Offense Maze

It has been a while since we went through the Maze and today seemed like a good day to get back into it. Today we are going to make a few stops along the maze run. We are going to stop at the different facets of the offense, no not like you are thinking. We are not going to look at what formations work or throwing to what formation to what player works, at least we are not doing that on this run. That would be fun to look at and maybe we will in the future.

We are first going to look at the distribution of points per game. Not a very interesting topic to most I would assume but I thought let us make a pit stop here. In games you have 2 possible scenarios, the game is a blow out or the game is close. I have come to realize that blow outs and close games hurt the same when you end up on the losing side. I am sure it is exhilarating when you manage to win a blow out game for some coaches and you breathe a sigh of relief when you manage to eke out a win.

The graph above is of the distribution of points per game for all the human coached teams at the D-1A level. I overlaid a density distribution on top of the histogram just to kinda add more detail to munch on for the stat-philes out there. The mean points per game is 38.84 and the median is 40.70. The mean and median are close to each other and the hump in the graph above. These numbers seem about right from my experience playing the game. There are some coaches though who have very high average points per game. You know who you are.

From this graph we are able to look at the top 20 schools with the highest average points per game through 3 games, small sample of games but that is what we have. Rutgers sits at the top of the mountain and they are way up there, whilst everyone is just hanging out on mole hills in comparison. Rutgers has been putting up points, some will say, oh they have just played Sim AI but I say you still have to do the work and they have. Wonder what their numbers will look like once they play some human coaches. I wonder if the top 20 will be the same at the end of the season. Another thing to notice is that there are only 5 elites in the top 20, not sure if that means anything or it is just a coincidence.

We are now going to look at the total yards per game. The graph above shows the distribution of the total yards per game and a density distribution. Most of the teams are between 400 and 600 yards, which is a ton of offense. People are moving the ball out here, man! After looking at this distribution I was curious to see what the mean and median were: mean = 462.5 yards, median = 474.0 yards. That is a lot of yards, but is it though? Tom Brady had 466 yards in Superbowl 51, so maybe we need to step our game up fellas. All things considered teams put up a lot of yards but I have seen more in other worlds granted they are not as filled as Wilkinson so they might be inflated with people playing more Sim AI teams, but even with that in mind you still have to show up and do the work.

Look at that, the same schools who are putting up points are moving the ball. I hope that does not surprise anyone. Again Rutgers is just miles ahead of everyone, someone needs to slow them down so that they do not make the rest of us look bad. We again have only 5 elites in the top 20, I am sure this will change as the season progresses and it is the same 5 schools too. There has been a bit of a shuffle behind Rutgers in the order of the schools but I think for the most part it is the same schools in the top 20. The only thing I can think of, from here is, are these schools moving the ball through the air or on the ground.

The majority of schools from the graph above seem to get a little over 250 yards per game through the air, which seems a bit low to me. The actual mean passing yards is 318.2 yards and the median is 306.3 yards. Both these numbers are higher than what I thought based on the graph above. They are also on the low end of what I was expecting considering my understanding of the engine we are playing the game on. It seems the engine likes the pass heavy coaches, but it might just be my bias, I like teams that pass, though I am afraid of doing so myself. (Did I just give away my game plan?).

Now we get a more in depth look. We get a look at the top 20 passing schools. Damn Rutgers back at it again with the topping of lists, they are again way out in front of everyone, there is a 200 yards difference between Rutgers and the next school. There are again 5 elite schools in the top 20, I think there might be a pattern developing here, not sure if it means anything. I see some familiar schools from our earlier top 20 graphs but again the order is a bit shuffled behind Rutgers. So now we know the top 20 coaches who chuck the ball, what about those who like to pound the rock.

I love that smooth density curve man. From the graph it seems like most schools try to run the ball a bit, just to maybe surprise the opposition. Most schools on average run between 100 and 200 yards per game, which is a decent amount of ground yards. The mean rushing yards per game is 144.3 yards and the median is 150.7 yards. This is inline with what we see in the graph above. Now what schools are pounding the rock, who has managed to get their hands on a group of players who will run over the opposition.

For once we have Rutgers at the bottom of a top 20 list. They have been dethroned people, we have a new king of the hill in the Missouri Tigers. They are not light years ahead of everyone in their ground game though but they are ahead. From the passing top 20 graph earlier it looks like the Tigers might be a balanced team on offense. That is good to see, or maybe they just switch it up from game to game, whatever the case maybe from a statistical stand point they are balanced. On our latest top 20 graph we have 5 elites again, look at that. I think we have a trend going here, trend of what I do not know but it is a trend, maybe it is that every top 20 list has to have 5 elites, not sure if it is a useful trend.

I hope this latest maze run did not out some people's game plans by showing what teams like to do. I just thought it might be fun to explore the stats that teams have generated thus far into this very short season. I especially hope Rutgers is not mad at me, but the data just spoke to me and said yo, Rutgers is out of here. I hope everyone enjoys this little run in the maze. See you on the next Maze run my Maze runners.