Option Advanced Stats Report: Miami

It was a slugfest from start to finish against one of the better defenses in the ACC, but the Jackets managed to win despite poor success rates across the board. While the rushing stats aren’t pretty, the offense was finally bailed out by some clutch passing plays that won’t show up on this report. Miami has a talented and aggressive defense, but Tech was ultimately able to take advantage of that very aggression.

These are not pretty numbers, and are certainly not numbers one would expect from a Paul Johnson team in a win. The story-line of the game was the various counter plays the team used to take advantage of Miami’s aggression. Miami flowed their safeties and linebackers with the motion, and generally took a couple false steps towards the initial fake on the counter. This made counters deadly, and made Taquon Marshall the right call for this game. His quickness allows him to better execute the QB counter, and it’s arguably his best play. The 50% success and opportunity rates were much higher than those of the Triple, Rocket Toss, or Zone Dive. The Counter Option and Counter Speed Option also found success. Counters saved the day, but the Triple’s success rate could have been improved due to missed reads. The Dive/Keep data put this on display.

Looking at the Triples in particular, there is a stark contrast in YPC, success rate, and opportunity rate between the dive and keep reads. There were a few missed mesh reads throughout the game, and when they were missed it was always due to Marshall pulling the ball when he should have given it. Many of these plays were immediately stuffed for a loss. To Miami’s credit, the mesh keys did a good job of disguising their intentions until it was too late. The Counter keep numbers were still good, but that was due to Miami’s aforementioned false stepping. Towards the end of the game, Johnson found something with the Midline, with 2 dives going for significant yardage. The Counter-heavy gameplan got the job done, but more dive reads on the Triple would have made Tech even harder to stop.

There’s been another lead change in the Highlight Yards cup, and it could be a wild finish depending on how these last two games go. The A-backs out-highlighted the B-backs for the second straight week due to repeated use of the Rocket Toss and A-back Counter. Nathan Cottrell in particular has heavily boosted his highlight yard numbers over the past two games. He could surpass Qua Searcy at his position group by the end of the year despite Searcy’s early-season lead.

Jerry Howard could also catch Jordan Mason for the B-back highlight yards lead, but with he will need to start putting up bigger numbers.

That’s all for this week! The end of the season is near, and we’ll be doing a season stats report at the end of the year for FBS games. Really looking forward to showcasing that data.