FanPost

Drive-Point Efficiency, an interesting advanced metric

I grabbed this stat from a Sportsnation blog, Footballstudyhall.com. This is yet another advanced metric that suggests that Utah is performing in the top half of the conference.

The way it works: there is an expected number of points that a team will score based on field position. This is measured by averaging the points scored between the next possession of BOTH teams. So, for example, if you start a drive from your own 1 yard line, on average your opponent will be the next to score, and they tend to score 3 points. If you start a drive from your opponent's 1 yard line, you almost always get a TD.

A team's Drive-Point Efficiency measures how that team performs on average based on their field position. So if when the Utes start on their own 1 yard line, they tend to score first and average 4 points, that means they have a high drive point efficiency. You can also measure it on defense. When our opponent gets a short field, we don't give up many points and that gives us a higher drive point efficiency.

Ultimately, you can take the average, add it all up, and get a nice number for how your team tends to perform on drives, based on where they start.

_________________________________________________________

Anyway, on to evaluating the Utes and Stanford by these metrics. The Utes are -.163 on defensive efficiency, meaning that we give up .163 less points per drive than an average CFB team. We're .960 on offensive efficiency, so we score almost a point more than we are supposed to. You can do a 'total efficiency stat', which gives us a 1.123.

Stanford has been nearly identical. They've got an offensive efficiency of .902 and a defensive efficiency of -.136. That means that they have been less efficient on offense and less efficient on defense than the Utes, but by what I imagine is a statistically insignificant margin. Their total efficiency stat is 1.038.

By way of comparison, total efficiency stats for notable teams:

Oregon- 2.7

OSU- 1.844

Alabama- .829

Utah State- 1.615

BYU- .477

Eastern Kentucky- Neg. 3.088

In This FanPost

Teams

Trending Discussions