It’s just
like riding a bike…virtually….with words and numbers…and no physical exertion.
As I settle back into the old digs at John Lynch’s Dad, I plan on continuing
much of the same analysis I’d previously been doing for Down the Tunnel. Less
there be any confusion, I think y’all should still be checking out Down the Tunnel's content, but with that out of the way, new
opportunities have also presented themselves.
One of
those opportunities was having an opportunity to go on to ND Fan Radio’s call
in show on Wednesday night. You can find all of their stuff on the iTunes store
through The New ND Nation's feed. Additionally, you should follow both of the hosts on Twitter if that’s your thing. The guys are @IrishTightness
and “Air McFly” @NDFanRadio to keep up to date with their comings and goings.
The hope
will be to get on more often than not and do some deep dives (or shallow dives
depending on how we’re feeling…perhaps just debating the value of 1990’s Pop
Rock?) on some statistics that I found interesting or are worth noting. That of
course means I’ll be speaking in a lot of numbers in a short period of time.
Speaking in numbers is good for computers (Siri excluded), but not so good
necessarily for digesting what was said in 10-15 minutes. With that in mind, I
welcome you to the first edition of the “ND Fan Radio Appendix.” Following any
appearance I make during their 9:30 PM ET Wednesday call-in show, I’ll try to
post a quick run through of the stats I talked about. The goal will be to shoot
for Fridays, but you can see how well that’s started out.
Enough of
this promoting, explaining, and wording. Let’s get to numbering.
Stat of the Week:
Through Notre Dame’s first 3
games, they're averaging a +2.7 Turnover margin per game. That’s good for a
top 5 ranking in college football year to date.
Explanation:
Turnover margin per game is a straightforward concept. Nothing deep
about it but always worth explaining
before we get into it. Turnover margin is defined as “Turnovers created by Team
A – Turnovers surrendered by Team A.” A positive margin means a team creates
more turnovers than it gives up. A negative margin means the opposite.
Obviously,
positive means “good,” and negative means “bad.” It’s effectively the single
number method of telling you “who won the turnover battle”…a phrase loved
by analysts and fans alike. And, in a rare instance of clarity, for good
reason. Turnovers and more importantly turnover margin impacts so many other
stats that come to decide the result of a game. A turnover deep in your
opponent’s territory can derail an otherwise promising offensive drive (see:
Crist, Dayne; South Florida). It harms other secondary stats that let you know
how an offense is performing such as yards per point, time of possession, and
scoring efficiency. Yes, turnovers may be just one facet of a game and somewhat
fluky, but they’re also remarkably important and quite predictive of how a team
will fare, usually. More on that later.
Stepping
away from the stat world for a second, anyone who’s watched a dramatic game,
drank in agony when a goal line interception shatters dreams, or quite simply
watched the Tommy Rees era of Notre Dame football understands the emotional
impact turnovers have on the feel of the game too. Whether true or not, there’s
a perceived psychological advantage to turnovers that can’t be dismissed
altogether.
What I’m Curious About: So, the real question is: How good
is a +2.7 margin? Sure, it’s top 5 right now, but will that continue? The
answer is: Yes, A +2.7 TURNOVER MARGIN PER GAME IS GOOD….REAL GOOD…..LIKE,
YOU’RE NOT GONNA CONTINUE THAT GOOD, GOOD.
To show you what I mean, the chart below displays the turnover margin
per game for the team that finished first in the nation at season’s end
dating back to 2005:
Year
|
2013
|
2012
|
2011
|
2010
|
2009
|
2008
|
2007
|
2006
|
2005
|
TO Margin
|
1.7
|
1.8
|
1.8
|
1.8
|
1.7
|
1.8
|
1.8
|
1.3
|
1.8
|
Whether
you’re good at logic puzzles or not, I think you can seen the pattern.
Basically, a +1.8 is about the top of the mountain when it comes to turnover
margin per game over the course of an entire season. Basically, just by regression we should
expect Notre Dame’s turnover margin per game to drop off by at least 1 turnover created per game.
That’s okay and is not necessarily a concern. While that number may come down,
maintaining a turnover margin on the positive side of zero over the course of a
year is still a huge advantage. In the Brian Kelly era, the turnover margin per
game numbers have been a beacon of what the season will come to be. The next chart shows each of Brian Kelly’s
first 5 seasons with their turnover margins through the first three games, what
their record was, and where the team finished:
Year
|
TO Margin First 3
|
Record First 3
|
Point
Differential First 3
|
End of Year
Record
|
2010
|
-1.3
|
1-2
|
4
|
8-5
|
2011
|
-2.7
|
1-2
|
11
|
8-5
|
2012
|
1.67
|
3-0
|
60
|
12-1
|
2013
|
0.33
|
2-1
|
18
|
9-4
|
2014
|
2.7
|
3-0
|
78
|
???
|
I apologize
in advance for doing this to everyone, but if you’re asking me based off of
these measures, what does the 2014 start look most like, it looks most like a
ramped up version the 2012 start. When on with ND Fan Radio, both Air McFly and
IrishTightness pointed to other areas where this start feels like 2012
including total rushing yards and scoring defense. It’s not worth drawing any
hard parallels to the national title run of 2012 just three games in, but
hopefully this helps confirm for you that you were in fact not crazy
with those special tingly feelings. Also, put down the glass of whiskey.
The other
thing this chart points out is how there is a loose but noticeable correlation
between turnover margin per game and point differential which is what I alluded
to earlier. Turnovers create (or take away) scoring opportunities and a
positive margin more often than not leads to a subtle but difficult to overcome
advantage of more possession and opportunities to score.
The Brian Kelly Era:
That takes
me to the pet project from the week. I set out to figure out what “winning the
turnover battle” has meant in the Brian Kelly era. The issue with margins/per
game in the early going is that outliers can impact the number and you don’t
necessarily know whether a team is consistently
winning or losing the turnover battle on a game by game basis. A team with a
+1, 0, 0 would have the same turnover margin per game as a team that had +5,
-2, -2 through three game. Of course, the first team would be much more likely
to have a good record than the team that had deficits of 2 in 66% of their
games.
Therefore,
I broke down Brian Kelly’s performance by turnover margin situation for each game during his 4+ years. The
results are as follows:
Situation
|
Games
|
Wins
|
Losses
|
Win %
|
ALL
|
55
|
40
|
15
|
72.72%
|
Margin > 0
|
25
|
24
|
1
|
96%
|
Margin = 0
|
7
|
6
|
1
|
85.71%
|
Margin < 0
|
23
|
10
|
13
|
43.47%
|
Margin ≥ 0
|
32
|
30
|
2
|
93.75%
|
So what
I’ve got highlighted is what I tweeted out on Thursday: Since Brian Kelly has been at Notre Dame, he is 24-1 with a positive
turnover margin and 30-2 if turnovers are even or better. The evidence was
overwhelming: an amazing predictor of success for Kelly’s teams was simply
to look at turnover margin. If it wasn’t in the red, there was a 96% chance
we’d won that game. Great, fantastic, awesome, but CONTEXT!! I really had no
idea how to absorb this information. It sounds impressive, but where does it
stand in relation to other college football coaches?
With a
substantial amount of assistance from twitter colleague and masochistic stat
nerd @andrewwinn (please follow him if you’re not already doing so), we can
provide a little more substance to this topic. The question was two fold: 1) What
to look at, and 2) Who to look at.
One proved easy to answer. I wanted the data for other college football coaches
since the beginning of 2010 when Brian Kelly came to Notre Dame. I also wanted
to exclude any match-ups which might’ve occurred with FCS opponents. The year
restriction had one exception: I was asked how Kelly matched up compared to
other ND coaches. With that in mind, Charlie Weis’ numbers were also crunched
through 4 seasons and 3 games during his ND tenure.
The who
proved more difficult. I was curious about coaches with similar records, better
records, and slightly worse records. I preferred coaches who were at one
school for the entire time period, though one partial exception was made. Truth
is, if a coach is much worse at winning than Kelly, he probably doesn’t make it
5 years at one school. With that in mind, the sample ended up including two of
the winningest coaches of the past 4+ years (Nick Saban and Chris Peterson),
several coaches who have substantially similar records to Kelly (Mike
D’Antonio, Bo Pelini, and Mike Gundy), two with slightly worse records (Mark
Richt and Art Briles), and then Charlie.
For the
comparisons, I present two charts. The first one will show each coach’s winning
percentage by turnover margin category:
Coach
|
Total
|
> 0
|
= 0
|
< 0
|
≥ 0
|
Saban
|
86.53%
|
96.55%
|
75%
|
73.33%
|
91.89%
|
Peterson
|
83.01%
|
88.46%
|
78.57%
|
76.92%
|
85%
|
Gundy
|
76.92%
|
96.55%
|
61.54%
|
40%
|
85.71%
|
D’Antonio
|
75%
|
88%
|
70%
|
58.82%
|
82.85%
|
Kelly
|
72.72%
|
96%
|
85.71%
|
43.47%
|
93.75%
|
Pelini
|
69%
|
94.11%
|
90%
|
44%
|
92.59%
|
Briles
|
68.5%
|
83.33%
|
81.81%
|
33.33%
|
82.85%
|
Richt
|
63.46%
|
88.46%
|
63.63%
|
20%
|
81.08%
|
Weis
|
58.49%
|
75%
|
40%
|
40%
|
65.79%
|
The coaches
are arranged by overall winning percentage. As you can see, Brian Kelly’s right
in the middle of the pack. The numbers revealed that Brian Kelly is in fact
elite at converting an even or better turnover margin into a win. None of the
other eight coaches reviewed since 2010 had a higher win percentage in such
situation. Only Nick Saban and Bo Pelini even broke the 90% threshold with
Kelly.
Not
surprisingly, the two coaches with the truly elite overall winning percentages
did something the others could not: overcome a turnover deficit to get a win.
Nick Saban and Chris Peterson were the only two coaches to break the 70% win
percentage when having a turnover deficit. In fact, they were the only two
coaches to break 60%! On the opposite end of the spectrum, there was Mark Richt
whose winning percentage of 20% with a turnover deficit was by far the worst.
Five of the nine coaches had winning percentages with a deficit between 40 and
60 percent. Richt’s frustrations with breaking through in the SEC East probably
have a lot to do with so rarely being able to overcome a sub-par turnover game.
And
then….there’s Charlie. Charlie Weis was the only coach not to break an
80% win percentage with a positive turnover differential. He was also the only
coach to lose more games than he won with an even turnover margin. As if
that’s not devastating enough, the chart below will really hammer home why that
was so painful to the Charlie Weis era.
The next
chart shows the percentage of games each coach found his team as a percentage
of total games played from 2010 – present (excluding FCS competition):
Coach
|
Total Games
|
> 0
|
= 0
|
< 0
|
≥ 0
|
Saban
|
52
|
55.77%
|
15.38%
|
28.84%
|
71.15%
|
Peterson
|
53
|
49.06%
|
26.42%
|
24.53%
|
75.47%
|
Gundy
|
52
|
55.77%
|
25%
|
19.23%
|
80.77%
|
D’Antonio
|
52
|
48.08%
|
19.23%
|
32.69%
|
67.31%
|
Kelly
|
55
|
45.45%
|
12.72%
|
41.82%
|
58.18%
|
Pelini
|
52
|
32.69%
|
19.23%
|
48.08%
|
51.92%
|
Briles
|
50
|
48%
|
22%
|
30%
|
70%
|
Richt
|
52
|
50%
|
21%
|
28.84%
|
71.15%
|
Weis
|
53
|
52.83%
|
18.87%
|
28.30%
|
71.7%
|
The two
coaches who won the highest percentage of their games when getting and even or
better turnover margin were also by far
the worst at their teams making it to
that situation. If there’s a reason Brian Kelly’s teams haven’t been even more
successful, it’s that his particular mix of offensive turnovers and lack of
defensive turnovers placed the team in a turnover deficit more frequently than
any coach other than Bo Pelini. Probably also goes a long way towards
explaining why so many Nebraska fans are growing tired of Coach Bo.
Mike Gundy
was the only coach to have his team at even or better over 80% of the time and
explains why he has the same number of wins as Kelly over the same time frame
with fewer losses.
That brings
us to Charlie. In terms of wasted opportunities, Charlie Weis won or at least
tied the turnover battle more frequently than any coach reviewed other than
Mike Gundy and Chris Peterson. He even edged out Nick Saban in that respect.
However, his teams performed so much more poorly in those situations that any
possible advantage was negated. Had he performed just at the norms, there’s a
non-zero chance Charlie Weis might still be honoring that 10 year contract
Notre Dame gave him. In a way, we all owe Charlie a degree of thanks for being less
successful at leveraging turnover advantages into wins.
Kelly’s Quarterbacks:
Finally, I
think many Notre Dame fans would point towards the failed (or at least tepid)
tenures of Dayne Crist and Tommy Rees as an explanation for why the team has
not more frequently found itself in an advantageous situation that could be
exploited. The numbers bear this out quite favorably. Suffice it to say that
Everett Golson has been the best quarterback in the Notre Dame/Kelly era. His
legs and improvisation are a definite plus. He’s also been less turnover prone.
Between 2012 and 2014, Everett Golson has played in 15 games (he did not play
in 2012 versus BYU). In those games, there is a distinct turnover advantage
which developed compared to other quarterbacks:
Quarterback:
|
Games
|
% ≥ 0 Turnover
Margin
|
% < 0 Turnover
Margin
|
Golson
|
15
|
80%
|
20%
|
All Others
|
40
|
50%
|
50%
|
If the goal
is converting Brian Kelly’s superb track record of converting even or better
turnover margins into wins, Everett Golson’s play has certainly assisted in
that respect. It’s still a reasonably small sample size, but in the 15 games in
which Golson has played, Notre Dame has an average Turnover Margin per Game of
1.0. In the remaining 40 during Kelly’s tenure, the average Turnover Margin is
-0.3. Let’s all hope these trends can continue.
Please let
me know what questions you might have or what else you’re interested in
learning about. Hit me up on Twitter at @IrishMoonJ, and I hope you’ve enjoyed.
- Moons
