600 yards according to this graph.  Wins seem to go up from 0-8 when your QB is producing lots of yards, but the teams who had real success all had passers around the 2,500-yard mark (LSU's Flynn had 2,407 and Georgia's Stafford had 2,523).

However, there is a clear upward trend on your leading running back's yardage that corresponds directly with winning football games.

These are the trends as I see it in the SEC: your QB's TD/INT ratio means a medium amount to winning games.  Your QB's yardage means nothing, while your best running back's yardage means a ton towards winning ballgames.  QB interceptions don't mean a whole lot, but your QB must be in the 20-30 TD range for your team to be an upper-tier SEC team.