Thursday, January 2, 2014

Florida State and Auburn

Here is the big one. By the end of this blog I will have a prediction for the national championship game. For this blog I thought it would be interesting to take a look back at last year's national championship through the eyes of my performance index that I have been using this year to see if there are any insights that can be gained from that.

First let's have a look at the Top 4 teams from THIS year as a refresher:
1Auburn20.89
2Stanford17.98
3Alabama17.95
4FSU17.50

Now by using the same process from this year and applying to last year's national championship contenders we have:

Alabama - 20.69
Notre Dame - 17.33

This does not bode well for FSU off the start. Auburn has a higher score than Alabama, but  Notre Dame has a lower score than FSU, thus making the gap between THIS year's contenders .03 bigger that last year's. And we all know what the actual gap was on the field between the Irish and Bama.

When I put Notre Dame through the scoring process I had to put them into the ACC since they don't have a conference. But most of their games were against ACC opponents so it seemed like a logical fit. I gave them a point for being conference champ even though they weren't, but they would have been if they had actually been in the ACC.

By deciding to put Notre Dame into the ACC, I put them into the same conference as FSU which only helps draw comparisons from this year to last, totally didn't even think about that when I did it. In looking at the conferences from last year this is what I found:
1. SEC - 3
2. B12 - 2.8
3. B10 - 2.4
4. Big East - 2
5. Pac12 - 1.6
6. ACC - .8

The scoring was a little different because I included the big east which led to some bigger scores than this year, but they were all scaled the same so the change was negligible. Ironically the ACC has been the worst conference in American for 2 straight years. And oddly enough, the B10 was the 3rd best last year....But even with a crap conference Notre Dame got a great score because of who else they played, ie: Stanford, Oklahoma, Michigan State, Michigan....

Now for Alabama, the SEC was brutal last year, more so than this year. They lost a game against A&M but looked dominating against everyone else. Not a whole lot of explaining to do here.

So based on last year FSU should be worried. Based on MY index there is a bigger gap between the two teams this year as compared to last year and both FSU and Notre Dame came out of the ACC in my index. That's 2 strikes.

Before I get into the actual break-down of this year's game I want to spend some time and talk about all these numbers. The old saying is: "numbers don't lie." And that is true, but sometimes it's hard to really tell what these numbers are telling us and sometimes, you just gotta know who the better team is. Look at these numbers from last year when I expanded my index to include other big teams from last year:

1. Alabama - 20.69
2. Florida - 20.57
3. Kansas State - 20.38
4. Stanford - 18.03
Notre Dame - 17.33
Oregon - 12.84
Louisville - 9.5

I stopped ranking at 4 because I don't know if there would have been a team higher than Notre Dame and I did not care for this example. Last year, we had 3 teams with scores in the 20's. Two from the SEC and K-State played a brutal B12 schedule and won them all but one, and was un-defeated against ranked opponents. The Pac12 was weak, but once again Stanford played a brutal schedule with 7 ranked opponents and Oregon only had 5. 

K-State played Oregon in a bowl last year and the Ducks were victorious in a game that no one doubted they would win. But my index had them way below the Wildcats. I don't know of anyone that would have picked K-State in that game, myself included. Furthermore let's look at Florida and Louisville....wow....what can you say here? That's a huge difference in the numbers and the best explanation is: UPSETS HAPPEN. Period. It's even happened this year. But in going deeper into that the numbers cannot express a team's heart, or their desire to win, which Louisville had a lot more of than Florida last year. BUT Louisville really suffered because of a weak schedule and a weak conference, AND they lost 2 games. But I have said all along that the AAC is under-rated. Through out last year Cincinnati and Rutgers were ranked, but they weren't ranked at the time Louisville played them, which impacted the scoring. If Louisville had gone un-defeated their number rises to 12.51, if Cincy and Rutgers stayed ranked, the number rises to 16.45. The gap closes if respect is paid where respect is due. Even this year, Cincy and Rutgers went to bowls, and so did former member Syracuse which joined the ACC. Houston didn't make it last year, but they did this year, add in UCF and the former Big East/AAC has some muscle. 

Even with that being said, we see that as Alabama with a gap of 3.36 over Notre Dame predicated an ass kicking, the gap of 4.12 over Louisville (@16.45) predicated a huge upset. If we look at this year, I don't even have UCF included in my Top 15 teams on the index, but I predicted they would beat Baylor. I had Stanford ranked over Michigan State all year and the Spartans came up roses and I missed the pick. Which brings me to the second truth in this segment: SOMETIMES GOOD TEAMS PLAY IN BAD CONFERENCES and that's where the numbers can mis-lead you. Michigan State looked awesome. UCF played a heck of a game and they both won against opponents that they shouldn't have. I feel good that I pulled UCF out of the rabble, but I completely missed on Michigan State. However I would like to point out one difference in my Performance Index as compared to ESPN's Power Index. ESPN designed their system to a predictive system in order to pick games. I designed my index to tell me what 4 teams should be in a play-off. Before the Rose Bowl I don't think there was any doubt that a 4 team play-off of Stanford, Bama, Auburn, and FSU was not fair and just. And last year the 4 team play-off would have been Bama, Florida, K-State, and Stanford. Would we really have put Oregon over K-State the B12 Champ and Stanford the Pac12 champ who had beaten Oregon? So I do not use my index as a predicative tool, but a tool of telling me who the best 4 teams are over the course of a season. If Stanford and Michigan State played 4 times, who wins the majority of those games?

As for now I am currently 19-10 in my picks and ESPN's Power Index is 18-11. ESPN and I have differed on 9 picks and I currently hold the edge of 5-4 over them. The two biggest ones that I scored over them are Ole Miss over Georgia Tech and UCF over Baylor. Georgia Tech is in the Top 20 on the Power Index....really?? Who in their right mind, who actually watched Ole Miss and the Yellow Jackets play this year would put Georgia Tech over the Rebels? And I feel this was the same with UCF and Baylor.

ESPN has another formula they are using to predict the best teams in the country as well called the Championship Drive Ratings which is as I quote: ESPN's Championship Drive Ratings evaluate teams on the difficulty of achieving their W-L or better and how well they control games using in-game win probability; both adjusted for quality of opponent. The Championship Drive Ratings are on a 0-100 scale. Ratings update daily.

These rankings look closer to mine I was shocked to find out. As of today they have: Stanford, Michigan State, Auburn, FSU, and Alabama at 5th. And as far as I can tell they have never had Alabama in the top 4 within the past month but a combination of Michigan State and Arizona State. Interesting stuff. The Championship Drive Ratings are also a tool used to try to predict the best 4 teams for a play-off and not necessarily who will win games.

Now by showing the numbers and then telling you why the numbers only matter so much, let's talk about FSU and Auburn!!

We'll start with some rankings:
AuburnFSUEdge
Total Offense10th - 505.35th - 529.4FSU
Passing Offense107th - 169.614th - 322FSU
Rushing Offense1st - 335.725th - 207.4Auburn
Scoring Offense10th - 40.22nd - 53FSU
Total Defense89th - 423.53rd - 268.5FSU
Passing Defense104th - 260.21st - 152FSU
Rushing Defense62nd - 163.214th - 116.5FSU
Scoring Defense36th - 241st - 10.7FSU
Turnover Margin60th - 03rd - +17FSU
Sacks57th - 2831st - 33FSU
Sacks Allowed21st - 1676th - 29Auburn
Penalties37th - 5 per game61st - 5.46 per gameAuburn
Red Zone Offense19th - 51/57 - .895 - 42 TD1st - 67/69 - .97 - 55TDFSU
Red Zone Defense7th - 34/48 - .71 - 23 TD23rd - 20/26 - .77 - 14 TDAuburn
Strength of Schedule6 Ranked Opponents4 Ranked OpponentsAuburn
ConferenceSECACCAuburn

So why are we playing this game?!?!? FSU right? Well, once again, these are just numbers. Let's go deeper.

FSU Breakdown - This team runs off of Jameis Winston. There's no other way to put it. In what I deem to be the BIG games from FSU's season: Duke, Miami, NC State, and Clemson, the passing yards vrs rushing yards was huge. They put the game on Winston and he delivered with some of his best games of the year. FSU has a pretty balanced attack, but in those games Winston definitly stole the show. 444 yards against Clemson, 342 against NC State, 325 on Miami, and 330 on Duke. This could be a worry for FSU. Winston's completion percentage has been going down. He was 73.6% in September, 66.3 in October, 67.2 in November, and 59.4 in December. Also, he has only thrown 10 INT's on the year, but 3 of those in the last 2 games. The schedule worries me as well, ie: is FSU ready for this game? There are 6 bowl teams on FSU's schedule which the Seminoles beat all of them, but those bowl teams are 2-4 in the bowls so far. And one of those losses is Duke "the second best ACC team" against Texas A&M who was not even the second best team on their side of the conference. I also have a feeling that FSU is not as sound against the run as the numbers suggest. They gave up more than their season average against BC who has a great running back, Clemson who just has a great offense, NC State who gouged them, and Syracuse which is just odd. 
Bottom line: It's all about Winston in the big games. The schedule up to this point was really soft. The run D might not be as dominant as the numbers. And they have looked completely dominant all year and have not lost any of the trap games that the Seminoles usually do.

Auburn Breakdown - I don't know how this team wins games. This is a team that literally trades body blows and the last team standing is the victor. They aren't that impressive anywhere on the field except in the run game. And that run game is RIDICULOUS. They go fast and they pound the heck out of a team. Alabama learned that the hard way. Alabama has the 9th best rushing D in the country and gave up 296 to the Tigers. Alabama has the 2nd best scoring defense and gave up 34 points. Auburn ran for 531 yards against Missouri...who only gives up 151 a game. The defense isn't great, but they make the plays when they need to. This is a team that rises up in the moment and they don't beat themselves. They have won close games all year by putting themselves in situations to win. Tre Mason is an absolute beast running the ball and has been on an incredible tear lately. There's no question about what to expect out of this team, but is that enough to beat a team that looks as dominant as FSU?
Bottom line: It's all about the run game, and I am sure Malzahn is going to have something special for FSU. Auburn will win the close game, if they can keep it close in the 4th quarter. The defense isn't great, but are capable of making the stops that they NEED to.

Last thoughts before the pick: This game will be a question of who can impose their will? If FSU gets up 14 and can do what they want to do and force Auburn out of their running game, it's a Seminole victory. But if Auburn can keep it close in the 4th quarter and put Winston in some situations that neither he or the team has been through....Auburn has them right where they want them. So who has the stronger will? Let's take a look at these teams in the first quarter of games this year:

Florida State has scored 626 offensive points this year (only offensive touchdowns and field goals)
165 of those points have come in the first quarter or 26% of the total
Florida State has allowed 139 points this year with 42 of those coming in the first for a 30% average.
Florida State has scored 3 points in the first quarter 4 times this year and 3 or 7 points 6 times.
The numbers are bolstered by the NC State game where FSU scored 35 points in the first quarter. If you take out the NC State game completely FSU's numbers look like this:
577 points on the season, 130 in the first quarter for only a 23% average.

Auburn has scored 501 offensive points this year
134 of those points have come in the first or 27% of the total
Auburn has allowed 312 points on the year with 66 coming in the first or 21%
Auburn has scored 7 or less points in the first 6 times this year. Same as FSU.
Auburn has no outliers that need to be taken out. 

So what we see is a FSU team that starts slower than how they finish and an Auburn team that thrives on being ahead early. Auburn's running game is dominating, Winston needs time to find his rhythm, and he will find it and make his plays, but by that time will it be enough to get ahead of Auburn? If the game is close, Auburn knows what to do and FSU hasn't been tested like that. Will Auburn drain clock with their running game late and protect the lead or will they continue to go fast and put Winston on the field and play the shoot-out game? If Auburn is smart, they run the ball early at tempo, hit a few big pass plays, get the lead, then slow it down to limit the damage that Winston and the Seminoles will eventually do. 

PREDICTION: AUBURN

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