SB Nation Los Angeles Editor's Pick
A Look at the UCLA Stats After 2 Games
by Kerckhoff405 on Sep 15, 2010 4:00 AM PDT
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PrintBumped. GO BRUINS. -N
Calming down from my furor over Saturday’s debacle, I decided to take a more empirical look at the statistics and looked for anything stuck out. Given that there are only two data points to consider, none of this should be considered conclusive evidence for anything. However, they do provide a glimpse at the problems and deficiencies plaguing our team that many of you have already mentioned here.
Average Time of Possession. It’s no surprise that given our offensive and defensive woes, that we are not holding on to the ball long enough. If our opponent has a higher time of possession, their offense and our defense are on the field longer, and that usually means more points for them. It also means our offense isn’t sustaining long drives and we’re not converting our 3rd downs (more on that latter). I think even more revealing is our average time of possession by quarter:
UCLA OPPONENTS
Average Total Possession Time 23:37 36:23
1st Quarter 5:11 9:48
2nd Quarter 7:26 7:33
3rd Quarter 6:20 8:40
4th Quarter 4:38 10:21
When I look at this breakdown by quarter, a few things stick out for me. First of all, our time of possession in the 1st Quarter is terrible. It’s almost half that of our opponents. This suggests to me that our offense needs almost an entire quarter before getting into any sort of rhythm. It can also shows that our defense isn’t getting the other team off the field. By the time the 2nd Quarter comes around, both sides seem to find some rhythm. After halftime, we seem to struggle again. We come out flat and aren’t able to sustain long drives. The 1st and 3rd Quarter times of possession are truly telling because these are the times when our team should be rested and prepared. No surprise, our 4th Quarter numbers are pretty horrid. By that time, our defense is gassed, and teams lean on us by keeping the ball on the ground. Time of possession directly correlates to my next point.
Scoring by Quarter. Given that we didn't score against Stanford, there really isn't much to see. However, some trends do stick out for me when I look at the scoring breakdown by quarter.
SCORE BY QUARTERS 1st 2nd 3rd 4th Total
UCLA................ 0 10 3 9 22
Opponents........... 17 3 25 21 66
First thing worth noting is that we haven’t scored a single point in the 1st Quarter yet. As I mentioned before, this is when our team should be fresh, energetic and prepared. Yet, our lack of offense here is disappointing. Similarly, our defense isn’t stopping drives, nor are they keeping points off the board. The 1st Quarter, for me, sets an important tone for the game. When we’re not scoring any points in the 1st Quarter, and not sustaining drives, it shows me that our team isn’t showing up ready to play, and is lacking that intensity, aggression and sense of urgency to set the tone. By the look of these numbers, we get completely dominated in the 2nd half. Opponents outscored us 25 to 3 in the 3rd Quarter. This is supposed to be the time when halftime adjustments kick in and we should be generating more points. Yet, we don’t get any momentum going into the 2nd half.
3rd Down Conversions. For those who watched the first two games, this stat shouldn't be a surprise, yet it's still painful to see.
UCLA OPPONENTS
3rd Down Conversions 4 for 22 17 for 32
It’s pretty clear here. Too many 3 and outs for our offense and very porous defense on 3rd down. We won’t win too many games if we don’t do better in this area. Our defense is allowing teams to convert around 50% of their 3rd downs. The worse part about this is that some of those happen during 3rd and long situations when our defense puts little to no pressure on the QB. If the defense is feeling gassed and spewing chunks on the sidelines, then they need to do a better job getting teams off the field. A little pressure via blitz packages wouldn’t hurt.
Turnovers. Call it a new offense, or lack of fundamentals, but we’ve been bad at protecting the ball. Our offense has been responsible for 6 fumbles (3 lost), and 4 interceptions. On the other side of the ball, our defense has caused 3 fumbles (2 lost) and 0 interceptions. I think our defense could do a better job attacking the ball when tackling a player. The one thing I noticed about the Stanford defenders is that they constantly tried to strip the ball whenever they wrapped up. That shows solid defensive fundamentals. At this point, I’d just be happy if we stopped arm tackling runners. I’m not surprised by our lack of picks so far. Our front 4 hasn’t been putting enough pressure on the QB to make a bad throw.
I could go on listing more stats, but these were the four that stuck out the most to me because of the differences between us and our opponents. Again, these are only from two games, so it’s far too early to draw any conclusions from them. Yet, they do provide a baseline for improvement. I’m going to focus on these areas in our games ahead and will try to update these stats as the season progresses. There is obviously much room for improvement, and I’m anxious to see what adjustments we’ve made against Houston this Saturday.
Go Bruins!
This is a FanPost and does not necessarily reflect the views of BruinsNation's (BN) editors. It does reflect the views of this particular fan though, which is as important as the views of BN's editors.
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Time of Possession and Fatigue
There is some skew in the TOP numbers because we have run the no huddle so often. I think a balancing stat will be how many plays we’ve run compared to how many our opponents have run.
But, no matter how equal the play count, if we don’t get first downs, the no huddle may be depriving the D of rest time. The D also deprives itself of rest time by failing to get itself off the field by stopping the other team with a 3 and out.
If conditioning is an issue, I wonder if the coaches will drop the no huddle in favor of taking more time off the clock while we are on O.
sjh
the two three-and-outs
to start both games probably are the biggest problem. You just can’t do that at the start of games and expect to control tempo.
Especially with our Schemes
On defense to start the games.
No need to apologize
Thanks for the great contribution! I’m sure N can clean up the formatting if necessary.
Good stuff 405.
Awesome post
From your stats & watching the games, it really looks like a strength & conditioning issue on TOP & scoring. It’s like the players are in a daze sometimes. Of course, that wouldn’t explain the lackadaisical play by the receivers :-P or the lack of productivity on 3rd downs.
Very interesting seeing this laid out. Thanks again!
while I don't have the time to look at more detail at the numbers
some potential criticisms of this analysis are:
1) TOP is a misleading statistic, given differential use of run and pass in games by teams, and as 66 notes, the use of no-huddle. Also, playing from behind in 4th quarters, we are actively trying to preserve gameclock while our opponents are trying to burn it. TOP does not necessarily reflect actual time spent playing offense and defense, and the comparison between the points/TOP for 3rd and 4th quarters shows it isn’t obvious that TOP differential and points differential are positively correlated.
2) coming out of half-time, both teams are fresh, both teams have adjustments kicking in, etc. You could equally well look at the difference between 1st and 2nd quarter, and between 3rd and 4th quarter, as showing what great in-game adjustments CNC and CCB are making. The idea that we ought to be coming out of half-time with an advantage over our opponents discounts the possibility of opponents adjusting to us. So it seems to cut both ways.
3) 3rd down conversion % is another stat that can be a good proxy for something, but not always clear what. You anecdotally mention how many 3rd and long attempts we are allowing people to convert, but it would be instructive to know what the average 3rd down distance was for each team. We seem to be in a lot of 3rd-and-long situations on account of not making progress on 1st and 2nd down (particularly due to incomplete passes and penalties), whereas we seem to allow other teams to be in 3rd and short more often (this is my ‘anecdotal’ impression, and might be way off).
You can also win games never converting a 3rd down and allowing your opponents to convert 50% of their 3rd downs if you are marching up the field at an average of more than 5 yards per play and holding your opponents to shorter gains. You can score points without ever facing 3rd down (indeed – that is how we have scored touchdowns this season!); and if your opponents start in deep field position and gain just 3-4 yards per play, you can let them convert 3 or 4 3rd downs before they even get to the halfway line. So again, these stats in isolation don’t give an unassailable causal relationship, regardless of the focus on them in the media.
4) the turnover stats are also somewhat influenced by the styles being used. The interceptions this year have, to my mind, been much less bad than interceptions last year. Last year, it seemed like we were throwing multiple passes per game that were in danger of being picked off, and often for no good reason. This year, we have had some INTs that were desperation throws or great defensive plays, rather than needless INTs killing promising drives. On the fumbles – I would only add that one was a QB being stripped at the line of scrimmage, and one was a QB being hit as he scrambled; in both those cases these are related to our current woes in the passing game. We seem to be seeing (though again, this is anecdotal rather than statistical) fewer terrible drive killing fumbles by running backs than we have seen early in previous seasons. In general though, I think the turnovers do reflect to a certain extent the lack of Brian Price creating one-man-rush pressure and allowing our linebackers to tee off on running backs and our defensive backs to ball-hawk on rushed throws.
I was just typing
some of the same stuff about TOP and the turnovers. As for the turnovers, I just hope that not committing drive killing turnovers is an area this team has improved in, with the alternative being our drives have just been so short they haven’t had significant chances to commit them. I really do think it’s the first option, one thing I noticed watching the KSU game (2x) was that most of KPs bad throws seemed to be him being overly cautious, the bad throws may not have been close enough to our receivers, but they were placed even further away from defenders.
Great effort btw, Kerckhoff. Much appreciated.
Just wondering?
How do these state compare to last year and the year before? I know for the last three years, we come out flat in the 1st quarter and usually after the half. It seems like our defense over the last 3 years comes out and needs the first quarter to figure out what’s going on. We usually spot the opponent a TD or two before we clamp down if we ever do.
These are game planning mistakes. The defense should know from films what the opponent is going to do and plan to defend against them. Offense should have an idea what they can and can’t do against the opponent and come out gunning for them.
I just think our O and D coordinators need to get their shit together or dust off their resumes. I don’t care if Norm Chow is the second coming of Knute Rockne or Mr. Heisman himself, show me what you’ve got! So far I’ve seen nada!
Mr. D Coordinator, if you can come out gunning for Houston from the opening kick-off then it’s time to dust off your resume and put Mayflower movers on your speed dial!
WRT to Turnovers
does Johnathan Franklin have any fumbles in the first 2 games? I don’t think he has… If so, that is good news right?
I don't recall any fumbles by JetSki
He’s really done a good job improving in that area… that’s another positive
There was a ball that hit the ground against Stanford -- recovered by us.
Can’t call it a fumble because I think it was a bad hand off.
And, the coaches must have agreed because he was not pulled.
sjh
I remember that
I checked his stats online and he wasn’t credited with a fumble.
No-huddle vs hurry-up
I agree to some extent that the TOP may be misleading because of our no-huddle offense. But going no huddle doesn’t necessarily mean we’re running a faster offense. In the offensive sequences I’ve seen, we snap the ball with less than 10 sec remaining on the game clock even with a no huddle. That’s roughly the same time as if we huddle before each snap (someone please correct me if I’m wrong here).
I guess the question is if the Pistol is designed to be a faster offense with less TOP and potentially fewer 3rd down opportunities. I can only look at Nevada’s performance so far for comparison as the only other Pistol system I know. After 2 games, their average TOP is 33:42 compared to our 23:37. They are also 19/28 on 3rd down conversions. Now, I’m not sure if Nevada runs no-huddle but from these numbers it looks like their Pistol offense can control the ball and take time from the clock when needed.
by Kerckhoff405 on Sep 15, 2010 11:24 AM PDT via mobile reply actions
CRN commented on that
Even when going no huddle against Stanford, we were running the play clock down to rest the defense. I think normally, the no huddle is intended to be at a little more of a “hurry-up offense” pace.
vital stats matter
Thanks for this post. If you’re trying to win a war, you can’t lose every single battle that counts and still have a campaign. We can chop these numbers up, bat ‘em around, spin and slant ’em we want, but these numbers tell enough of UCLA Football’s story at this point for anyone concerned to drop all pretense, sit up and take notice.
At some point, debating a struggling team’s key stats begins to sound like a room full doctors arguing over the diagnosis of patient with a flat line. Without clear breathing and a pulse, Nothing Else Matters.
If there is a coach in D1FB prepared to accept stats like these (and come on… let’s keep it real) I trust it ain’t ours. Pick any offense you want — pro, spread, option, whatever — winning football is about Ball Control — especially in the 4Q, where we seem to be generating the biggest deficits.
Here are the current P10 Conference Highs/Lows. We’re letting up record highs and posting record lows. You can lose one or two of these battles every game and survive.. but you can’t lose every one of them and expect to compete in games… much less win any.
I’ve seen the pre-game Bruins update on FSW Saturday mornings. I’ve seen the staff meetings. While I’m privy to none, I imagine Neu and his staff are pouring over the exact same numbers we are. I cannot imagine a D1HC asking his coaches why the team is bombing on key stats like these and the response being anything even remotely close to “the numbers are misleading”.
GO BRUIN BLUE
erm
when you say
I cannot imagine a D1HC asking his coaches why the team is bombing on key stats like these and the response being anything even remotely close to "the numbers are misleading".</ quote>
you imagine that the coaches are having to resort to “vital stats” to find something on which to improve. First, stats after one or two games tell you very little of importance – this is simply the nature of statistics, that their reliability depends on large samples. Second, if CRN is asking “guys… what can we do to improve our TOP?” as his first question at the coaches meeting then he should be fired tomorrow. I cannot imagine a coach watching our last two games and saying much at all about “bombing on key stats”; he is much more likely to ask his coaches why we can’t appear to complete passes and why we can’t appear to make defensive stops. Statistical analysis of performance is useful to identify small differences, tendencies and issues that may not be immediately obvious to the naked eye. For our coaches, there are plenty of areas for improvement that are immediately obvious to untrained observers
by britishbruin on Sep 15, 2010 12:54 PM PDT up reply actions
Mark Twain
never played football. If he did, I bet even he’d admit “66-22” is a worthy stat. So is 40Y Tot passing through 3Q, going 18% on 3DC’s and burning 2 time outs before the 7m mark of your home opener.
Those are the notes I’d start – and end – my Monday morning meeting with. I’d challenge any assistant who tried minimizing these stats, dismiss any coach delusional enough to rationalize them and fire anyone foolish and unprofessional enough to waste precious time diluting good data with semantics.
But that’s the HC’s job.
</quote>,
L5
GO BRUIN BLUE
while you're at it, why not just go with 0-2?
that would save time in your Monday morning notes, which would give your coaches more time to do their job, and, at least this is a statistic that indisputably matters – in contrast to pretty much any isolated statistic you (or ‘one’) can come up with.
by britishbruin on Sep 15, 2010 4:29 PM PDT up reply actions
I should add
thanks for the numbers, Kerckhoff – I am just emphasizing the
Given that there are only two data points to consider, none of this should be considered conclusive evidence for anything
aspect of your post and trying to add to the interpretation of what we have there.
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