Monday, September 03, 2007

GT-ND Review

Over the next 12 days, I'll be reviewing the Notre Dame game and giving analysis, as well as reviewing the BC-Wake Forest and this Saturday's BC-NC State game to get ready for what is likely a big battle of two Top 20 teams.

Georgia Tech's performance on offense was remarkable. Excluding field goals, they ran 62 plays on offense. In those 62 plays, they gave up one sack and two procedure penalties. That's it. No holding penalties, no fumbles, no interceptions, no dropped passes. NFL teams have summer camps where they practice four times as much and have five preseason games. I bet there will be no NFL team that has just three mistakes on offense for a game.

Meanwhile, Notre Dame also ran 62 plays on offense. Nine sacks, three fumbles and three penalties later, they're on the bottom half of a 33-3 loss.

I've always been a fan of Ralph Friedgen's formula of winning games. The statistic is derived by adding a team's interceptions, fumbles, dropped passes, sacks and penalties during a game and dividing that by the team's total number of offensive plays. The key is to keep the result under 12 percent -- meaning that the team is committing a human error on 12 percent or less of its plays. Through the years, Friedgen said the formula's accuracy is around 95 percent.

Georgia Tech committed a human error on only 5 percent of its plays. Notre Dame committed a human error on 25 percent of its plays. It's easy to see why GT blew ND out.