Friday Five: Judging Notre Dame’s performance using a key CFP metric
We know the College Football Playoff committee uses strength of schedule and top-25 wins when ranking teams, but those are just two data points. A revealing story in The Athletic this week shed a light on another ranking tool advanced stats.
There are three heavily weighed stats, as The Athletic’s David Ubben learned while observing a mock selection: relative offense, relative defense and relative scoring. They examine how many yards Team X gains and allows on average, and how many it gained and allowed against Team Y. Scoring is the same principle, but with points instead of yards.
In other words, if a team gains 400 yards against a defense that allows 300 yards per game, that’s good relative offense. If a team allows 30 points to an offense that averages 20, that’s poor relative scoring.
Relative scoring, offense and defense aren’t publicly available numbers. My suspicion, though, was Notre Dame would rate somewhere in the middle of the pack, which might have contributed to its No. 10 initial CFP ranking. Despite a 7-1 record, the Irish are allowing 0.1 more yards per play than they’re averaging.
But I wanted to confirm it. So I tried to calculate Notre Dame’s relative numbers myself.
I found each Notre Dame opponent’s yards, yards allowed, points and points allowed per game this year, then compared Notre Dame’s performance vs. that opponent to the opponent’s season average.
It turns out, Notre Dame is a better relative performer than I thought, but not a dominant one.
The Irish have gained more yards than the opposing defense’s average in seven of eight games. They have allowed fewer yards than the opposing offense’s average in six of eight games. They have scored more points than the opposing defense’s average in every game. They have allowed fewer points than the opposing offense’s average all but twice.
It is, though, worth noting Notre Dame’s offense has surpassed a defense’s average by 50 or more yards just twice this year. The defense has held an opposing offense to 50 or more yards below its average once.
On average, the Irish are gaining 48.8 more yards than their opponent normally allows, giving up 16.3 fewer yards than their opponent typically gains, scoring 8.8 more points than their opponent usually gives up and allowing 5.3 fewer points than their opponent normally scores.
Of course, stats are all about context, and how those numbers compare to other teams remains the mystery. The committee’s data isn’t available, and it would be a bear to compile the relative numbers for all 130 teams on my own. My hunch remains that most of the teams in the top 15 have slightly better relative numbers than Notre Dame.
2. The CFP
There might be five teams better than 8-0 Cincinnati now or four teams better than a potentially unbeaten Cincinnati in early December. It’s not outrageous to be down on them or higher on several others.
Cincinnati’s No. 6 ranking and 8-0 UTSA’s lack of a ranking (with a pair of three-loss teams in the top 21, no less) highlight once again a harsh reality of college football’s championship: It’s essentially inaccessible for half the sport. That has been the case since the Associated Press poll era. It remains true now.
It’s too early to say Cincinnati won’t make the four-team playoff field, but its path isn’t wide. The committee was happy to put three one-loss teams ahead of the Bearcats now. There’s no reason to think it won’t be willing to do the same when compiling the final rankings Dec. 5.
Maybe those three one-blemish teams are indeed better. But the point of the CFP rankings isn’t to say, “Alabama would be a two-touchdown favorite over Cincinnati” or “Cincinnati is a two-loss team against an SEC schedule.”
This exercise should be about results first. Yes, Cincinnati’s lighter schedule means the Bearcats are a bit less of a proven force, but a zero in the loss column should at least be worthy of an opportunity if they reach 13-0.
In any other sport, a team can confidently say on opening day, “If we win all of our games, we’ll win the championship.” Half of college football has no such claim, and any format that enables such reality is a farce.
If you’re convinced Cincinnati or whichever hopeful disruptor is in this spot next would get exposed in a playoff semifinal, perhaps that’s true. But so have some of the sport’s biggest brands and best teams, including the one this site covers.
I say all this to highlight my hope an expanded playoff is pushed through this year and opens the championship path to all.
3. Quantifying the offensive line
Notre Dame needed some trial and error before finding what worked at quarterback. The same goes for the offensive line. Four different left tackles, two left guards and one shift to a higher-tempo offense later, the Irish have something that works.
The five starters up front have combined to give up 11 pressures in the last three games. Only one of the four sacks allowed in that span was charged to a lineman, per PFF.
The quick passing game helps, of course. Notre Dame’s opening drive against North Carolina provided multiple examples of a quick throw mitigating leaky blocking.
The run-blocking might be the more impressive and important reversal. Junior running back Kyren Williams was hit at or behind the line of scrimmage on 54.5 percent of his carries in Notre Dame’s first five games. At one point in September, he was leading the country in hit-at-line rate.
The last three games, though? His hit-at-line rate is 36.4 percent. That’s three percentage points lower than his 2020 number.
4. Kevin Austin Jr.’s usage change
The quick passing game has slashed the number of vertical shots. Graduate student quarterback Jack Coan threw just six total passes that traveled at least 20 air yards against USC and North Carolina. He completed only one — a 21-yard touchdown to senior wide receiver Kevin Austin Jr. against the Tar Heels — but had two more hit a receiver’s hands and fall incomplete.
That touchdown was the first time those two have connected on a deep pass since the Wisconsin game Sept. 25. Coan’s benchings in consecutive weeks played a part in that drought, but it’s also due to the reduced vertical passing game.
Coan and Austin have still been productive together, though. They have linked up for seven completions the last two weeks, plus the two-point conversion at Virginia Tech in the prior game. The targets are mainly short and intermediate throws — a sharp heel turn from the beginning of the year.
Austin had 22 targets through the season’s first three games. Ten of them were deep throws. Since Notre Dame’s bye, though, only two of his 11 targets are deep shots.
Going vertical can’t completely disappear from the offense. Notre Dame has the downfield receiving threats to warrant a few attempts per game. It’s a necessary element of a functional passing game, but can also fit into the quick passing game when the deep throws are leaving Coan’s hand as fast as they are now.
Coan’s average release time on deep balls was 2.63 seconds or faster against USC and North Carolina. It was 2.98 seconds or slower in four of his first five games.
5. In-state recruiting
I’m not of the belief that Notre Dame needs to lock down Indiana if it wants to push higher up the recruiting rankings. It is not a talent-rich football state. Its metro areas are not ripe with Notre Dame loyalty.
Yet when 2023 Merrillville (Ind.) Andrean four-star linebacker Drayk Bowen committed Wednesday, the Irish landed the top-ranked player in Indiana for the second time in the last three cycles. They snagged Blake Fisher in 2021. They beat out Auburn and Clemson for Bowen, the No. 22 overall recruit in his class.
Elsewhere, the Irish have commitments from two of the state’s top 12 players in 2022: Zionsville High guard Joey Tanona (No. 7) and Lawrenceburg High guard Ashton Craig (No. 12).
It seems misguided, though, to think of this as some critical effort to protect the home turf. Indiana isn’t as important to Notre Dame as, say, New Jersey is to Rutgers, Pennsylvania is to Penn State or southern California is to USC. Notre Dame landed two Hoosiers from 2016-20 and still won double-digit games in all but one of those years.
At the same time, when there are blue-chip recruits in Notre Dame’s backyard who are on- and off-field fits and like the proximity, the Irish should be able to land them with some frequency like they have in recent cycles.
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