Game Preview: BYU vs. Florida State

We’re just a couple hours away from kickoff, so I’m going to attack this preview, bullet-point style, so I can get up to Lavelle Edwards Stadium and get ready for what should be a great game.

• Don’t underestimate the importance of this game or the quality of BYU’s oppenent. It seems most BYU fans are expecting an easy victory today. The Seminoles are separated from an 0-2 start by a few last-minute heroics against an FCS opponent. They don’t have the high national ranking or buzz to match their reputation, and they’re playing in Provo, where BYU fans seem to think the Cougars are all but invincible. Don’t be so sure. FSU has a good football team. They have an excellent coaching staff (even ignoring their obviously symbolic head coach). They have depth in terms of athletes, a solid quarterback, and speed across the board. I expect a close game, and definitely not certain victory for the Cougars.
• BYU offense vs. FSU defense: edge to BYU. We won’t run all over Florida State the way we ran over Tulane. Unga should get the bulk of the carries, but Cariya and DiLuigi will both be factors. FSU has had problems defending against the pass. They have the athletes to match up well against our top receivers, but I don’t think they are strong enough in their system to handle the way Max Hall distributes the ball. Don’t expect to see a breakout game for McKay Jacobsen, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see Pitta and George wreak havoc between the linebackers and the secondary. BYU will score 35 points, on the heels of 315 passing yards and 75 yards on the ground.
• BYU defense vs. FSU offense: slight edge to FSU. BYU’s defense has looked great so far this season, but I’m not quite sold that a well-coached team can’t find a way to exploit BYU’s lack of speed and athleticism on defense. If FSU is as well-coached as I think they are, expect to see a lot of short pass plays, screens, and slants. This will protect Ponder from the pass rush and force the BYU secondary to play closer to scrimmage, at which point their receivers will have a better chance to make big plays. The FSU running attack will be secondary today, but the backs will still be active running draw-plays, pass-protecting, and running screens that could really be a problem for BYU. That said, BYU has shown good fundamental open-field tackling so far this season, and if they can find a way to disrupt the short pass and screen game without becoming susceptible to the big play, they could easily bend without breaking. FSU will score 31 points to go with 265 passing yards and 65 on the ground.
• My boldest prediction of the day: BYU’s kickers will not kick a single ball out of bounds, after sending three past the sidelines in their first two games. Instead, they’ll pound the center of the field, taking advantage of the thin air to achieve better hangtime and distance. Florida State will have a long field for most of their drives, in hopes that the Seminoles will prove as careless with the ball as they seemed against Jackson State.
• Players of the game: Max Hall will have his first interception-less game of the season to go with three TD passes. Dennis Pitta will be the first BYU receiver to cross the 100-yard mark in a game this season. Jan Jorgensen will sack Ponder at least once.
• We’ll know BYU’s in trouble if Florida State scores on their first drive, if they’re having success with the short pass, or if they successfully run the ball against the BYU front seven.
• We’ll know BYU’s in good shape if the defense stops FSU from scoring on two of their first three possessions, if Pitta’s finding himself open in the middle of the field, and if the FSU pass-rush has trouble putting pressure on Hall.

I’ll write a brief re-cap later tonight, and something more elaborate come Monday morning. Enjoy the game everybody.

That’s Stat-tastic! — YPP Explained

Greg Wrubell usually does good work over at his Cougar Tracks blog on KSL.com, but in his latest post, Wrubell steps into some murky statistical waters. The result isn’t pretty:

“A stat I really like is ‘yards per point,’ generally a measure of offensive efficiency.” [author's emphasis]

The italicized generally helps a little bit, but this statement is still generally misleading. Yards per play (YPP) is one of those statistics championed by very smart people (in this case, Phil Steele), but misunderstood by almost everyone else. Any stat can be incorrectly applied in a number of ways. Wrubell’s guilty of a few of them.

1. Misunderstanding what a statistic measures

What is it that YPP actually measures? Well, to state the obvious, it is the total yardage gained by an offense (or allowed by a defense) divided by the points scored (or points allowed). Does a low YPP indicate an efficient offense, as Wrubell suggests? Not necessarily–it could indicate a number of things. Perhaps the team employs excellent special teams, ensuring better field position, and less yardage necessary for a score. It’s possible that the team excels in the red-zone, scoring more touchdowns and kicking less field goals, with similar yardage gained. However, YPP can also indicate a team’s “luck factor,” or in other words, the effect of random statistical variance on said team.

Let’s suggest that a certain runningback will average one fumble lost for every sixty touches. Assuming his touches are distributed evenly across the field (i.e. He isn’t a goal-line back.), one would expect 20% of his fumbles to occur in the red zone, because twenty yards out of 100 = 20%. Now, we all know that statistical models don’t play out so neatly–we’re dealing with probabilities rather than realities. (If you flip a coin five times, you can’t get heads two and a half times, and it’s not unlikely that you might get tails four or five times in a row.) Let’s say this runningback gets 600 touches in a season and fumbles the ball 10 times, as expected. However, in this case, none of his fumbles occurred in the red zone, instead coming earlier in drives before his team had been able to rack up many yards. The fumbles still result in ten scoreless drives, but involve less yardage gained, leading to a lower YPP for the team. Is this lower YPP the result of greater offensive efficiency? Not at all. In this case, it’s at least partially a measure of where the runningback fumbles the ball, which is a result of random statistical variance.

This is actually pretty intuitive if you think about it a little differently. If you had to use one statistic to guess which  team scored the most points in a season, wouldn’t it be total yards gained? Of course it would, because for the most part, yards gained and points scored are directly proportional. What YPP measures is how much a team varies from this relationship of direct proportion, which, as we’ve already discussed, is less a measure of “offensive efficiency” than it is a measure of luck.

2. Using a statistic incorrectly

So if YPP is a measure of luck, isn’t it a worthless statistic? Well, that depends on what you want a statistic to do. If you want it to accurately measure the quality of past performances, YPP is mostly useless. In essence, it’s taking two useful statistics and combining them in a way to remove their relevancy. If you want a statistic to predict the quality of future performance, it’s also pretty worthless, because YPP isn’t a qualitative measure.

If YPP were a measure of quality, you’d think there’d be a pretty big difference between the YPPs for the best and worst teams. Here are the YPP calculations for four teams last year–one elite, one good, one average, and one poor:

USC – 5,911 yards / 488 points = 12.1 YPP

Georgia – 5,538 yards / 409 points = 13.5 YPP

UNC – 4,178 yards / 360 points = 11.6 YPP

Western Kentucky – 2,690 yards / 210 points = 12.8 YPP

In terms of offensive efficiency, these four teams seem pretty clearly sorted in descending order, using yards gained. However, if we sort them according to YPP, you get North Carolina ranked higher than USC and transitional FBS Western Kentucky higher than #13 Georgia.

So if YPP is not an indicator of quality, how is it useful? To explain, let me digress into baseball.

In baseball, there’s a statistic called Batting Average on Balls in Play (BABIP), which measures how often a ball hit into play will fall for a hit. The fundamental premise is that neither a hitter nor pitcher has much control over where a ball ends up once it’s hit. Whether or not the ball is hit to a place where a defender can make a play is a function of random variance, centering somewhere around a 27-33% likelihood of it being an out. BABIP is actually more successfully used in terms of pitchers, rather than hitters, as hitters can do a few small things to influence the path of the ball, while pitchers face a wide enough variety of hitters to make the total BABIP of the batters they face almost completely random.

So why keep track of a stat that is essentially random? Because in any random sample, there are outliers–data points on the extreme sides of the expected result. In this case, those outliers represent unsustainable performances. So, if a pitcher allows a .375 BABIP, he’s likely to have given up more hits and runs than one would have expected. The good news is that his opponents’ BABIP is unsustainable, and therefore, extremely unlikely to remain that high. This means that his perceived performance is very likely to improve going forward, without any change in the pitcher’s actual ability or the quality of his pitches. So, it obviously helps to keep track of BABIP, and other similar indicators, to know how a pitcher’s performance might change in the future.

YPP is a similar statistic. Because it involves a lot of random variation, at least in terms of offensive performance (i.e. where a back fumbles the ball, the field position opponents offer, etc.), outlying YPP numbers can be viewed as mostly unsustainable.

In Wrubell’s post, he lists the YPP numbers for each MWC team so far this season, intending to make a comment about each team’s efficiency so far. To his credit, he does acknowledge that TCU’s giving up “cheap points” has heavily influenced their defensive YPP. He should have gone a step further and acknowleged that similar factors have influenced all team’s YPP numbers. Instead, he suggests that Utah’s the Vermillion Nasty’s relatively high offensive YPP means they “aren’t as good at turning yards into points,” using their turnovers and missed field goals as evidence that their high YPP indicates an inefficient offense. There are two problems here. First of all, why can’t we just look at turnovers and field goal percentages as evidence of something in themselves? If that’s what YPP reflects, why do we need YPP? Secondly, Wrubell isn’t acknowledging the luck factor in those events. Turnovers are an indicator of offensive efficiency, but where on the field those turnovers occur affects YPP almost as much as how often, and that is essentially random.

If you want to use YPP correctly, look at it as variance that is likely to regress to the mean. The teams with the lowest YPPs (Air Force, TCU, and BYU) are likely to look at least slightly less explosive going forward, while the teams with the highest YPPs (New Mexico, Wyoming, and you know who) are not as inept as they’ve seemed so far.

3. Failure to consider sample size

College football is a tough game to predict, because there is so much turnover on rosters, and the combination of systems and personnel often leads to unpredictable results. It takes several weeks to really get an idea of which teams are strong and weak and in which ways. Similarly, it takes at least that long for any statistic to have a useful context.  Because YPP is a measure of variance, having an adequate sample size is even more important to having useful results. Even if you’re trying to use YPP correctly, to use it with two data points per team is pretty much useless.

Again, I want to stress that I like Wrubell and his blog. I just really key in on these statistical discussions and when one is misleading, the pedant in me flares up. Maybe I should create a new stat: WPP (words per point made). I’m afraid this post (and most of mine) wouldn’t rank very well by this statistic.

A preview of Saturday’s game is coming up soon, so stay tuned. I’ll try and keep it brief.

Poetry in Stasis

Mike Bianchi of the Orlando Sentinel shares this with the world:

Well, their football team might be sputtering, but at least FSU’s creative writing department is alive and well.

Game Recap: BYU 54, Tulane FAIL

My first instinct is to suggest that we learned essentially nothing about BYU’s team this Saturday, as Tulane appears to be a truly awful, C-USA bottom-dweller. And had this game been anything less than the 51 point beatdown it was, that instinct would be right. As it is, BYU dominated a weak opponent on the road, while coming off an emotional win and looking forward to a marquee matchup vs. Florida State. There’s something to be said about a team that, no matter the quality of the opponent, can keep its eye on the prize. I’m sure Bobby Bowden, whose Seminoles needed last-minute heroics to vanquish the mighty FCS Jacksonville State Gamecocks, would agree.

When I say BYU dominated, I’m talking about domination in the historic context. A Bronco-led BYU team has never destroyed an opponent the way they did on Saturday. Yes, I am well aware of BYU’s 59 point shutout over UCLA last year, but that game involved some atrocious luck for UCLA. In that game, BYU fumbled the ball twice and recovered both–UCLA fumbled five times, losing three of them. UCLA also drove the ball to two reasonable field goal attempts. BYU blocked one, and the other was missed wide. A little better luck for UCLA and that game could have been 45-10. UCLA was almost certainly the better opponent, but the game was in Provo. The Cougars gained more yards on the road against Tulane and gave up fewer to boot. I’ve never seen BYU do what they did on Saturday against any other opponent.

Throughout Bronco’s 4+ years as BYU’s head coach, BYU has scored 54 or more points four other times. Only once did BYU gain more yards than the 527 they gained on Saturday, when they racked up 683 yards in a 64-41 win over Air Force in 2005, including a cool 300 yards rushing on 42 attempts. Still, as far as defense goes, there’s obviously no comparison between the two games, and BYU’s win on Saturday was the first time under Bronco’s tenure that the Cougars didn’t even have to punt once.

From the defensive side, Bronco’s teams have allowed three or fewer points four times, but BYU’s 168 total yards allowed to Tulane is easily the lowest of the bunch. There’s no doubt this was the most dominating defensive performance in Bronco’s tenure, and depending on how you look at it, either the first or second most dominant offensive performance as well. Most of the credit probably belongs to Bob Toledo’s Green Wave. Still, I think we can say we learned something about BYU on Saturday–something good.

In baseball scouting, there is such a thing as a “statement performance,” meaning, no matter what a pitcher does in his other starts, if he ever strikes out 15 batters in one game without walking anyone, he’s got a special kind of talent. He could get shelled in his previous and following starts, but that game in itself tells you something important about his skills and potential. BYU’s win over Tulane might be something similar. Tulane was held to their lowest point total of the last three years. The only other team during that span to hold them to less than 200 yards of total offense was #19 LSU last year, playing at Tiger Stadium. Whatever might happen going forward, because of what happened in this one game, it’s probably safe to say that this is BYU’s most talented defense under Bronco–whether or not they will continue to execute at that level remains to be seen.

So we know BYU dominated Tulane in a historic way. Let’s talk about how.

BYU’s offense racked up 527 yards, including 206 on the ground. Tulane managed to force BYU into only 9 3rd down situations. They converted 6 of those. Of the other three, two were followed by made field goals, and the other came when BYU was taking a knee to run the game clock out. Take out that last third down situation and the ensuing fourth down (when BYU again kneeled), and the Cougar offense converted six of eight third downs (three on the ground and three in the air), and went 2-2 with field goals on fourth downs. The offense also played much more cleanly than last Saturday, losing only 30 yards on three penalties (the defense added two more penalties for 17 yards) and not fumbling the ball once.

Efficiency and discipline considered, the real reason BYU’s offense did so well on Saturday was how they spread the ball around to multiple receivers and ball carriers. Last season excepted, BYU’s always been known for spectacular quarterbacks and unspectacular receivers. They’ve always thrown the ball enough to rack up yards, but also spread it around enough to keep any one receiver from putting up dominant numbers. This strategy is nothing new–really just classic Cougars offense, making up for a lack of top-end athletes by keeping opposing defenses off balance. Even in that context, Saturday’s pass distribution was positively Marxist. Twelve receivers caught passes, eight caught at least two, and no one caught more than four. McKay Jacobsen led the pack with 79 yards on three catches, including a nice touchdown snag over a well-positioned defender.

The rushing attack was, as expected, highly successful against Tulane’s woeful defense. What wasn’t so expected was how successful they were, despite Harvey Unga’s being healthy enough for just three carries. Brian Kariya once again proved he deserves to be getting carries, even when Unga returns, racking up 63 yards on 12 bruising carries. Even more impressive was J.J. Di Luigi’s twelve rushes for 71 yards and two touchdowns. Probably most useful as a change-of-pace back for Unga and Kariya, Di Luigi showed surprising strength to go along with his obvious quickness. Both Cariya and Di Luigi averaged over five yards per carry. Tulane’s defensive weakness notwithstanding, it looks like BYU might have three starting-caliber backs, which is a luxury of depth at an unexpected position. And thanks to the commanding lead, four other backs got into the game against Tulane, all of whom gained at least 3.5 yards per carry. To put it another way, I’m going to be following the updates on Unga’s hamstring much less closely than I was before the Oklahoma game.

Game balls go to Hall and Di Luigi, with apologies to Cariya and Jacobsen.

BYU’s defense played physically and fundamentally sound on Saturday. Tulane only put together one drive longer than 24 yards, when they drove 56 yards to a first and goal at the BYU six-yard line. Just like last week, BYU’s defense toughened when it needed to and held Tulane to a field goal. Here’s a quick rundown of Tulane’s other drives:

• 6 plays, 4 yards gained, punt
• 5 plays, 20 yards, punt
• 1 play, 0 yards, interception
• 3 plays, -4 yards, punt
• 5 plays, 18 yards, punt
• 3 plays, 8 yards, punt
• 3 plays, -8 yards, fumble
• 3 plays, 13 yards, fumble
• 6 plays, 24 yards, interception

Futility, thy name is Tulane, and thou art manifest in eight first downs to your opponent’s 9 scores.

Game ball goes to Jordan Pendleton for tipping a pass that led to a Brian Logan interception and recovering a fumble for a touchdown.

Special teams were not so special for the second Saturday in a row. The one bright spot from the Oklahoma game, the decent punting, wasn’t seen against Tulane. What was seen was more atrocious kicking. No kick-offs went past the ten-yard line, and two went out of bounds. Mitch Payne was 2/2 in field goal attempts, but missed an extra point. I guess the kick-off coverage wasn’t awful, but it wasn’t good (Tulane averaged 18.6 yards per return). That kind of performance cuts it when your offense scores 54 points and the defense gives up three. It won’t cut it against a better opponent–probably not even Florida State this weekend. Bronco needs to figure something out in the kicking game, or BYU can’t be a legitimate candidate to win a BCS game.

BYU’s Special needs aside, it takes a true pessimist like me to find a cloud in Saturday’s silver lining. BYU needed a big win to maintain legitimacy and they got it. There’s something to be said for simply surviving a trap game, and there’s quite a bit more to be said about coming out of one with a statement performance. As Maxie said after the game:

It shows that we’re going come out every week hungry to play and eager to play because we love the game and we love playing and we love to win.

If that’s all we learned about BYU from Saturday’s game, that’s more than enough.

Monday Morning Links

• Greg Wrubell’s Cougar Tracks blog is always a good read. I especially like this entry, in which Bronco calls Saturday’s game against FSU “athletes against athletes.” Am I wrong in hoping this is not the case?
• As always, the BYU slideshow of Saturday’s game features some fantastic pictures with some not so fantastic radio play-by-play. Might I suggest muting it and providing your own soundtrack? Try Passion Pit’s “Little Secrets.”
• The Trib’s Jay Drew has a piece up today, explaining one of New Smiley Bronco’s new rules for the season, banning players from thinking about the next week’s opponent until Monday.

“It is too hard to win football games, and [the season] is too fast not to enjoy small moments when you have them,” Mendenhall said. “So that was the advice I gave them. Whether they can do it or not, whether I can do it or not, we will see.”

I am soooooooooo happy last season is over!

• Max Hall is stuck at #4 in ESPN’s Heisman Watch. Unless something changes, it’s looking like a three horse race.
• In this week’s Bad Journalism 101 lesson, Kurt Kragthorpe seems to stake his credibility on BYU’s unproven defense and simultaneously patronizes his readership, without actually committing himself to any sort of interesting statement about that defense:

“Take it from someone who studies defenses: These guys have improved.”

• Jay Drew’s Sunday article is a rare oasis of interest in a desert of cookie-cutter post-game analyses. I love how he picks an item of interest (12 receivers catching passes on Saturday), shows why it happened, and gives it a context in terms of team strategy. Drew quotes Bronco as saying that spreading the ball around is his strategy for dealing with the loss of Austin Collie–something most pre-season analyses didn’t even consider.

BYU #7 in AP Poll, #9 in Coaches’

UPDATE: In this morning’s updated USA Today Coaches’ Poll, BYU also climbs three spots to #9, passsing Oklahoma State, Ohio State, and Boise State. There’s still a significant gap–about 100 points–between BYU and the teams tied at #7, LSU and California.

BYU, as expected, moved past Oklahoma St. (dropped to #16) and Ohio St. (#11) to #7 in this morning’s updated AP poll, 23 points behind Penn St. and Ole Miss, who are tied at #5.

Other items of interest:

• TCU climbed past the plunging OSU Cowboys to #15. A certain other Mountain West team dropped a spot to #18, despite winning on the road. Climbing past them is Cincinatti, who has outscored their first two opponents by a total of 99 points.
• The only other BYU opponents receiving votes are CSU and FSU, who racked up a total of three points.
• The only teams currently ranked above BYU that play each other this season are Alabama and Ole Miss. If one of those two and Florida go undefeated, they’ll have to play eachother in the SEC championship game. No likely upsets in the top six next week, but there are a few games of interest: Tennessee @ #1 Florida, #3 USC @ Washington, and Texas Tech @ #2 Texas. These games are all probably easier than BYU’s vs. Florida State.

National Update – Week 2

BYU’s strength of schedule took a moderate hit when Florida State struggled to a narrow victory over Jacksonville State. To put it another way, the JSU Gamecocks revealed a lack of Seminole fluid in the FSU bandwagon. A victory over FSU in Provo this Saturday has changed from a challenge game and an SoS builder to a must-win over a weak, but potentially dangerous opponent.

Also not helping BYU:

• Colorado State barely sneaks by Weber State by a field goal. But maybe Weber State is actually kind of good. They hung tight against Wyoming too a week ago
• UNLV lost a close game to Oregon State, and Air Force lost at Minnesota. Too bad–either one would have been a nice addition to the Mountain West’s non-conference record. New Mexico also got hammered by what’s looking like a good Tulsa team.

Helping BYU:

• The cream of the MWC crop remained undefeated with victories in must-wins over Virginia (TCU) and San Jose State (The Crimson Suck).
• USC outlasted #8 Ohio State in the Horseshoe, and #5 Oklahoma State got routed by Houston, likely sending BYU to #7 in next week’s polls and knocking out two barriers to a possible BYU title-shot.
• Oklahoma rebounded to completely dominate a sadly outmatched Idaho State squad. Anything less than the 63–0 beatdown it was, and this game probably wouldn’t have made any difference to BYU. As it is, the country has seen that Oklahoma is still a very good team and Landry Jones is a pretty good quarterback. This is what BYU needed.
• Notre Dame lost in a close one to Michigan. A one-loss Notre Dame team is a much smaller threat to BYU’s BCS hopes than an undefeated one. Maybe now Lou Holtz will pick BYU to slobber about every week.

Post-Game Notes: BYU 54, Tulane 3

Just complete and total domination.

• BYU, predictably, just ran all over the Green Wave. Di Luigi and Kariya were both fantastic. The o-line could do pretty much whatever it wanted, and Max Hall kept poised and made plays.
• Nice to see some playing time for Riley Nelson. This is the first time I can remember feeling at all positive about BYU’s backup QB. It’s a nice feeling.
• Tulane trotted out three quarterbacks, desperately looking for someone to do something, but BYU’s defense was all over them. Things aren’t looking up for Bob Toledo and the Tulane faithful.
• My prediction, as I feared, was a little conservative. BYU almost tripled the spread. Great game for the Cougars–BYU fans couldn’t have hoped for anything better. Full recap coming Monday morning.

Halftime Notes: 20-3

• I can’t believe Tulane plays all their games at the SuperDome. It honestly looks like there’s about a thousand people there. No one is sitting in the endzones. Maybe they should find a high school field or something to play on. Here’s a quick way to tell if you’ve had seven straight losing seasons: check and see if Journey sells out a stadium that your team can’t.
• I’m watching the game at my cousin Gabe’s house. The last game I watched here was the 2006 last second victory over a team that shall not be named, sealing an undefeated conference season. We went so crazy when Beck found Harline alone in the endzone, that his son, Kanamu, ran in the corner and started crying. Good memories. I just asked Kanamu if he likes Journey. His answer? “No. I like Spiderman.”
• It’s nice to see Unga healthy enough to start, but he’s looking a bit slow to this observer. Kariya looks great again, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see Unga sitting for most of the second half.
• The Cougars look great so far. The two touchdowns in the second quarter really helped ease the pain from settling for two field goals early on. The defense looked a little shaky on Tulane’s one scoring drive, but they tightened up when they had to and held them to a field goal. I’m liking BYU’s goalline defense so far this season. I would like to see the cornerbacks, especially Brandon Bradley, playing just a little tighter on the line of scrimmage. Tulane had some success on that drive with quick sideline routes.
• I loved it when the announcers expressed so much enthusiasm for Tulane QB, Joe Kemp’s gunslinger style. After the jump pass and the sidearm throw, I said, “This guy had better cut it out or he’s going to throw an interception.” Next drive, first play, I was vindicated. There’s a reason high release points and not throwing off your back foot are good things.
• After another kick out of bounds, Gabe asked me, “Do you think the church might give Justin Sorenson an early honorable release from his mission?” I don’t think we should even worry about the honorable part. GET HIM HOME.

Second half’s starting. Let’s go Cougars!

Game Preview: BYU @ Tulane

When I looked up Tulane’s stats over the last several seasons, I was genuinely surprised. BYU’s loss to Tulane in Memphis is still fresh in my mind, as I was at the game, and I just assumed they were always decent, though never spectacular. They’ve actually been pretty awful. It’s been seven years since Tulane’s had a winning record. They’ve lost against such powerhouses as Army (the last two years) and Rice. They’ve lost their last six games against Houston and their last five against Tulsa. It’s been a prolonged period of futility for the Tulane Green Wave. Look for it to continue this afternoon.

Tulane lost to the Tulsa Golden Hurricanes last week 37-13. Allowing 37 points to Tulsa isn’t a big deal–they’re known for their explosive offense. Only managing thirteen points against a typically porous defense is more of an issue. They passed for 300+ yards, but only managed 39 rushing yards on 34 attempts, a measly 1.1 yard/carry. Tulsa only threw for 211 yards against them, but completed 75% of their measly 20 pass attempts, as they spent most of their time of possession rushing for more than 200 yards.

BYU Offense vs. Tulane defense:

Tulane’s defense was pretty bad last year, especially against the run, where they gave up the seventh most yards/game in the country, a whopping 218.42 ypg. Against similar defenses last year, BYU’s pass-first offense racked up a solid, though unspectacular 150 rushing ypg. If Unga plays, expect something similar to that; if not, 100 yards on the ground is probably the over/under. Tulane’s pass defense was much better, ranked 14th in the nation giving up 172.83 ypg. BYU played two other highly ranked pass defenses last year: TCU and UCLA. There’s a big difference between those two teams. TCU ranked #1 in rush defense and #11 in pass defense, and BYU passed for 274 yards against them. UCLA was ranked #7 in pass defense, but #89 in rush defense, and Max Hall lit them up for 337 passing yards. To make a long story short, there are two ways to give up few passing yards for a season: actually play good pass defense (TCU), or let teams run all over you so they don’t have to pass (UCLA). Tulane seems more UCLA than TCU. The Green Wave ranked 84th in the nation in total yards allowed and 106th in scoring defense, meaning they must have struggled on either special teams (giving teams short fields to start drives) or red-zone defense. Turns out, it was both, ranking #103 in red-zone defense and #94 in net punting. Big edge for BYU. My prediction: 290 passing yards, 140 rushing yards, 1 interception, 1 fumble lost, 42 points scored.

BYU Defense vs. Tulane Offense

The Cougar defense last year was bad against the run and really bad against the pass. Tulane’s offense was bad at passing, and really bad at rushing. BYU’s defense seems to have improved dramatically. Tulane’s offense does not. Edge to BYU again. My prediction: 240 passing yards, 65 rushing yards, 22 points scored.

That’s right folks. BYU wins 42-22, just barely beating the spread of 18.5 points. Enjoy.