Number Nonsense

by Xerxes on Dec 9, 2009 1:26 PM CST

We are starting to see stats bandied around about the Texas Alabama game. In the next month I imagine we will see as blizzard of them.
I really like the approach Basketball stats have taken. I wondered about football. So I Started at the very beginning, what did I want to know? Who will win the game. The numbers that correlate best with who wins and who loses is the score. Scoring most often occurs when a team is on offense, so I wanted to look a the rate of scoring per possession.
Looked at both team's records. I looked at the numbers of Possessions and the number of points scored. In the case of Alabama I took the number of points (less any defensive scores)and divided it by the number of possessions in each game. I averaged that number for all 13 games. Then did the same for Texas. I also found out the average number of possessions per game for each team. I did the same things for each teams opponents.

Alabama

points per possession 2.41*
possession per game 12.5
allowed points per possession .09
allowed possession per game 12.2

Texas

points per possession 2.57*
possession per game 13.5
allowed points per possession 1.1
allowed possession per game 13.7

What I did next was take the average number of possession Alabama gave up and averaged them with the number of possessions Texas gets per game.
I did the same for Texas -Alabama.
This should give a number of possessions that each team should get for the Texas Alabama game .

Texas has 12.85 possessions
Alabama has 13.1 possessions

Then multiplied it by the points per possession each team averaged.

Texas 12.85 x 2.57 = 33.02 points
Alabama 13.10 x 2.41 = 31.57 points

*the number of scores made by the defense or on punt and kick returns was subtracted from the totals points

Texas scored 11 Td's on int's, punk returns and kickoffs.
Alabama scored 3 Td's on int's, punk returns and kickoffs.

Texas added 5.92 points per game, on defense
Alabama added 1.6 points per game on defense

Alabama 33.17 3 Td's and 4 field goals 7 scoring drives.
Texas 38.94 5 Td's and 1 field goal 5 scoring drives 1 defensive TD

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Comments

Loved the break down,looks like we win.

by cpabis on Dec 9, 2009 1:32 PM CST reply actions

Point total is probably more accurate than one would presume after looking at the defensive stats for both teams. I feel like both teams are not particularly well suited to stop the type of offense that they’ll be facing. That said, we’ll probably win 5-3.

by Tackchevy on Dec 9, 2009 2:07 PM CST reply actions