A real shame no one truly knows who uttered it first, because that person deserves credit once again.
Wikipedia provides no clear answer. The man known for it, Mark Twain, is not the original author. It is often mistakenly attributed to a late-19th century British Prime Minister. At this point, we’ll never know.
The phrase in question originated when football was a nascent sport, having nothing to do with a game. Today, though, it often applies.
“There are three types of lies: Lies, damned lies and statistics.”
In the instance of Notre Dame’s 27-13 win over Duke, well, it rings true with basic statistics. The postgame narrative – a fair one – was frequent lamenting about quarterback Ian Book and the offense’s bumps.
Yet, his surface numbers show no hint of them. Book averaged 8.5 yards per attempt, nearly a yard higher than his season average a year ago. A year ago, such an average for an entire season ranked 17th. Notre Dame gained 441 yards, which if done over the course of a season, would have ranked 30th nationally in 2019.
Pretty good! But that’s not the verdict most would give the offense after one week.
What you get on the general postgame stat sheet is a snapshot. It’s true, but can be incomplete. What you see each week isn’t a mirage. Numbers can lie, or at least leave you wanting more context and depth.
So, here’s more…in the form of more stats, but more nuanced ones.
Each week, I’ll compile a few stats you don’t see that can help paint a better picture of what really happened, why something happened and some individual stars.
First, a custom one I came up with: individual defensive wins, which measures the number of times a defensive player directly caused a failed play for the offense.
An individual defensive win (IDW) is when a defensive player registers any of the following: sack, tackle for loss, tackle for no gain, forced fumble, fumble recovery, interception, pass breakup, tackle that creates a third- or fourth-down stop and any tackle in a goal-to-go spot that results in the offense gaining 50 percent or less of the needed yardage. If both happened on one play, like a tackle for loss on third down, that counts as one IDW. Half-sacks, half-TFLs and half-stuffs count as a full IDW.
Here are the IDW leaders for Notre Dame against Duke:
