by Brian Fremeau

Florida punted midway through the third quarter of last weekend’s SEC Championship Game, trailing by 13 points but still within striking distance for a comeback. The Crimson Tide then embarked on a 17-play, 88-yard drive culminating in a Mark Ingram touchdown run, eroding nearly 10 minutes of game clock, and snuffing out the potential for a miracle finish by the Gators. Javier Arenas’ end zone interception of Tim Tebow officially christened the victory on the next series, but the Alabama offense delivered it. Is there any doubt that it was the most important drive of the year in college football?

It wasn’t strictly the longest possession of the year, per se, but it may have been the most impressive. Out of the more than 17,000 offensive possessions in 2009, there were six FBS drives of at least 20 plays, and 68 of at least 17 plays. (Way back on Oct. 6, Arizona State had a 22-play, 94-yard scoring drive against Oregon State, albeit in meaningless garbage time -- and in a losing effort). There were only 23 drives of at least 17 plays that resulted in a touchdown. Only 14 such drives belonged to the victor in the game and only 10 of those took place in the second half. Four of those drives are classified as the final or penultimate non-garbage possession of the game.

Florida faced 117 opponent non-garbage possessions this season, and 49 percent of those lasted only three plays or fewer. Before the game-clinching drive in the SEC championship, Florida had only given up two non-garbage touchdowns all season on opponent drives that began at or inside the opponent’s 20-yard line. Only 15 out of 79 opponent drives that began at or inside the opponent’s 30-yard line resulted in a score of any kind against Florida this season -- six of these drives were produced by the Crimson Tide offense on Saturday. In terms of game-specific Offensive FEI -- efficiency adjusted for opponent -- Alabama had the single best offensive game of the 2009 college football season.

Compare that to Texas, who faced an almost impenetrable Nebraska defense on Saturday night, eking out a victory in the final harrowing seconds to clinch a spot in the BCS championship game. Colt McCoy and Texas’ offense took the field 16 times in the game, twice as many non-garbage opportunities as Alabama, but only managed 13 points. Against Nebraska and Oklahoma, the two best defenses the Longhorns faced in 2009, Texas’ offense never could find their rhythm. An average offense against an average defense would have expected to score more than 66 points with Texas’ starting field position in those two games -- Texas scored only 29 total points.

For their part, the Longhorns’ defense dominated their side of the ball in those games, setting up Texas for enough short field position situations to knock in a few clutch field goals and pull out victory in the end. But with a championship tilt against the nation’s best defense looming, the Longhorns are going to need to figure out how to jumpstart their offensive attack. Otherwise, workhorse Mark Ingram and the ball-hogging Crimson Tide will roll to a national championship victory.

Week 14 FEI Top 25

The principles of the Fremeau Efficiency Index (FEI) can be found here. Like DVOA, FEI rewards playing well against good teams, win or lose, and punishes losing to poor teams more harshly than it rewards defeating poor teams. Unlike DVOA, it is drive-based, not play-by-play based, and it is specifically engineered to measure the college game.

FEI is the opponent-adjusted value of Game Efficiency (GE), a measurement of the success rate of a team scoring and preventing opponent scoring throughout the non-garbage-time possessions of a game. Like DVOA, it represents a team's efficiency value over average. Strength of Schedule (SOS) is calculated as the likelihood that an elite team would win every game on the given team's schedule to date. SOS listed here does not include future games scheduled.

Only games between FBS teams are considered in the FEI calculations. Preseason projections are not a factor in the current calculations. Current FEI ratings are a function of results of games played through December 5th.

FEI ratings for all 120 FBS teams are now listed in the stats page section of FootballOutsiders.com. Click here for current ratings; the pull-down menu in the stats section directs you to 2007 and 2008 ratings.

This is the final regular FEI update of the year, but we'll be back in a couple of weeks with bowl previews.

Posted by: Brian Fremeau on 09 Dec 2009

9 comments, Last at 11 Dec 2009, 5:33pm by beargoggles