Option Advanced Stats Report: UVA

A week ago, Georgia Tech won despite low success rates due to some timely special teams plays. This week was similar, though special teams came up even bigger and the offensive numbers look even worse. Against Miami, counter plays were working exceptionally well. Against UVA, nothing worked particularly well. I would highly suggest checking out BillC’s advanced stats box score this week. S&P gave Tech a 1% of winning the game based on play-by-play data, and there was a big disparity between the two teams in terms of success rate. Special Teams really won the game. Some have been giving credit to the defense as well, but while they made a couple timely plays, they also gave up a 55.7% success rate. The offense only managed a 31.7% success rate, which is equally terrible.

The offense used a wide variety of plays, with few putting up respectable numbers:

The game plan centered on the Triple and Zone Dive/QB Follow. The Dive and Follow were particularly important, as UVA did a good job getting wide against plays to the edge. Their LBs did a particularly good job of not falling for counters, either. While the counters worked against Miami, they were stuffed against the Cavaliers. With UVA controlling the edges for much of the game, Tech was forced to play physically in the middle.

Despite the success inside, there was a dearth of Dive reads from the Triple due to UVA heavily crashing the unblocked DE inside or Cross Charging/Easy Stunting the OLB. Coach Johnson had to force the issue by going with called dives and follows.

The Success Rate data on Keeps is ugly, but the opportunity rate data is more forgiving. Triple and Counter Speed Keeps just kept happening in situations where a big gain was required for the play to be successful. Speed Option keeps struggled, but the one success was a huge 30 yard gain. Again, UVA’s LBs did a good job of getting into the QB track and avoiding blocking attempts.

The Pitch data looks better on the surface, but the YPC and opportunity rates were largely worse across the board. The interior game was the only thing that consistently worked against this well-coached defense.

Marshall had a fairly good day running the ball, and has likely wrapped up the Highlight Yards Cup for this season. Marshall dominated the Highlight yards in this game, racking up several explosion plays to the tune of 63.5 highlight yards. The rest of the team struggled to gain many, with Qua Searcy coming in second despite only getting one carry all game.

Howard didn’t get a large number of highlight yards, but ran with power all game, leading to a relatively high success rate. There were multiple plays where he shrugged off first contact or dragged a defender for a couple more yards, which the team desperately needed.

With low opportunity rates across the board, there were few chances for highlight yards in this game. These numbers won’t cut it this week. Wild special teams wins are fun, but if the team wants to be successful against better teams, the offense can’t run like this.

We’re going to be doing some cool off-season stats after the bowl game this year, compiling every single play into one spreadsheet so that we can get season statistics. If there’s anything you’d like to see us look into, let us know!