Realistically, how much can Notre Dame football improve this season? Here’s the Cliff Notes answer: We don’t know. Ha! No, but seriously, there’s no definitive way to answer the question. If every coach and every starter from 2016 returned for this season, there would still be far too many variables in the 2017 equation to make any kind of actual prediction. What we can do, though, is look for teams in recent history that made big jumps from one year to the next and see if we can draw any parallels to the 2017 edition of the Irish.
Setting the Table
First, let’s take a look at some key numbers from Notre Dame’s 2016 season:
- Record: 4-8
- S&P+ overall: 26th
- Offense: 36th
- Defense: 28th
- Special teams: 80th
- 2nd order win differential: +3.2 (more on this below)
- FEI overall: 42nd
- Offense: 38th
- Defense: 63rd
- Special teams: 81st
- FBS mean win differential: +3 (estimated)
Our own Mike Bryan has explained these much better in the past, so by all means, go look up some of his advanced stats work if you’d like to dig in. My “Advanced Stats for Dummies” explanation is that S&P measures success on a per-play basis while FEI measures success on a per-drive basis; that’s badly over-simplified, but it gets you the general idea at least.
One of the components of S&P+ is second order wins, which is how many wins a team of a given quality should have against its schedule; it compiles the individual game win probabilities into a projected win total. A spinoff of this is second order win differential, which is the difference between second order wins and actual wins. A positive number, like Notre Dame had last year, indicates underachieving, as it means the expected wins are higher than the actual wins. FEI’s FBS mean wins component is essentially the same as S&P+’s second order wins. It’s only published for 2007 through 2015, so unfortunately I don’t have our actual number for last year. However, I went through all the data available, from 2007 to 2016, to see how teams with similar FEI rankings did, and on average they posted seven-win seasons. Hence the +3 estimate for Notre Dame’s number in 2016.
What both of these sets of numbers tell us is that, in terms of individual plays and drives, we weren’t that bad last year. There were other failings that made us a 4-8 team, which we’ve beaten into the ground at this point, but the silver lining in that very large cloud is that you generally have a better chance at fixing those “other failings” in an offseason. Both S&P+ and FEI would’ve expected us to be around 7-5 last year, which obviously still is not great, but jumping from there to 9-3 or better seems less insurmountable.
While an improvement from 4-8 to 9-3 seems intuitively like it would be extremely difficult, the advanced stats tell us that we have some reason to believe that it might be possible. Lots of teams underachieve every year, though, so can we determine how common such a jump is and if we have parallels with the teams who made it?
Has Anyone Gone From Rags to Riches?
Bill Connelly, the brain behind the S&P+ rankings, had a great piece about second order wins a couple of years ago that went into a lot more depth. As he notes in that piece:
From 2005-13, 35 FBS teams ended up with an actual win total at least 1.8 games lower than their projected second-order win total. That means they underachieved pretty drastically compared to what the stats would expect. Of these 35, four saw their actual win percentage regress the next year, four stayed the same, and 27 improved.
In 2014 and 2015 five more teams posted second order win differentials of +1.8 or worse – 2014 Pitt, 2014 Kent State, 2015 Iowa State, 2015 Florida Atlantic, and 2015 Boston College. Pitt, Kent State, and Boston College all improved the next year, while Florida Atlantic and Iowa State stayed the same. The set of recent additions to the list, while small, would seem to further support Connelly’s point.
The +3.2 differential that the 2016 Notre Dame team posted is tied with 2013 TCU for the third-highest out of 1,470 season records since 2005. That’s… impressive, I guess? Note that Connelly says a +1.8 indicates underachieving “pretty drastically,” so it’s fair to assume that a +3 or worse indicates underachieving pretty catastrophically. The numbers suggest that we can expect a better year in 2017, but of course the remaining question is just how much better that year will be. After all, 5-7 is an improvement over 4-8, but I don’t think it’ll make anyone put away the pitchforks.
So what teams, if any, have pulled off major turnarounds after underachieving years? The astute/obsessive among you may have already picked up a major clue in the mention of TCU – the turnaround they made in 2014 is the exemplar of the category. There are a handful of other teams too that have pulled it off, though, and a couple in particular should serve as some comfort to Irish fans. What’s more, the four “best” examples that we’ve highlighted didn’t turn around based on dumb luck – their expected vs. actual win differentials for their turnaround years were all really low.
2013-14 TCU
2013: 4-8, 50th S&P+/+3.2 2nd order win differential, 50th FEI/+1.5 FBS mean win diff
2014: 12-1, 7th S&P+/-0.6 2nd order win differential, 6th FEI/-0.4 FBS mean win diff
TCU joined the Big 12 in 2012. Their first two years in the conference were not kind to them, as they lost a total of 14 games overall and never won consecutive conference games. 2013 in particular was bad, as the Horned Frogs went 4-8 overall and 1-4 in one-score games. The defense was workable, but the offense was subpar and a general sense of impending doom settled on the program as the year progressed; switch “offense” for “defense,” and let me know if that sounds familiar.
Gary Patterson pulled the trigger on some major changes in the offseason, with the most significant being a complete overhaul of his offensive philosophy. Gone was the conservative approach that conventional wisdom said matched their always-formidable defense, as he brought in Air Raid disciples Sonny Cumbie and Doug Meacham to serve as co-offensive coordinators. It was a bold move, and boy, did it ever pay off… In 2014, TCU went 12-1 and averaged a whopping 46.5 points per game, while the defense was just as solid as always. Their lone smirch was a disputed loss to Baylor that kept them out of the first College Football Playoff, a snub that in turn motivated them to eviscerate then-#9 Ole Miss 42-3 in the Peach Bowl. They finished the season ranked #3.
Referring to the major shift in philosophy that offseason, Patterson said, “I think people are just in shock that I let them do it. That’s all I heard: ‘No way he’s going to let them do it.'” Sounds like what a lot of people said about the changes Brian Kelly made at Notre Dame this offseason, back when the changes were rumored – from canning Brian VanGorder, to replacing Paul Longo, to truly handing over the reins of the offense to Chip Long. Does that mean Kelly’s changes are guaranteed to be as successful as Patterson’s? No. It does give an indication, though, of how significant those changes were for each head man.
2011-12 Central Florida
2011: 5-7, 52nd S&P+/+2.8 2nd order win diff, 63rd FEI/+2.7 FBS mean win diff
2012: 10-4, 35th S&P+/+0.2 2nd order win diff, 35th FEI/+0.8 FBS mean win diff
Central Florida had a brutal year in 2011, going winless on the road and 0-6 in one-score games. Head man George O’Leary fired his defensive coordinator and his linebackers coach, casualties of a defensive fade down the stretch. He quickly hired Auburn defensive coordinator Ted Roof for the same position at UCF, and added Alabama grad assistant Derrick Ansley as secondary coach. Within two months, Roof had left to join Bill O’Brien at Penn State and Derrick Ansley had left to join Derek Dooley at Tennessee. Irish fans likely have very little sympathy for O’Leary with these faceplant hires, of course…
O’Leary ultimately tapped Kent State linebackers coach Jim Fleming for the coordinator position. Their wide receivers coach had to step down due to involvement in an ongoing NCAA investigation, and their tight ends coach/special teams coordinator and defensive line coach left of their own accord as well. It was quite a chaotic offseason for the Golden Knights, one that led to five new assistants taking the field at the start of spring ball.
The chaos all worked out in the end, though, as UCF reversed their fortunes in 2012, thanks in large part to Fleming’s impact on the defense. They were even better in 2013, as they went 12-1 and closed out the season with an upset of Baylor in the Fiesta Bowl.
2010-11 Georgia
2010: 6-7, 30th S&P+/+1.6 2nd order win diff, 34th FEI/+1.8 FBS mean win diff
2011: 10-4, 14th S&P+/+0.5 2nd order win diff, 19th FEI/-0.2 FBS mean win diff
Georgia went 6-7 in 2010, and capped the season off with a listless 10-6 loss to Central Florida in the Liberty Bowl that sent them to 0-4 in one-score games. The record was just as unacceptable for Bulldog fans as it would be for Irish fans, and Mark Richt was once again on the hot seat in the offseason. Richt didn’t make any on-field staff changes, but he did shuffle administrative responsibilities around to allow him to focus more of his time on football. He assigned a new strength and conditioning coordinator, brought in a nutritionist, increased support staff’s academic monitoring responsibilities, and added a mentor role to help kids transition to college life.
Here’s how Richt summed it up in his postseason wrap-up press conference: “I’m just spending less time messing around with things that
In 2011, Georgia turned in a 10-2 regular season before falling to eventual #2 LSU in the SEC title game and dropping a three-overtime affair to #11 Michigan State in the Outback Bowl. While the season still ended on a down note, it was unarguably a huge turnaround from the year before, and I’m sure every Irish fan would sign up now for a 10-2 regular season and take their chances in the bowl game.
2005-06 Arkansas
2005: 4-7, 33rd S&P+/+2.1 2nd order win diff
2006: 10-4, 12th S&P+/+0.1 2nd order win diff
Note: FEI data only starts in 2007.
2005 was Houston Nutt’s seventh season in Fayetteville, and it was his most forgettable. The Hogs dropped a home game to Vanderbilt in week 2, then traveled to Los Angeles the next week only to get humiliated by USC, 70-17. The season didn’t really get any better from there, as they ended up 4-7 overall and 0-4 in one-score games. Similar to 2013 TCU, their defense was good but their offense was inconsistent at best, logging 17 points or fewer in five of their seven losses.
Nutt made an even bolder move than Patterson did in 2014 – he hired Gus Malzahn from the high school ranks as his new offensive coordinator. It turned out to be a terrible long-term match, mostly because Nutt is a bit of a weirdo, but for that year it worked wonders. Arkansas opened with another blowout loss to USC, which prompted Nutt to tell Malzahn he had to junk the Air Raid spread he was hired to implement. Malzahn adjusted, using Darren McFadden as the focal point of a wildcat offense, and the Hogs won their next ten games before falling to LSU, 31-26, to close out the regular season. They lost the SEC title game to eventual national champion Florida, and again lost a heartbreaker in the Citrus Bowl, falling 17-14 to Wisconsin. Rumors of tension between Nutt and Malzahn were rampant, and were seemingly confirmed when Malzahn made a lateral move to Tulsa at the end of the year.
But for that one year, it worked. Nutt pulled the trigger on a major shift to address a shortcoming on one side of the ball, and it worked.
Other Notables
All five of these turnarounds by underachieving teams are directly connected to a new head coach, so they’re not really comparable to what 2017 Notre Dame hopes to do. Nonetheless, they’re worth noting.
2006-07 Illinois
I don’t really know how to describe this other than to say that Ron Zook found a nut in his second year, when the Illini improved from 2-10 to 9-3.
2007-08 Minnesota
The Gophers went from 1-11 to 7-5 in head coach Tim Brewster’s second season, which isn’t great, and it’s propped up by a couple of FCS wins, but that’s still a hell of a turnaround. Of course, in the three years before Brewster, Glen Mason had gone 7-5, 7-5, and 6-7, so it’s more likely that Brewster’s first year disaster was due to the changeover.
2011-12 Texas A&M
Mike Sherman logged an uninspiring 7-6 campaign in his final season in College Station, made more gut-wrenching by a 1-5 record in one-score games. Kevin Sumlin and Johnny Manziel took the stage together in 2012 and led the Aggies to an 11-2 season, including a demolition of Oklahoma in the Cotton Bowl in which Manziel rushed for 229 yards. The stars of each have diminished since then, but for that one year, new coach and new quarterback were a perfect match.
2011-12 Vanderbilt
Vandy improved from 5-7 in James Franklin’s first season to 9-4 in his second. After a 2-4 start to the 2012 season the Commodores closed 7-0, with a Liberty Bowl win over North Carolina State putting the cherry on the sundae.
2015-16 Washington
Chris Petersen’s second year in Seattle was nothing special, as the Huskies posted a very up and down year and a 7-6 record; however, three blowout wins to close the season may have given some hint of the turnaround that was coming. In 2016, Washington went 12-2, running roughshod over most of the Pac 12 on their way to the conference title and a spot in the playoff. Where they got pounded by Alabama, but hey, we know all too well how that can happen.
The Flipside
In the interests of completeness, of the 40 teams that posted a second order win differential of +1.8 or more between 2005 and 2015, only four regressed the next season while eight treaded water. Of the 38 teams that posted an FBS mean win differential of +2.1 or more between 2007 and 2015, only one regressed the next season while five treaded water. So, again, when you underachieve significantly one year, improvement the next year is extremely likely but not guaranteed.
A further flipside here is coaches moving on. Gary Patterson is still at TCU, and probably will be for as long he wants to be given what he’s done there. Houston Nutt left Arkansas one season after his turnaround, George O’Leary retired three years after his, and Mark Richt was gone from Georgia four years after his. And as we’ve noted in this space before, the three great Notre Dame coaches who put up clunker seasons – Knute Rockne, Frank Leahy, and Lou Holtz – were all gone from the Dome within three years. For different reasons, of course, but still. Even a successful turnaround seems to take a lot out of a coach.
So You’re Saying There’s A Chance…
No, listen, I’m not trying to… Well, yes, I guess I am saying there’s a chance that you’ll see Notre Dame football improve substantially in 2017. There are obviously tons of teams that put in bad records for one year and again the next year, but underachieving substantially with respectable advanced stats ratings has typically been a harbinger of substantial improvement the next season.
But how big will “substantial” be, exactly? Well, that depends on how well all the offseason gambles pay off. I like the Chip Long hire and I’m interested to see what he brings to the offense, but I think improvement there will likely be relatively incremental. Which is fine – as frustrating as the offense was at times last year, it doesn’t have to get all that much better as long as the other side of the ball isn’t a tire fire. And that, in turn, is why I’m really psyched about the Mike Elko hire; I think Kelly may well have made the best assistant hire of this offseason in Elko. If the offense can hold server and Elko can bring our defense from, say, 63rd in FEI to 35th – a big leap but one that I don’t think is unreasonable – watch out, folks. The average overall FEI rank of a team with a top 35 offense and a top 35 defense is 12th. The average S&P+ rank of such a team is 10th. I would sign up for that today, no questions asked.
Great stuff Brendan – I think the chances of the defense jumping to top 35 are pretty slight, but in Elko we hopefully we can trust. And, that could be balanced out a bit in the big picture if the offense does better than tread water versus last year, which I think I’d bet on.
Admittedly, I’m the optimistic sort. Still… I filtered S&P+ since 2005 to teams that ranked 36th in offense and 28th in defense, and about 70% finished with 10 or more wins. I also filtered FEI since 2007 to teams that ranked 38th in offense and 63rd in defense, and just under 60% finished with 10 or more wins. So even if we just hold serve on both sides of the ball and fix the discombobulation – which, again, is no guarantee – I like our chances to improve.
Sold. I’m buying my playoff tickets.
I am in the camp that while the record was lousy last year, the team itself is not a dumpster fire (as noted in these stats and recent recruiting rankings). Things unraveled, they lost the ability to finish, there were a few questionable game plans, and once the season went down the tubes the team did not seem as motivated. I think that there is talent, but some holes (see d-line), and I agree with these stats that suggest that ND is poised for a rebound. Maybe not a playoff level rebound, but clearly better than last year. My biggest curiosity is how Elko is going to compensate for the d-line – hopefully his linebacker / rover / safety blitzes are effective!
I’m right there with you man. I think there was a major leadership problem last year, on the sideline and on the field. That’s the “other failings” I alluded to above – if it was a pure lack of ability, we’d be SOL this year too. It’s not easy to fix leadership, but it’s possible at least. I’m encouraged by what we’ve seen from the coaches so far and by the fact that so many guys return, and we should see a leadership bump just from their natural maturation.
I’m cautiously optimistic, as opposed to my usual preseason state of blindly optimistic.
Excellent work, Brendan!
After this further evidence, I shall remain cautiously optimistic that the offense finishes in the top 35, defense finishes in the top 50, and special teams finishes in the top 60 (top half) of the country. Do these things, and I think we can go 9-3, which I believe might be the floor for BK keeping his job.
Thanks! I’ll differ with you on one point – much to the chagrin of ND fans, I think 8-4 will be enough for Kelly to keep his job. In fact I think 7-5 might be as well. 6-6 it gets very murky – I don’t think he would get another chance, but the university has to have committed a ton of guaranteed money to Elko and Long, and probably Polian and Alexander as well. 5-7, I think he’s definitely toast.
Note that I’m not saying I think 8-4 is a good year. I’m just reading the tea leaves with the admin and guessing it would be enough to keep BK around.
I hope and think you are wrong about 7-5. 8-4 will be uninspiring but, yes, probably enough to buy a year, but I think 7-5 probably means two or three losses by the bye week, which means the talk then will be “are they going to fire him over the bye week?”, followed by two or three more losses over the course of the season. At that point, the buzz will be so much that they will basically have to get rid of him, and I would think more than justifiably.
Out of curiosity, I just took a look at the significant overachievers: the 61 teams that posted a -1.8 second order win differential between 2005 and 2015, and the 40 teams that posted a -2.1 FBS mean win differential between 2007 and 2015.
Only nine of those 61 S&P+ overachievers posted a better record the following year, while another eight teams held steady. The remaining 44 teams regressed by an average of three wins.
The curve breaker was Gandalf the White, I mean Bill Snyder, who in 2011 posted the largest overachieving season of any of the 1,342 team seasons in question. Kansas State went 10-3 with a -3.8 second order win differential that year, and actually improved by one game the next year. Snyder, you magnificent bastard…
Of the 40 FEI overachievers, nine posted a better record the next year, four held steady, and 27 teams regressed, again by an average of three wins. The curve breaker here is less clear, but 2011 Michigan State is probably a good choice – they had the sixth-worst differential out of the 1,104 team seasons examined, but held steady at 11 wins. They took one extra game to do it, but still, that’s not too shabby.
The correlation in FEI is clearly a bit weaker, but with both metrics, the overachieving/underachieving correlation is definitely there.
Great work Brendan, but I thought Snyder was a vampire not a magician.
I wonder if any of these overachievers improving the next year had anything to do with scheduling scenarios?
For the most part the schedules tend to be pretty consistent. TCU plays a couple of body bags every year, Georgia plays Florida/Tennessee/Georgia Tech every year, etc. Those opponents can go up and down in quality, of course, but that’s where the next year second order win differential comes in – the advanced stats account for opponent strength. It could certainly play a part, but when you’re talking about turnarounds that big I think it’s down the list.
thepowerrank.com also had ND rated as the #25 team in the country. It is a purely algorithmic ranking based on yards per play, which explains why it is so close to S&P. But it is another piece that backs up the idea we weren’t terrible at playing football, just terrible at winning games.
*This is how we win by losing!?*
“Nutt is a bit of a weirdo…” Thanks for not taking the easy money Brendan.
And people will still go apeshtuff when we go 8-4.
FWIW I looked at the depth charts of each of the teams mentioned, and all except 2006 Arkansas and 2012 Texas A&M had returning starting quarterbacks. I have great faith in Brandon Wimbush but it would seem that a returning starting QB does make a difference. However, correlation does not prove causation.
12-0 all the way!
That’s a good point. There will definitely be some growing pains with Wimbush, but I’m banking on the combination of exceptional talent and his third year in the program to make him good enough. Plus we have a poop-ton of experience returning all over the rest of the roster, which should help.
Lots of uncertainty, but some cause for optimism as well.
EDIT: Actually, Trevone Boykin barely counts as a returner – I think he ran the scout team the year before and of course they junked the system in the offseason. Even so, you make a very good point.
Trevone?
/facepalm i get it now
Ah, I was going off Wikipedia which showed stats for him in 2012 and 2013. He did a lot of time-sharing and played as a WR:
Gotcha… I must’ve misread one of the at-the-time articles that I just read about Patterson’s overhaul – “part time starter” is definitely better than “scout team QB.” Thanks for digging that up.
I wonder if we can explain the lost 3.2 games in any way? I think I can remember two, throwing the football non-stop in a hurricane is one. Flip flopping QBs in the opener is two. Where is the other 1.2 game?
I don’t Think that’s exactly how the advanced stats play out the season. Rather given the yards per play on offense and defense it’s that of an 8 win teams.
However if I was to pick out more specific games, the likelihood of going 1-7 in 1 possession games is pretty low and therein lies a lot of the flukiness of last season.
And more specifically I would imagine the win expectancy of ND was pretty high with a 10 point lead and the ball against Stanford and a 17 point lead Against va tech
Off the top of my head, Texas, MSU, Duke, Stanford, and Va Tech were all games that could’ve/should’ve gone the other way via stuff solely in our control (plus one awful fluke bounce against MSU).
The hurricane game is what it is. The gameplan was terrible, but it’s an embarrassment to the ACC that the game was played.
Navy turned on, all due apologies, horrific officiating – not just the 12 men on the field, but numerous uncalled open field holds at the point of attack. USC was lost by awful special teams, which at that point were clearly a lost cause.
Several of these turnaround teams, btw, had really bad one-score records the one year and more even the next year. Regression to the mean there is part of it, but then there are multiple possible reasons for such a regression.
Brendan, speaking of special teams, do you have any thoughts on the hiring of Brian Polian? Given the dumpster-full-of-used-tires fire that ND’s special teams were last year, likely being responsible for at least two losses, I would think that this might make a difference. I don’t know if any of the advanced stats look at that, though, or what effect Polian might be able to have.
Good question. Both stats do in fact take special teams into effect, although I get the sense both Bill Connelly (S&P+) and ND’s own Brian Fremeau (FEI) are still tweaking that part of their formulas. I didn’t get into them here because they don’t seem to have all that much of a correlation to record. Which isn’t saying that special teams aren’t valuable, because obviously they are, I just don’t think the advanced stats components to measure them are super meaningful.
On Polian, I think he was a fantastic hire. As a ST coach he has generally been average to slightly above, but (a) let’s be honest, average would be an enormous improvement, and (b) I don’t think he’s ever been just a ST coach. Really encouraged to see what he can do with the unit. And, just as importantly, he’s a phenomenal recruiter. His results under Weis made Tony Alford look like Bob Diaco, and he’s picking up right where he left off.
Just a bit of pedantry, but the Dumb & Dumber quote is actually “So you’re telling me there’s a chance.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMRrNY0pxfM
Pedantry auto-rec.
I’ve been so out of football discussion that I opened this article thinking “Why is there a picture of Robert Blanton running the football?”
Smart man. Me, I’m clearly a glutton for punishment.