O-Line Stats Part Two

This is part two of Poseur's two part series on o-line stats

Now that we have developed a formula for rating offensive lines, let’s apply it to the 2006 season and see if we can draw any sort of conclusions. First, the numbers for the pass blockers.

Team	Sks	Mod Att	Sks/Att	PSCORE
ARKANSAS	9	311	2.980	1.467
TENNESSEE	19	434	4.578	0.843
GEORGIA	17	359	4.971	0.690
LSU	19	387	5.163	0.615
VANDY	19	356	5.638	0.430
FLORIDA	23	422	5.764	0.380
SOUTH CAROLINA	24	413	6.170	0.222
ALABAMA	28	421	7.125	-0.151
MISS ST	29	389	8.056	-0.514
KENTUCKY	39	475	8.945	-0.861
OLE MISS	29	309	10.357	-1.412
AUBURN	35	317	12.411	-2.214
Average	24.167	382.75	6.739

Two things stick out: Arkansas was much better than everyone else and Auburn was much worse. Let’s take on Auburn first because it’s become sort of an accepted belief Auburn will have a bad line this year in their quest to replace two All-SEC linemen.

Well, their offensive line could not be worse, and those awards were a mistake (okay, maybe not for Grubbs). Allowing over 12 sacks per 100 pass attempts is Oakland Raiders level of bad. It is so bad you don’t even immediately notice how bad Ole Miss’ pass protection was. And it comes without a built-in excuse. Teams with running quarterbacks tend to allow more sacks because the running quarterback occasionally gets caught for a loss and that counts as a sack.

Which makes Arkansas even more impressive. 2.98 sacks per 100 attempts? Arkansas’ line was absolutely dominant in pass protection. The only other surprise is that Tennessee’s maligned offensive line ranked second best in the conference.

Rushing

Team	Mod Rush	Mod Yds	Yds/Att	RSCORE
ARKANSAS	530	3129	5.904	2.080
LSU	431	2009	4.661	0.713
VANDY	366	1683	4.598	0.644
FLORIDA	453	2074	4.578	0.622
SOUTH CAROLINA	390	1727	4.428	0.457
AUBURN	435	1722	3.959	-0.060
GEORGIA	409	1535	3.753	-0.286
TENNESSEE	363	1270	3.499	-0.566
OLE MISS	393	1312	3.338	-0.742
ALABAMA	427	1396	3.269	-0.818
KENTUCKY	372	1008	2.710	-1.434
MISS ST	365	935	2.562	-1.597
Average	411.167	1650	4.013

And… there’s Arkansas again. They had three 1st team All-SEC lineman, and it seems the SEC got that one right. They were the best run block and best pass block unit, and they did both by fairly wide margins. In fact, their gap in run blocking makes their advantage in pass blocking almost seem slight. LSU had the second best run blocking line, and they were closer to 10th place than they were to SEC-leading Arkansas.

No real surprises at the bottom, with Mississippi State bringing up the rear. But Kentucky and Alabama probably didn’t expect to have such poor running games. Kentucky had one of their best seasons in a decade, and it came with a line that couldn’t open up a hole for anybody. Alabama’s expected improvement needs to come from some serious improvement in the run blocking. Because last year’s effort won’t get in done.

Overall

Team	PSCORE	RSCORE	OLINE
ARKANSAS	1.47	2.08	354.72
LSU	0.62	0.71	132.83
VANDY	0.43	0.64	107.37
FLORIDA	0.38	0.62	100.24
SOUTH CAROLINA	0.22	0.46	67.90
GEORGIA	0.69	-0.29	40.42
TENNESSEE	0.84	-0.57	27.75
ALABAMA	-0.15	-0.82	-96.87
MISS ST	-0.51	-1.60	-211.05
OLE MISS	-1.41	-0.74	-215.43
AUBURN	-2.21	-0.06	-227.39
KENTUCKY	-0.86	-1.43	-229.48

Not surprisingly, Arkansas is #1. But what is interesting is that the teams neatly organized themselves into three tiers:

TOP TIER
Arkansas, LSU, Vanderbilt, Florida

Three of those teams make sense, but Vandy? Now, some of that could be a factor of who on earth would bother to blitz Vandy, but the running game speaks for itself. Vanderbilt’s line performed well all season long. I’d also like to point out that LSU’s line ranked second without having a single player ranked 1st or 2nd team All-SEC. Florida is widely considered the second best line, with three All-SEC linemen (one 1st teamer), but they really weren’t that far off from second place.

MIDDLE TIER
South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama

Actually, Bama is much worse than the other three teams listed but they are much better than the bottom four so they hang out on an island. I just lump them in with the others to be nice. And for symmetry.

Strangely enough, SC ranks as the toughest line but they are the only one of the four without an All-SEC lineman,

BOTTOM TIER
Miss State, Ole Miss, Auburn, Kentucky

These teams were flat out lousy.

Actually, Auburn’s run blocking was decent, but their pass blocking was so terrible it almost ranked them as the worst line in the league. Kentucky gets that dubious honor despite having one of their best overall seasons. They did it the old-fashioned way, by stinking in all phases of the game.

And what are we going to do with the state of Mississippi?

But let us all bow before Arkansas. And be thankful most of their line graduated and they will hopefully return to mediocrity.

No Worries, Mate, Part I

Actually, there are worries. This is the first of a multi-part series on the things I worry about when I think of the 2007 LSU football team.

We have a very good team, a team that looks like it has a genuine shot at running the table all the way to the National Championship Game. That's not to say it will happen, but we have a real shot at it. But what could go wrong? Several things can go wrong. This team, despite all its strengths, has some serious weaknesses that have not been corrected despite years of effort.

One of the big rule changes this year is the new rule moving kickoffs back to the 30 yard line from the 35, meaning there will be fewer touchbacks and more runbacks on kickoffs. This has LSU fans salivating waiting for another electrifying return from Trindon Holliday.

Don't forget, however, that the opponent has a kickoff returner too. There are several really good return men in the SEC. Felix Jones at Arkansas almost burned us with a kickoff return last year. Javier Arenas at Bama was dangerous. Raphael Little at Kentucky was dangerous. And those are just some of the ones on our schedule. Mikey Henderson at Georgia is as dangerous as anyone, and everyone in the SEC has someone capable of returning the ball a long way.

This means that the team should be spending a lot of time focusing on covering kickoffs. It may also be a good idea to put more of the best players on kickoff coverage as well. Les Miles, like a lot of coaches, uses a lot of young players on special teams, which helps get these players experience. Some coaches, like Frank Beamer at Virginia Tech, actually put their best players on special teams and rotate the young players into regular plays to give his best players a rest. Miles should consider doing the same thing, at least on kickoffs.

Any time you get a special teams touchdown, it dramatically increases your chances of winning, but any time you give up a special teams touchdown, it dramatically decreases your chances of winning. Because LSU has not recently been particularly good at kickoff coverage, and because the rules have changed to benefit returners, this is a spot to worry about in the upcoming year.

O-Line Stats Part One

This is part one of Poseur’s two-part series for offensive line statistics.

One of the hardest things to evaluate in football is line play, just because there is a complete dearth of analytical tools at our disposal. We are pretty much at the mercy of common wisdom, which becomes a sort of group think. Team X has a good line because one expert said so, who is usually parroting another expert who is parroting another. And our statistical toolbox is virtually empty for evaluating lines.

I’m trying to rectify that. Now, I’m not claiming my o-line states are flawless. No statistic is, but it at least gives us something to start a debate with. It gives us a context to objectively evaluate the lines. Before I unveil the system, let’s admit the difficulties and flaws of creating an objective statistic for offensive line play.

First, an offensive line works as a unit, not as a bunch of individuals. At no position is the cliché “only as good as the weakest link” as true as it is with the offensive line play. So I don’t even attempt to evaluate individual linemen. If you want to know how good Ben Grubbs is, I really can’t help you. The system here is to evaluate each unit as a group.

Secondly, everything an offensive line is dependent on someone else. The line has essentially two jobs: prevent sacks and open up holes for the running game. So by counting the sacks or the average yards per carry is not just the responsibility of the line, it is determined by the mobility of the quarterback or the skill of a running back. This is an unavoidable fact of ANY football stat. Every statistic is influenced by more than just the player being evaluated. Receptions are a function not of a receiver’s skill but of the quarterback’s skill and the coach’s decision to throw the ball. Hell, every running stat has been dependent on the offensive line and we don’t throw those numbers out, so turnabout seems like fair play. Isolation of a skill in football statistics is frankly an impossible task.

Finally, opportunity matters. The number of sacks allowed for a pass-happy team like Kentucky is not the same as the run-oriented offense of Arkansas. This is actually a fairly easy problem to rectify, as we will look solely at rate stats. It’s not raw sack totals or raw rushing yards, but sacks per attempts and yards per attempt. This puts teams on an equal footing regardless of their offensive philosophy.

So, onto the system itself.

Like I mentioned, the offensive line has essentially two jobs: preventing sacks and opening up holes for the running game. Which means we can evaluate the line in two separate facets of the game: the running game and the passing game.

PASSING
It’s actually pretty easy. Take the total number of allowed sacks compared to the total number of pass attempts. OK, not exactly because there is some slight modifications needed. In college, sacks count as rushing attempts, not pass attempts, so the sacks have to be added to the total number of pass attempts. Also, to put the number on a more readable scale, we multiply the result by 100. It leaves us with this formula:

100*Sacks/(Pass Attempts + Sacks)

Taking the average SEC team, we plug in these numbers: 24 sacks and 359 attempts (actually, 24.167 and 358.583). The average team allows 6.739 sacks per 100 pass attempts.

RUSHING
Well, we can’t use simple yards per attempt because of the problem with sacks. Sacks count as rushes, not as pass attempts and we need to avoid penalizing a team twice for allowing a sack. The modified yards per rush formula we’ll evaluate offensive lines purely on rushing with is this:

(Rush Yards – Sack Yards)/(Rush Attempts – Sacks)

Once again, taking the average SEC team, let’s plug in some numbers. The average team attempts 435 rushes on the season, gains 1815 yards, and allows 24 sacks for 165 yards (actual figures: 435.333 rushes, 1815.083 yard, 24.167 sacks, and 165.083 yards). The average team averages 3.938 yards per attempt.

PUTTING IT TOGETHER
We’ve now encountered another problem. The numbers are on completely different scales. Take a look at the average team: 6.739 sacks and 3.938 yards/rush. If we work on the assumption that pass blocking is equally important as rush blocking, it’s impossible to simply add those numbers together. The ratio is too bizarre.

What we need to do is get these two variables on the same scale. And here we turn to one of our friends from your college statistics course: standard deviation.

We can take figure out how many standard deviations a team’s performance has been from the mean in both run blocking and pass blocking. This puts both variables on the same scale and also makes the numbers completely dependant on how the rest of the league has performed. We’ll call each computation of the number of standard deviations the PSCORE and the RSCORE.

Then, it’s a simple matter of adding the two numbers together to get an OLINE score. To keep the total number from being a long decimal, I multiply the result by 100 just to make it more readable.

This also means that 0 is a perfectly average offensive line. Any number in the negative is a below average team, and any number in the positive range is above average. Since this is running a bit long, we’ll put this into practice and apply these formulas to last year’s SEC teams in the next installment. There are some surprises on who ranks as a quality and poor offensive line. But without spoiling the suspense, Arkansas’ line was not just awesome, it was fucking awesome. It was every bit as good as we thought it was.

So at least the numbers passed the early smell test.

Let's Take a Moment

Let's take a short break to pay tribute to a terrific player whose career was cut short. His stat line will never turn heads. In his career, he caught 58 passes for 863 yards and 5 touchdowns. He also ran for 166 yards on 24 attempts, and scored one touchdown on a kickoff return and returns punts.

As observers of SEC Football know, however, stats don't tell the story with Tyrone Prothro. It's hard to conceive how Urban Meyer can say of a wide receiver with such modest stats, "He was the best player in the SEC." I have no link for that quote, but I remember him saying it on TV. Of course, the context of that quote was that Prothro had suffered a horrific injury in a game against Florida. A game that just so happened to probably be the best game he ever played, and the signature win of Mike Shula's coaching career. Prothro caught 5 passes for 134 yards and 2 touchdowns in a 31-3 road win over a highly ranked Florida team.

As most of you probably know by now, Prothro's career came to a semi-official close this week as he was taken off of his athletic scholarship and placed on a "medical" scholarship. I had never heard of a "medical" scholarship before this, but here's what I know. If a player is physically unable to play because of health issues, he can be kept on scholarship without counting against the team's scholarship limits, but in order to return to the football team, he has to get special permission from the NCAA. The purpose of the NCAA review is to prevent schools from abusing the rule to effectively increase their scholarship limits.

If you're on a medical scholarship, it is to be expected that your career is over. Prothro is a 5th year senior now, but could conceivably apply for a 6th year of eligibility and attempt to return next year, but this development seems to signal that is very unlikely.

I first remember Prothro from the 2003 season. I personally thought Bama's receivers were second rate, and the biggest weakness of the team. Mid-season, Mike Shula introduced the undersized true freshman into the lineup, and I thought he quickly became better than the two seniors who had been starting at receiver. One was Triandos Luke, and I don't remember who the other one was. He was small, but had good hands and was dangerous in the open field. He was still a true freshman, and not a fully-developed player yet, but you could tell he was on his way to being a very good player.

In 2004, his receiving stats were held down by the fact that Bama's starting QB, Brodie Croyle, suffered a knee injury early in the season. The Tide never found a competent quarterback the rest of the year, and was reduced to a pure running team. Despite this, and despite his modest 347 yards receiving, he was named a 2nd team All-SEC wide receiver at the close of the season.

In 2005, his season was of course cut short by his horrific injury, but not before making one of the great catches you will ever see against Southern Miss (it won an ESPY) and leading his team to a glorious victory over Florida. He returned to the playing field a few times, always an emotional scene, but when I saw him last year still noticeably limping, I had a pretty good idea he would never be able to return to playing effectively.

Now, Prothro has to look to his post-playing-days life. Sadly, the NFL does not await him, but he may be able to develop a nice career in coaching. EVERYONE in Alabama and a lot of people throughout the Southeast would bend over backwards to give Tyrone Prothro a chance to do whatever he wants in life. He could walk into any SEC coach's office and be accepted as a grad assistant coach today. At a very minimum, the Crimson Tide network of graduates will take care of the guy. I'd like to see him in coaching, personally.

Fall Practice Starts

It's now officially pre-season. Huzzah! Some new:

• Ryan Perilloux is back, baby! He's done everything asked of him during his suspension. He went to summer school and did well. He did community service work. He stayed out of trouble. He continued working apart from the team.
• True freshman Chad Jones will report to practice on Friday. He has not signed with the Astros and reports that the Astros have not really been trying to sign him. I'm not holding my breath on him being with the team until the August 15 deadline comes and goes, but this is encouraging news.

• Offensive guard/center Steven Singleton (pictured) has reportedly left the team. He was a massive redshirt freshman who was relatively far down the depth chart.

I have said before and I will say again that it is not such a bad thing when players leave the team, if those players are not anticipated to contribute. Singleton was a promising player, but it would have been at least a couple years before he was a contributor, if ever, and a bunch of solid players are coming up behind him at his position.

When a player leaves the organization, it clears a spot for a new recruit, who may end up being better than the one who left. The 85/25 rule basically requires players to leave if coaches want to keep signing 25-man classes. You can only have 85 scholarships at a time, but you can add 25 in any given year. If everyone stays 4 years, and some stay 5 years, you'll quickly lock yourself out of recruiting entirely.

Of course, too much attrition or attrition of the wrong people is a very bad thing. Losing quality players who you were counting on to contribute is a bad thing. It doesn't do a lot of good to sign a really good class only to have most of them leave because they kept getting arrested. But, a coach does his job realizing that SOME people are going to leave.

Anyway, it is now less than 4 weeks until the first game of the season, and I can't wait.

2007 Recruiting - Terrance Toliver

This handsome gentleman is the last of the 2007 LSU football recruits that we at GeauxTuscaloosa will profile. This is it. The last one. The ultimate. That's an appropriate choice of words. Ultimate. He is Terrance Toliver, 5-star wide receiver out of Hempstead, Texas. He is 6'4" 185# and runs a sub-4.5 40 yard dash.

Toliver enters a pretty good situation for a young wide receiver. LSU lost two great wideouts to the NFL Draft, and needs to find production either from other receivers currently on the roster or from new recruits. Toliver joins a class that includes Demetrius Byrd, Ron Brooks, and John Williams, plus current receivers Brandon Lafell, Chris Mitchell, Jared Mitchell, and Ricky Dixon fighting for the snaps and touches that Dwayne Bowe and Craig Davis leave behind.

While practice doesn't start until Friday, "practice" *wink* started long ago. The team has been running 7-on-7 drills since early in the summer. Of course, the coaches aren't allowed to attend the drills, but there is nothing in the world saying they can't have offices that happen to overlook the practice field, and there's even less saying they can't get feedback from the people who are present.

By all accounts, Terrance Toliver has been a standout at these drills. He has also put on weight in the weight room, which was the biggest concern people had of him. A 6'4" inch wide receiver who weighs 185# is pretty thin, and is vulnerable to being hurt or simply taken out of a play by a physical cornerback. But if he's really put on about 10 pounds and is closing in on 200#, his weight is not a big issue anymore. He'll never be a Calvin Johnson, but if he can be a taller Craig Davis, no one will complain. Les Miles has said in the press that Toliver will see playing time very early.

From what I have seen of Toliver, he is a big guy but has gotten away with playing a small game so far in his football life. He'll have to learn to use his size and height to his advantage. There's nothing wrong with being quick and shifty, but if you are quick and shifty and happen to be tall, there's no reason you can't be quick, shifty, AND physical when need be.

We're going to see Toliver in action this year. He's not going to redshirt, and he's probably not going to be playing special teams. He's not a tackler and he's not a returner. He's a wide receiver, and he's making a splash early in his career. Don't be shocked if he has Michael Clayton-esque production in year 1.

And this ends 2007 off-season coverage. Starting tomorrow, we enter pre-season mode, which means less focus on recruiting and more coverage of the team this year. There will still be SOME recruiting analysis, but it will be limited to more "big picture" stuff or bigger news items. I won't report in depth on every commit unless it is a splashy one. Instead, we'll talk about stuff of more immediate importance.

New 2008 Commitments - Kyle Prater and Derrick Bryant

LSU picked up two commitments for the 2008 signing class yesterday, but so far only one is confirmed to have been accepted. LSU accepted a commitment from linebacker Kyle Prater of Kerryville Highschool in Tivy, TX. Apparently, Kerryville's mascot is the Antlers, which is just about the strangest mascot I've ever heard of.

But that's neither here nor there. Prater, I think, makes an interesting combination with yesterday's commitment Ryan Baker. Baker plays linebacker like Barry Sanders played running back. He waits for a space to develop between him and the ball, stays low, and hits that space like a missile. Prater is more aggressive in getting to the ball and taking on blocks, but is not as quick to the ball once he spots it. At least, that's the impression I get from his videos.

Prater is listed at 6'2" and 215# with 4.5 speed and a 35" vertical, which is roughly the same as Baker, but their videos are strikingly different. Baker looks like the sexier commit because his videos show him to be so quick and athletic, looking to deliver a big hit. Prater's videos show him to be more of a traditional linebacker, taking on blockers and searching for the ball. He plays bigger than Baker, but not as fast, and looks like he'll put on a good bit of weight and end up a rather big linebacker. He compares favorably to Darry Beckwith at this point, while Baker compares more to Ali Highsmith.

Prater is a good student, so there are no worries about him qualifying academically. He's also a baseball player on traveling teams, though I do not know if he is also considered a baseball prospect. He chose LSU over Oklahoma, Nebraska, Texas Tech, and others.

This is Derrick Bryant, 6'1" 186#, 4.55 second 40 time, 3-star cornerback out of Suwanee High School in Peachtree Ridge, GA. He gave his commitment to LSU at a press conference last night, but as of press time none of the recruiting services were able to confirm that his commitment was accepted. He's been talking about committing for quite some time, however, and I sincerely doubt he would have gone through the trouble of a press conference if he did not know it would be accepted.

Not a lot is known about him by the recruiting press. His videos are short, with little information. I know he has been to camps at LSU and has been high on the coaching staff for a while. He's a good size for a CB, but I hope that 4.55 second 40 time was on a bad field.

But what do we know? From his videos, though scant, we know that he is a corner who is not afraid to hit and provide run support, which I really like in a cornerback. We know he picked us over offers from Bama, Auburn, Ohio State, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia Tech.

One thing this means is that LSU is officially a force in Georgia recruiting now, which bodes well for the future. LSU picked up a couple of linebacker recruits out of Georgia two years ago: Kelvin Sheppard and Perry Riley. This year we've gotten commitments from Bryant and Cordian Hagans out of Georgia.

Bryant is kind of an unknown quantity, at least to us. If his commitment is accepted, I'm looking forward to hearing more about him as the season goes on.

The off-season is coming to a close, as Fall Practice will be starting on Friday. Tomorrow, we will profile the last of the 2007 class, wide receiver Terrance Toliver. After that, we will focus a lot less on recruiting and a lot more on the upcoming season.