The traditional stats such as passing yards and rushing attempts don’t mean what they used to in the game of football. God forbid someone starts telling you how important time of possession is to winning. Never sleep on yards per play, though. It’s one of my favorite old-school indicators of quality football, even without adjusting for strength of schedule in comparison to the rest of the country.
This time last year we were focused on 3 issues looking ahead to 2018:
Could the Irish put together +1.0 YPP differential for the second straight season?
Success achieved! Obviously, going 12-0 and making the playoffs meant this easily happened. Going that many games undefeated while under +1.0 YPP differential would’ve meant some super luck, a mountain of weird things happening, and/or one of the weakest schedules in Notre Dame history.
Unfortunately, the National Champion Clemson Tigers prevented another chance at a major bowl game victory and put a good licking on the Irish yards per play up to that date. Heading into the Cotton Bowl the Irish were sitting at +1.66 YPP differential which would be rounded up to a tie with 1969, 1972, and 1993 for the 10th best at Notre Dame since 1964.
That would be some rarefied air, but of course the season didn’t end at 12-0 and no uNDefeated shirts were printed this time–at least not that I am aware?
Could Notre Dame prevent a downturn on offense?
We talked about what an average passing game could do for the offense coming off a very meager 2017 but also with an eye toward a running game that had very little chance of maintaining itself from a terrific season with crucial personnel losses. Thanks largely to the quarterback switch to Ian Book the offense shot up by 1,021 more passing yards from 2017 to 2018. And yet, overall YPP for this side of the ball declined.
The first reason was the running game regressing by a lot more than some predicted. The 1,127 decrease in rushing yardage on only 24 fewer attempts was a tough pill to swallow. The 1.4 YPA increase in the passing game was a nice improvement just not enough to overcome such a decline on the ground. After all, those 1,021 more passing yards took 66 more attempts, or 5 more per game than 2017.
Would Clark Lea be able to build off the foundation poured by Mike Elko?
The next two years should show us a lot about Clark Lea as he has to replace a lot of personnel after 2019 and the second group of a two group set that have largely been responsible for this post-VanGorder renaissance. If he is able to put together strong defenses with so much turnover he may be the real deal. After his first season though, things are trending in the right direction.
The Irish went into the Cotton Bowl with a 4.52 YPP for the defense and only 3,978 yards given up–that is freaking outstanding. Until the Clemson reckoning the 2018 defense was squarely in the conversation as the best at Notre Dame of my lifetime then came back down to earth a bit at the (large and freakishly athletic) hands of Clemson’s receivers. Even still, Lea’s 4.72 defensive YPP ended up being the best mark of the Kelly era, the best since 2002’s 4.4 mark, and the second best since 1997.
Kelly-Era YPP (2010-2018)
| YEAR | OFFENSE | DEFENSE | DIFFERENTIAL |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2010 | 5.52 | 5.15 | +0.37 |
| 2011 | 5.93 | 5.05 | +0.88 |
| 2012 | 5.99 | 4.78 | +1.21 |
| 2013 | 6.07 | 5.12 | +0.95 |
| 2014 | 6.11 | 5.60 | +0.51 |
| 2015 | 7.02 | 5.57 | +1.45 |
| 2016 | 6.07 | 5.40 | +0.67 |
| 2017 | 6.39 | 5.05 | +1.34 |
| 2018 | 6.00 | 4.72 | +1.28 |
Once more, getting to +1.0 YPP differential means very good things happen on the football field. Following 2018, the Irish are now 107-17-1 (.860) since 1984 when reaching at least the +1.0 YPP mark in a given season and have made a major bowl in 8 out of those 10 qualifying seasons.
Here are my predictions from last year (actual numbers in parentheses):
2018 Defense
2,650 passing (2,703)
1,850 rushing (1,813)
4,500 yards (4,516)
920 plays (957)
4.89 YPP (4.72)
2018 Offense
3,050 passing (3,347)
2,220 rushing (2,374)
5,270 yards (5,721)
905 plays (954)
5.82 YPP (6.00)
The defense played so much better than I expected with extremely impressive numbers across the board. I was selling the offensive running game pretty hard and that turned about to be prescient. Even though I called for Ian Book after the third game of the season I didn’t envision him being the starter for so many games or as effective as he turned out to be.
For the record, the Irish were 5.09 YPP on offense in Wimbush’s first 3 starts. In games 4 through 13 the offense was 6.25, without the bowl game 6.53 from game 4 onward, and 6.21 in all of Ian Book’s starts.
2019 Prediction
2019 Defense
2,570 passing
2,180 rushing
4,750 yards
940 plays
5.05 YPP
2019 Offense
3,680 passing
2,270 rushing
5,950 yards
975 plays
6.10 YPP
I feel pretty good about this defensive prediction. It should still be a good defense but not as dominant as last year. Unless Okwara & Co. put up an obscene amount of tackles for loss the rushing yards surrendered feels like a lock to go up by a decent amount.
The offense is trickier to predict. If you extrapolate Book’s stats from last year he could be pushing towards 500 pass attempts and 4,000 passing yards. In other words, going right up to and maybe past a bunch of single-season school records. That seems a bit excessive and I would have to pull back based on Book perhaps missing some time due to injury (and the backup not throwing nearly as much) while games like New Mexico and Bowling Green should be blowout victories where the offense may not approach 20 passes in either game.
A +1.05 differential feels a touch low to me, and I’d like to raise the offense by as much as 0.20 overall I just don’t know how to accurately lay it out. Will Book hit a bunch of deep passes to Claypool and seam passes to Kmet to boost his YPA? Will an athlete emerge at running back that wows Irish fans to give us a bunch of long runs? Will Book develop even more that he’s just so efficient that the offense will score at a high level even if the yards per play isn’t matching that productivity?
The defense should be taking a step back with perceived weaknesses up the middle while maintaining last year’s level seems like too much to ask. This should be a season where the offense picks up more of the slack, I just worry about a lack of one or two truly fantastic skill position players who can carry this side of the ball if Ian Book isn’t going to take a big step forward. If Book does take a big step forward I can see him being surrounded by a bunch of very good but not super great talent (how I’d view things right right now if I’m honest) with the offense pushing well past 6.5 YPP for 2019.
I’m absolutely desperate for some reporter to say that Lenzy has just been taking the top off the defense in practice. We desperately need explosiveness on offense. Asking college kids to put together long drives just isn’t sustainable against great defenses, and our receiver with the best hands on the team is now in the NFL. Then, add in the fact that we have no idea if we can kick field goals this year, and you’ve got a recipe for a lot of yardage with no points to show for it.
With a full offseason of Book running the show, maybe we’ll actually be able to get that bubble screen game going. Finke seems like an ideal receiver for this role, but with Wimbush running things, those plays were never able to develop. If we can hit those, at least we’ll have a chance to spread the defense wide if we can’t spread them deep.
I feel like there isn’t much out there on Lenzy…Yet. But yeah that would be great. I’ve seen some positive reports on Keys but idk if he’s really going to be that home run threat in 2019 that’s needed.
I wouldn’t sell Claypool short though. I’ll bet you he has 3+ 40-50+ yard TD catches this year. He’s not Will Fuller explosiva but I really think he’ll be contending for a 1,000 yard season and he’s big, strong and fast enough to rack up a lot of YAC. (Plus he’s going to get a ton of targets, which helps too). I feel OK with Claypool as a downfield threat.
I’d be a bit more excited about him as a downfield threat if:
A) his deepest catch of 2018 was more than 35 yards
B) he hadn’t started off his 2019 camp with an ankle injury
The potential is definitely there though.
I’m overlooking A because I believe I read Claypool is shifting into Boykin’s position. And Long is pretty aggressive I see them taking shots down the field to Claypool to meet your point above about trying to establish a deep threat.
To me I’m more worried about the QB actually wanting to take a risk and heave one up for the WR to get rather than Claypool not being capable of breaking off big plays.
Boykin, who was faster than Claypool and had better hands, only had 2 catches over 35 yards last year, with 40 being the long. Whether it’s a Book issue or a receivers issue, I’m nervous about it.
I think it was a Book issue
Your last sentence is very important Eric. The reason we get pretty close but no cigar re national championships is that the teams that win it have super great talent alongside super great talent. Example Clemson with all world qb, receivers, rb etc. Bama likewise year before.
There just aren’t enough super great talents to go around though. Of those, we need to get more than we currently do.
Interesting article.
Man, if the 2015 team just had the 2018 defense and a little bit of injury luck…
https://youtu.be/gkLaH2khpi4
I don’t know if this the best place to put this, but I really like these guys. I think they’re critical but fair. They have kind of a macro view of things.
That link looks sketchy af, as the kids say. What is it?
YouTube video with some fun and interesting analysis of how and independent ND functions as a sort of barometer across college football. Well worth the few minutes (and safe!).
Thanks. I wasn’t familiar the youtu.be, which also looks exactly like a spammer would send a link.
Thanks. You briefed it much better than I would have. These guys break games down too. They only break down the big games but they’re pretty interesting.
I like those guys. Ended up watching their ND season preview. Thought it was pretty in line with how I feel. The only major difference of opinion I have with them, not actually about ND, is that they clearly still judge playoff teams by the BCS criteria, basically who has the best loss, which I hate and think the playoff committee has done a good job only judging wins.
If you lose to Purdue by 30 though, that should play some sort of role. Definitely start with wins, but I do think bad losses should have an impact that exceeds a close loss to a good team.
Those are some crazy good predictions last year E.
I’m optimistic about the offense for this year outperforming those numbers. Looking last year at the Book games and excluding garbage time, which is going to pull some of this down (was 5.48 YPP last year offensively across all games)….
Passing – 7.69 YPP (including sacks), 49% success rate
Rushing – 5.33 YPP, 41% success rate
I don’t think the passing game projects to fall off much if at all. Rushing I think stands a very good chance to improve with OL continuity and sneaky poor efficiency last year, driven largely by lots of run stuffs for no gain or negative yardage. And if the needle moves a bit more pass-heavy to play to the strengths of Book and receivers that will help too – the run/pass split in that same sample is 47% run / 53% pass despite the big advantage to the pass in both efficiency and YPP.
“Those are some crazy good predictions last year E.”
I meant to say that too! Predicting the defense within 16 yards is pretty incredible.
Good stuff!
I’ve been thinking a lot about the stuffs with the running game. I was running some numbers and even modest improvement doesn’t look like it would drive up rushing YPP by a ton. I think +0.2 YPP for the overall offense is about as much improvement as I could predict.
We’ve also been super hot and cold with stuffs in recent years. Looking at TFL only we’ve been 58th, 72nd, 26th, 85th, 86th, and 11th nationally since 2013. Just 10 fewer tackles for loss jumps you from below average to above average in the country. So if you’re gaining 34 yards on those 10 carries in 2019 it’s not much of a major change. But if there’s a couple long runs, then you’re talking.
So I guess I can see 6.3 YPP overall with a slightly better run game. I’m waiting to see more from camp to really think it can go much higher.