Data Analysis: How Wisconsin Beat Illinois
Let's go beyond the score to examine how the Badgers beat Illinois on Saturday.
Given the Badgers expectations coming into this season, this win gets things back under control for Wisconsin Football. The Badgers now control our destiny in the B1G West. We'll see if that fact lives past our matchup with Ohio State next week.
This win showed us a lot about this Football Team and the Coaches at its helm. I thought Phil Longo in particular shined when we needed it most. His last three Scoring Drives were almost flawless!
I’ll take you “Beyond the Score” giving you rich insights and analytics that drove our performance vs. Illinois.
Alright, let’s jump into it!!
Play Call Distribution & EPA:
Play Calls:
We saw an okay dose of PA/RPO Passes on 1st Down. I’d like to see more, especially with Illinois crashing so hard on the Read-Option. I’d like to see more H-Outs off of the TE motion. Or what I really loved was that Whip Route to Bryson Green on the 2nd to last drive.
That one came on 2nd Down. But if Locke isn’t going to be a threat to pull and run himself to counter those hard crashes, we need to supplement a bit more with those backside routes on all of our Read Options. This should increase our PA/RPO Pass % as Braedyn pulls and instead of using his feet like Mordecai, they're short RPO Throws instead.
It's a much different story than last week on 2nd Down. A much healthier dose of running plays. With 52% vs. 29% vs. Iowa:
Success Rate:
A new stat we’re tracking is Success Rate.
What is Success Rate? If you’re at all in tune with the NCAAF/NFL Analytics community, you’ve surely seen it. But what the hell does it mean???
Success Rate - much like EPA, is a metric designed to parse out the noise of YPA into a more thoughtful approach to Offensive or Defensive “Efficiency”.
A play is defined as “successful” if:
50% of the Yards-to-Go are achieved on 1st Down
70% of Yards-to-Go are achieved on 2nd Down
100% of Yards-to-Go are achieved on 3rd/4th Down
So…Success Rate is the number of plays where those parameters are achieved divided by the total offensive or defensive plays.
This cuts out the noise that EPA can generate on those “Explosive” Plays both Positive and Negative. And is more of a metric of Drive x Drive Efficiency regardless of Field Position.
Wisconsin football saw a bit better Success Running the ball on 1st Down vs. Passing. On 2nd Down we saw MUCH more success Passing the ball vs. Running.
Then, Running the ball on 3rd Down was much more successful for Wisconsin.
The Badgers thrived on 3rd Down this year by maintaining a healthy dose of "Manageable" situations we can run in. Thankfully, we had a good dose of those Saturday (64%)!!
We had been seeing upwards of 80% of our 3rd Downs in a 3rd & Manageable (Medium & Short). So the 64% we saw on Saturday is still lagging behind our Season Performance.
But, even with higher levels of 3rd & “manageable” situations. Wisconsin football still dropped the ball with our Run v. Pass Mix IMO:
In 3rd & Shorts, we went Pass in 33% of those situations!!! With a Conversion Rate of 0%...
I’d be fine with those if they weren’t Straight DBs…might be anecdotal based on these results, but if you’re going to pass there, I’d like it to be a PA/RPO. Those quick mesh/crossing routes are tough to time out without that extra half-second the play-fake gives the QB and WR to create more separation!
This severely impacted the Badgers 3rd & Short + Overall Conversion Rates:
Much improved performance, but could’ve been a bit better as well.
EPA:
EPA/Play x Half & Game:
Love this mixture of EPA x Play Type. We should see those PA/RPO throws have outsized returns from an EPA perspective. You want those to be the explosive plays where you fool the Defense. Then your Straight DB and Run Less "Explosive" but still firmly positive.
After the 1st Half, we really got things going. The Badgers ran the ball more effectively which caused Illinois to back off some of its pressure and Locke was able to start DEALING!!
Wisconsin Football EPA Leaders:
Braedyn Locke (Passing):
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