After a long hiatus...

by Lennie Mac

I am back for the new season. After a summer of studying Mike Sewak and Ken Nuimatolo triple option videos and after watching an NBC.com replay of the Navy-Notre Dame several times, I am ready for the upcoming season.

As a refresher to the stats that I provide for each game, they are as follows:

- The Freidgen Formula - Comprised by Ralph Friedgen, this formula holds true in 95% of football games. Take the number of fumbles, interceptions, dropped passes, offensive penalties and sacks and divide it by the total number of plays. If it is under 12%, you will win 90 to 95% of the time. Likewise, if you are over 12%, you will lose 90 to 95% of the time.

- Success Rate - I got this one from Rock M Nation http://www.rockmnation.com/. Here are the rules for a successful play:

1st Down - 50% of necessary yardage
2nd Down - 67% of necessary yardage
3rd and 4th Down - 100% of necessary yardage

Sucess Rate can tell you how a game will flow, and over the long haul can tell you who's winning and who's losing.

- Defensive Success Rate - If it's a sucessful play on defense, then it's an unsuccessful play on offense.

- Line Yards - This measures run blocking (I will follow this one closely). Here are the rules:


- For a play that resulted in negative yards, the O-line is given 120% of the effort (i.e. a 3-yard loss would be a 3.6-yard loss for the O-line).
- For a play that resulted in a 0-4 yard gain, the O-line is granted 100%.
- For a play that resulted in a 5-10 yard gain, the O-line is granted 50% of the yards over 4 (i.e. an 8-yard gain would be a 6-yard gain for the O-line).
- For a play that resulted in a 10+ yard gain, the O-line get no extra credit—by that point, the runner is into the secondary, and the line won’t get much chance to block. Therefore, the most credit an O-line can get is 7 yards.

This works a lot better for runs than passes since, obviously, the O-line isn't allowed to run down the field and block for receivers until the ball is actually thrown, and in most cases (some screen passes being the obvious exception) the ball is thrown pretty far away from the line.

- Sack Rate - This is used to measure pass blocking. Pretty easy:

Sack Rate = (sacks)/(sacks + passes)

Other things I'll try to put together after each game:

- # of plays by each skill player
- # of defensive players rushing the QB
- # of defensive backs

I'll start doing this for the BC game. Two reasons:

1. The Jacksonville State game is not televised.
2. I only consider games against fellow BCS schools.