2015 NCAA Football Thread

TCU isn't my team. Texas Tech and K State are better than anything that Ohio State has faced this year. If you are giving up 28 to Maryland (West Virginia only gave up 6 to Maryland this year), then you probably don't want anything to do with offenses like Texas Tech or Kansas State.

I am not saying that TCU has a good defense - I am saying you are overhyping Ohio State's.
 
JollyRoger said:
TCU isn't my team. Texas Tech and K State are better than anything that Ohio State has faced this year. If you are giving up 28 to Maryland (West Virginia only gave up 6 to Maryland this year), then you probably don't want anything to do with offenses like Texas Tech or Kansas State.

I am not saying that TCU has a good defense - I am saying you are overhyping Ohio State's.
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That is simply not true. Texas Tech is about the same quality of opponent as Indiana and Kansas State is about the same quality of opponent as Virginia Tech.

And yeah, you implied TCU has a better defense than Ohio State simply because they stopped more offensive drives. Which is absolutely ridiculous because that's not even a stat that is tracked for the purposes of defensive rankings. However, In the two main stats that are used to rank defenses, points per game and combined yards allowed, OSU ranks way above TCU. OSU has also shown this year that they are playing down to their competition and that when they feel truly threatened then can simply "turn it on" and come away with the win. Am I happy the Buckeyes are playing that way? No I'm not because I feel it's going to come back and bite them eventually.

It's okay though, because neither OSU or TCU have faced an opponent yet that will truly test their abilities as neither one plays their toughest opponents until the last few weeks of the season. How TCU does against Oklahoma and Baylor, and how OSU does against Michigan State and Michigan will determine just how for real each of those teams are.
 
Points and yards are absolutely horrible ways to evaluate how good a college football defense is.
 
ummmm........ said:
I'm not going to pretend that I spent four hours watching the Ohio State game, but it does seem like they played better, even if I am just judging by the stat sheet and play-by-play. But then we're back to the question of how hard is it to look good against Maryland? So still, we really don't know anything about Ohio State . . .
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It's hard to say. Maryland certainly isn't very good, but they were also playing for their coach (who they knew before the game was about to get fired), and their defense is actually not terrible. It's their offense is awful.

I've watched a fair amount of Maryland this year. I thought OSU was fine.

I'd be interested in your opinion of Michigan/Michigan State this week, and whether you think either or both still poses a realistic threat to Ohio State at the end of the year . . .
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I'd probably put Michigan as the favorite in that matchup, just because Michigan State is really beat up, injury wise right now. I'd expect it to still be close though, given that I'm not sure Michigan can really exploit Sparty's shaky secondary at the moment. I think Ohio State has better players than both teams, and has a higher ceiling than both teams, but could absolutely lose to either of them. Or both.




And finally, just for Light Cleric there bc I don't think anyone else mentioned it, that was ofc and incredibly cool thing LSU did for SCAR this weekend. It's easy to look at it from the outside with a cynical eye, but I'm not sure Alabama would have treated another school that way and I doubt there are many schools outside the SEC that would have done that either, so kudos sir, well played . . .
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I hope to have a story out on this in a few weeks.


Commodore said:
Tell that to the people that rank defenses.
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Serious commentators outside of lazy broadcasters have stopped using total defense (yards) as a metric, and any curious person could find lots of other ones. Yardage, absent any adjustment for pace, opponent quality or opponent style, tells us nothing. If you give up 220 yards rushing against Washington State, you probably suck. If you give up 220 yards rushing to Navy, you might still be really good.

Per S&P+, which tracks efficiency and adjusts for pace and opponent, Kansas State and Ohio State have roughly the same quality of defense (#26 to #29). That sounds about right to me.


In unrelated news, if you're interested in conference realignment, I wrote something about New Mexico State and Eastern Kentucky's bid to join the Sun Belt:
http://www.sbnation.com/college-foo...ignment-new-mexico-state-eku-coastal-carolina
 
downtown said:
Per S&P+, which tracks efficiency and adjusts for pace and opponent, Kansas State and Ohio State have roughly the same quality of defense (#26 to #29). That sounds about right to me.
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Where does TCU's defense fall? Because that's the defense I'm accusing of being paper thin and will fold once they have to play a decent opponent.
 
Twitter fun fact ! ! : 40% of Alabama's opponents' points have come off turnovers . . .

With Michigan/Michigan State, Alabama/A&M and LSU/Florida, this week is looking much better than last week . . .

I think LSU/Florida is maybe the easiest to pick there. LSU should dominate, I'd think . . .
 
JollyRoger said:
TCU is 64th on defense, 17th overall, and 5th on offense. TCU opponent,Texas Tech, is 1st in offense. Overall, Ohio State is 28th overall, just behind mid-pack Big 12 teams Kansas State (26th) and Texas Tech (27th).

http://www.footballoutsiders.com/stats/ncaa
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I like how you try to imply that OSU isn't any better than middle of the road Big 12 teams. You go ahead and keep thinking that and see what that gets you. You know who else thought that way? Alabama and Oregon last year. Go ask them if the Buckeyes are a middling team that is way overrated. Of course you fail to consider probably the most important factor: Those middling Big 12 teams have lost games whereas the Buckeyes have the longest active winning streak in FBS right now. My point? People keep talking about how bad the Buckeyes are, yet they keep on winning. Tell me how a team can apparently be so bad and yet not lose?

Also, people keep saying the Buckeyes are struggling, but they have only had one really bad game all season and that was against NIU. And if you bring up the Indiana game that will prove to me that you just looked at the score and didn't actually watch the game. Because if you watch that game, you will see that while it was close the whole time, the Buckeyes never lost composure and really controlled the tempo of that game the entire time. Indiana just played a hell of a game to keep up with OSU. All their other games have really been complete Buckeye domination. The only reason people keep saying they aren't impressive and they are struggling is because they are putting up 30 points a game instead of 60 and their offense isn't the high-flying flashy offense that seems to be so trendy nowadays. For example: Everyone criticized OSU and said they struggled against Hawaii even though they won 38-0. People also said they struggled against Western Michigan even though they won 38-12. And of course people keep saying the Buckeyes looked flat against Maryland despite winning 49-28. Even in the Indiana game, the Buckeyes started to dominate and then Indiana gave it absolutely everything they had and played the game of their lives to come roaring back into it and it still wasn't enough to topple the supposedly "flat" and "mediocre" Buckeyes.

If that's what it means to struggle if you're the Buckeyes, then it would seem to me that a repeat national title is more or less a done deal. It also seems that a team that is supposedly playing so badly and is still undefeated has shown that they deserve the number one spot more than anyone else. Because if they are still winning like they are when they are supposedly playing poorly, then what do you think they are going to do once they actually start taking games seriously?
 
There is not a single player on Indiana that could start for Ohio State, and the Buckeyes could not put them away until literally the last play of the game. They had over 100 yards of penalties. They were -3 in turnover margin. Against one of the worst defenses in college football, they did not have a drive last longer than four plays the entire second half. They had two drives longer than four plays for the entire GAME. Also, Indiana's two best players got hurt early in the game, and their third best player was suspended and did not play.

There is no credible way you can look at that performance and not call it a bad game.
 
downtown said:
There is not a single player on Indiana that could start for Ohio State, and the Buckeyes could not put them away until literally the last play of the game. They had over 100 yards of penalties. They were -3 in turnover margin. Against one of the worst defenses in college football, they did not have a drive last longer than four plays the entire second half. They had two drives longer than four plays for the entire GAME. Also, Indiana's two best players got hurt early in the game, and their third best player was suspended and did not play.

There is no credible way you can look at that performance and not call it a bad game.
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Like I said, Indiana played the game of their life. I also am hesitant to count the turnover margin as a factor in determining whether or not the Buckeyes played a good game. Why? Last year's playoff games. In both of those games OSU lost the turnover battle by a lot. Now would you seriously call those "bad games"? No, you wouldn't. And who the hell cares if they didn't have a play that lasted more than four plays in the second half when three of those drives ended in touchdowns? All-in-all 6 of their 16 drives in the game ended with some type of scoring. That's not too shabby at all. The penalties I'll give you. That's a problem the Buckeyes have been having all season so far.

The point is, you gotta look deeper than just the stats to determine whether or not a team had a good game. Once Ohio State took the lead in that game Indiana made some noise and still played tough, but they never really threatened to actually take the lead back. That's what I mean when I say the Buckeyes were in control of that game.

And even if I concede that the Buckeyes had a bad game against Indiana, still, that's two bad games out of six that still resulted in wins. That alone justifies them holding the number one spot. Because the true test of how good a team really is, is whether or not they can still win when they are playing at their worst. And I think the pollsters and the committee recognize this, which is why OSU is still number one and why Florida State was number one last year until late into the season. One of the perks of being the defending champion is that you tend to get the benefit of the doubt from the powers that be until someone manages to actually beat you on the field, head-to-head.
 
I wanted to respond to this, but did not address it in my previous posts:

downtown said:
Serious commentators outside of lazy broadcasters have stopped using total defense (yards) as a metric, and any curious person could find lots of other ones. Yardage, absent any adjustment for pace, opponent quality or opponent style, tells us nothing. If you give up 220 yards rushing against Washington State, you probably suck. If you give up 220 yards rushing to Navy, you might still be really good.
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Notice I said points and yards. Really in my opinion points allowed per game should be the only metric a defense is judged by since stopping the other team from scoring is kind of the whole point of having a defense. I mean, who cares if your defense is getting 3, 4, or 5 sacks or turnovers a game if those opponents are still scoring 20, 30, or 40 points on you? And don't say it can't happen. Because I have seen a not insignificant amount of games both last year and this year so far in which one team or another's defense looked good in every stat column except points allowed.

Points per game shows how good a defense is at stopping their opponents from scoring. It also doesn't need to be adjusted for quality of opponent either. If your defense knows how to keep an offense from scoring and is actually good at it, then nobody will score a lot of points against you, no matter how good or bad they are.
 
Commodore said:
I wanted to respond to this, but did not address it in my previous posts:



Notice I said points and yards. Really in my opinion points allowed per game should be the only metric a defense is judged by since stopping the other team from scoring is kind of the whole point of having a defense. I mean, who cares if your defense is getting 3, 4, or 5 sacks or turnovers a game if those opponents are still scoring 20, 30, or 40 points on you? And don't say it can't happen. Because I have seen a not insignificant amount of games both last year and this year so far in which one team or another's defense looked good in every stat column except points allowed.

Points per game shows how good a defense is at stopping their opponents from scoring. It also doesn't need to be adjusted for quality of opponent either. If your defense knows how to keep an offense from scoring and is actually good at it, then nobody will score a lot of points against you, no matter how good or bad they are.
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Yards per play does all of that only way better.
 
USA got outscored 29-7 in the fourth quarter to lose 49-31 :thatshakesheadrollseyessmileyIcan'tfindrightnow:
 
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