Rose Bowl Analysis: Wisconsin’s Offensive Juggernaut

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The analysis of the Rose Bowl from the typical football-watching human has been delightfully simple. Wisconsin has a great offense. Oregon has a great offense. Wisconsin doesn’t have a good defense. Therefore — with some comment about the blazing speed of Oregon — Wisconsin will hang around but ultimately be run through due to their inability to stop the Ducks. It is a very plausible scenario, but the simplicity of the argument misses one point: the greatness of the Wisconsin offense, through 12 games, has been demonstrably better than the Oregon offense (and, arguably, every offense in the nation).

Wisconsin ranks fifth in yards per play and fourth in points per game — both one spot behind Oregon — but in schedule adjusted metrics like S&P+ and FEI (definitions linked) they move up to first and second (behind Baylor) respectively. The scheduling is in an important distinction to make — by raw numbers, Wisconsin and Oregon were similarly good offenses, but the beatdowns Wisconsin placed on opponents were by comparison more impressive.

Despite the black box nature of FEI — something that should invite skepticism to the statistic — its page on Football Outsiders (linked above) gives an interesting variety of component statistics regarding the drives of college football teams, the foundation of the metric. Particularly, there are three measures presented here in which the Badgers rank among college football’s elite, regardless of schedule.

— First down rate, in which the Badgers rank fourth at 80.9% (Stanford, Baylor, Boise State), measures the percentage of drives in which the team gets at least one first down. This is an extremely important factor when it comes to field position, and the Badgers felt it against Ohio State and in the second quarter of the Big Ten Championship against Michigan State, when three-and-outs put the defense in tough spots.

— Available yards gained, in which the Badgers rank fifth at 62.1% (Boise State, Houston, Baylor, Stanford), measures the percentage of possible yards gained. When starting from your own 20, there are 80 yards available, etc. This helps even out the effects of field position. For example, LSU scores a whopping 38.5 points per game but much of that can be ascribed to field position provided by their awesome defense — they rank 39th in available yards gained. Conversely, it isn’t fair to penalize a team for gaining only 50 yards when they only have 50 to go as opposed to a team picking up 70 with 80 to go — the goal is the same, score touchdowns.

— Explosive drives, in which the Badgers rank second at 27.3% (Houston), measures the percentage of drives in which a team gains at least 10 yards per play. This is partly a style measure — Oregon, which focuses on the run, will be more successful on an eight yard per play drive than Wisconsin without the trifle of incompletions — but a drive which average 10 yards per play is all but guaranteed to result in a score.

And, perhaps most importantly, the schedule the Badgers have racked up these gaudy offensive numbers has been a very difficult one to rack up yards and points. As was exposed in the Big Ten Championship game, the Badgers’ defense isn’t great, but it wasn’t challenged much by great arguments — outside of Michigan State, an argument can be made that Northern Illinois was the best offensive team to play Wisconsin this year. But many of the teams the Badgers played, even those that were utterly anemic on offense, could really defend.

The most obvious of these teams is Illinois, which held Wisconsin to its lowest point output of the year of 28. Penn State as well boasted no quarterback play to speak of but a top-10 defense. The Badgers faced another top-10 defense twice in Michigan State, a top-20 defense in Nebraska, and a top-30 defense in Ohio State. There were stinkers, too — Indiana and UNLV chief among them — but the Badgers offense hardly skipped a beat against the top opponents, scoring at least 28 points and averaging at least 4.9 yards per play in each situation.

The performance of the Oregon Ducks, overall, is exceptionally similar, but against a far worse set of foes. Outside of LSU — by far Oregon’s worst offensive output of the season (and understandably so, as LSU’s defense is from another planet) — the highest ranked defense they faced by S&P+ was Stanford at 22, with only California and USC checking in the top 30 as well.

The Big Ten may not be the impressive conference it used to be when Michigan and Ohio State were powers on a yearly basis, but the conference still boasts some impressive defenses, and the way Wisconsin tore through those squads puts their offense on a higher level than Oregon, no matther how shiny the Nikes on LaMichael James’s feet are.