ISU vs KU Analytics

[PSYclone22]

Another Cyclone football dump for this weekends game. First up: some team performance on different down and distance. I arbitrarily chose 2nd and 7 as the "2nd and long" distance and 3rd and 5 as "3rd and long".

Not to go too deep here, but it looks like Kansas is bad.

The one thing I wanted to point out regarding Kansas is their run ratio on 2nd and long. They run over 40% of the time on 2nd and long which is ... not efficient.

Note that the below reflects when the score is within 14 points, my indicator for how a team calls things in "close games".



Some specific 1st down breakdowns here: Kansas is not just bad on 1st down, they are downright TERRIBLE. They're gaining a little over 3 yards per play on first downs. When you get into 2nd and long, things are bad. Let's hope our 3rd down defense is a bit better this week.

 

[PSYclone22]

Running backs

Pooka Williams opted out, so Kansas is somehow even worse on offense.

Breece keeps hitting home runs (7 carries of 20+ yards) but his most common carries are for 1 yard and 2 yards. I'm hopeful that a game against Kansas will see constant gains of 5 or 6 yards rather than several carries for short yardage and one bigger run here or there.

 

[PSYclone22]

Receivers

On first downs, Kansas has targeted Andrew Parchment heavily when they throw (only 20 of 55 times on first downs in close games).

Purdy continues to have success spreading the ball around when passing on first downs. Five receivers have seen 5 or more targets on 1st downs through 4 games.



Finally for receivers is a graph showing yards per target (length of bar), completion percentage to each receiver (color of bar and label), and volume of targets (width of bar).

Somewhat surprising given the above graph is that Kwamie Lassiter II is tied with Parchment for the team lead with 30 targets. The bulk of his work is on 2nd and 3rd downs. That indicates to me that Parchment is the guy they are scripting to get open on 1st downs while Lassiter is likely the receiver that Daniels trusts when he needs to get a conversion.

 

[PSYclone22]

Quarterbacks

Just a quick look at how Daniels and Purdy compare.

Daniles is consistently putting up 5 to 7 yards per attempt regardless of situation.

Purdy is putting up big numbers in favorable situations (1st and 10, 2nd and short, 3rd and short) while the unfavorable situations have been... unfavorable. On 2nd and long he's only averaging 4.5 yards per attempt and 3rd and long only 5.0 yards per attempt.

 

[khardbored]

Gud stuff.

 

[NWICY]

So are we going to win? I say YES!

 

[besserheimerphat]

Running backs

Pooka Williams opted out, so Kansas is somehow even worse on offense.

Breece keeps hitting home runs (7 carries of 20+ yards) but his most common carries are for 1 yard and 2 yards. I'm hopeful that a game against Kansas will see constant gains of 5 or 6 yards rather than several carries for short yardage and one bigger run here or there.

View attachment 77254

Years ago when the data was more freely available, I looked at RBs and I was kinda shocked that basically EVERYONE has a median of 3 yards. Here and there you'll find a guy with 2 or 4, but almost always 3 whether a Heisman candidate or a backup. The difference was almost entirely in the number of long runs, and also in the lack of big negative yardage. The best backs always had the most 20+ yard runs, the most 15+ yard runs and the most 10+ yard runs but inevitably the median was still 3 yards.

 

[JHUNSY]

@PSYclone22, can we get one of these for the Texas game coming up? I need another thread to absolutely kill my productivity during work hours tomorrow.

 

[PSYclone22]

@PSYclone22, can we get one of these for the Texas game coming up? I need another thread to absolutely kill my productivity during work hours tomorrow.

Hmm, I can work on one