Vols410
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Happy New Year's all!
I've been wanting to dig into the upcoming bowl game from an analytics perspective. The national perception of this game seems to be that both teams are fairly even, with our defense matching up well with their offense and vice-versa, but something about the way we've played the last several games has me thinking we're superior, and I want to see if the numbers bear that out.
I've built a few models to predict the major offensive/defensive stats for our game: points, total yards, YPP, etc. based on two factors: Opponents OFF/DEF ESPN efficiency rank (this is adjusted for pace/opponent) and the week number.
1. This should show how much of the production of each team has been dependent on the strength of their opponents. Indiana put up great numbers against the likes of Maryland/Rutgers/Purdue, but struggled against the better defenses, and we've been similar on defense in the Florida/Georgia games vs. Kentucky/Vandy/etc.
2. Using week should show if either team is improving/declining in certain parts of the game as the season progresses. We know this is the case for our Vols, but I wanted to see how that plays into the predictive value.
After all that... here's the predicted numbers.
Points:
Tennessee 31.5
Indiana 25.5
Passing:
Tennessee 267.94 yards, 8.41 YPA
Indiana 248.49 yards, 8.41 YPA
Rushing:
Tennessee 174.19 yards, 4.82 YPC
Indiana 157.72 yards, 3.73 YPC
Total:
Tennessee 442 yards, 6.96 YPP
Indiana 406 yards, 5.75 YPP
A couple things to note that I thought were interesting:
First, the strength of opponent was MUCH more influential for Indiana than it was for us, meaning their production is extremely dependent on the quality of their opponent, both for offense and defense. Not good news for them given how strong we've been defensively over the past several weeks.
Second and very encouraging for Tennessee, the biggest factor in the prediction for us isn't the opponent but the week number. Once the data is adjusted for the quality of opponent, you can see how much the Vols have improved during the year on both offense and defenses.
With each new week, you would expect:
+0.83 points
+2 Passing Yards
+0.2 YPA
+5 Rushing Yards
+0.13 YPC
+7 Total Yards
+0.16 YPP
and on defense...
-1.23 points
-4.36 Total Yards
-0.05 YPP
It seems small, but over the course of a year, you're talking about a 20-point difference in scoring differential, a 135-yard difference in yardage differential, and 2.5-yard improvement in YPP differential which is insane. This isn't close to the week 1 Vols, and when you give them a couple weeks to improve even more that gap is only going to widen. Keep some consistency at OC/DC with Chaney/Ansley and next year could be exciting.
TLDR - Indiana isn't as good as they have looked and we're improving at a crazy rate. Let's get it!
I've been wanting to dig into the upcoming bowl game from an analytics perspective. The national perception of this game seems to be that both teams are fairly even, with our defense matching up well with their offense and vice-versa, but something about the way we've played the last several games has me thinking we're superior, and I want to see if the numbers bear that out.
I've built a few models to predict the major offensive/defensive stats for our game: points, total yards, YPP, etc. based on two factors: Opponents OFF/DEF ESPN efficiency rank (this is adjusted for pace/opponent) and the week number.
1. This should show how much of the production of each team has been dependent on the strength of their opponents. Indiana put up great numbers against the likes of Maryland/Rutgers/Purdue, but struggled against the better defenses, and we've been similar on defense in the Florida/Georgia games vs. Kentucky/Vandy/etc.
2. Using week should show if either team is improving/declining in certain parts of the game as the season progresses. We know this is the case for our Vols, but I wanted to see how that plays into the predictive value.
After all that... here's the predicted numbers.
Points:
Tennessee 31.5
Indiana 25.5
Passing:
Tennessee 267.94 yards, 8.41 YPA
Indiana 248.49 yards, 8.41 YPA
Rushing:
Tennessee 174.19 yards, 4.82 YPC
Indiana 157.72 yards, 3.73 YPC
Total:
Tennessee 442 yards, 6.96 YPP
Indiana 406 yards, 5.75 YPP
A couple things to note that I thought were interesting:
First, the strength of opponent was MUCH more influential for Indiana than it was for us, meaning their production is extremely dependent on the quality of their opponent, both for offense and defense. Not good news for them given how strong we've been defensively over the past several weeks.
Second and very encouraging for Tennessee, the biggest factor in the prediction for us isn't the opponent but the week number. Once the data is adjusted for the quality of opponent, you can see how much the Vols have improved during the year on both offense and defenses.
With each new week, you would expect:
+0.83 points
+2 Passing Yards
+0.2 YPA
+5 Rushing Yards
+0.13 YPC
+7 Total Yards
+0.16 YPP
and on defense...
-1.23 points
-4.36 Total Yards
-0.05 YPP
It seems small, but over the course of a year, you're talking about a 20-point difference in scoring differential, a 135-yard difference in yardage differential, and 2.5-yard improvement in YPP differential which is insane. This isn't close to the week 1 Vols, and when you give them a couple weeks to improve even more that gap is only going to widen. Keep some consistency at OC/DC with Chaney/Ansley and next year could be exciting.
TLDR - Indiana isn't as good as they have looked and we're improving at a crazy rate. Let's get it!
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