by Brian Fremeau

The final weekend of head-to-head matchups between the top teams in the SEC West further solidified those teams' lofty ratings in this week's FEI standings. Auburn topped Alabama (with precisely the final score FEI forecasted) and Arkansas knocked off LSU. The winners received a slight bump. The losers held their ground. In the end, they all benefitted from playing one another.

There were six games played between a combination of Auburn, Alabama, Arkansas, and LSU. Five of the six games were decided by a single score: 24-17, 31-23, 24-21, 24-20, 28-27. All but one of the 12 individual team performances ranked among the Top 100 single-game GFEI games of the year. Against everyone else, these four teams combined to win 31 of 32 FBS games by an average margin of 18 points, and the one loss was to No. 10 South Carolina. Are the SEC West team ratings artificially inflated?

In the last few years, FEI has been criticized for inflating ACC team ratings due to a similar connectivity boost. When a group of teams play one another very close and play teams outside the circle close, FEI tends to reward the entire group more than conventional wisdom would suggest. Whether those ratings are wrong or not is difficult to judge without more non-conference game data, but inevitably, a closed rating system must employ some degree of circular logic.

Auburn is No. 1 in part because Alabama is No. 2, Arkansas is No. 4, and LSU is No. 8. And those teams are ranked where they are in part because of Auburn's rating. The same logic applies to every team, but the connections may be weaker. TCU hasn't played a team ranked within 25 places of itself according to FEI. Comparing a dominant performance against a very weak opponent to a modest performance against a very strong opponent isn't easy, and FEI may not have all the answers. But whether you or I agree with every team rating isn't as important as our understanding of the system logic that produced that rating.

FEI Drive Summary Breakdown: Nevada vs. Boise State

Previous drive summary breakdowns:

• Week 10: LSU 24, Alabama 21
• Week 12: Utah 34, Sand Diego State 31
• Week 12: Stanford 38, California 0

The FEI system "watches" each game as a series of alternating possession and breaks down the scoreboard value of each possession to the offensive, defensive, and special teams units that contributed to that value.

In the table below, the white fields represent basic box score drive data. The yellow fields represent the component values that contribute to each team's scoring, according to FEI efficiency metrics. Offensive drive value (ODV) is the scoring value produced (or forfeited) by the offense in the given drive, including the value of driving into field goal range. Field goal value (FGV) is the value produced (or forfeited) by the field goal unit on attempts. Extra point value (XPV) is the value produced by the point-after unit touchdown drives, including two-point attempts. Field position value (FPV) is the expected score value of the drive based on starting field position alone. The gray fields represent the component values of FPV. Automatic field position value (Auto) is unearned drive value based on national average score expectations from possession alone. Punt or kickoff return value (Ret) is the value above or below average produced from the kick return that initiated the drive. The remaining value (Seq) is produced from the sequence of defensive and special teams events that preceded the drive.

The total score values include only non-garbage possessions and are the only data that is included in the weekly FEI ratings. When applicable, garbage possession data is provided as a reference, including first-half clock-kill possessions. The start of garbage time at the end of a game is calculated retroactively from the game's conclusion as a function of the score margin and the remaining possessions to be played.

Unlike my esteemed colleague, I did not watch the thrilling finale to one of the best college football games of the season. When halftime arrived and Boise State appeared to be safely in control of the game, I turned off ESPN3 and went to bed. It was, admittedly, a bit of a thrill learning of the details of Nevada's comeback via a frenzied scan of the previous night's tweets, but I sure wish I would have watched it unfold live.

The drive summary breakdown paints a picture of two halves, with the first controlled by the Broncos and the second by the Wolf Pack. I found a few data points particularly interesting. First, there was only one drive that started in opponent territory, Boise State's 48-yard touchdown drive that opened up a 17-0 lead. Fourteen of the game's 20 other regulation drives started at or inside the team's own 25-yard line. Punt and kickoff returns were generally well defended on both sides. The big exception was Boise State's kickoff return after Nevada pulled with in three points, 24-21, early in the fourth quarter.

Boise State started only 51 yards from the end zone. On its 22 previous non-garbage drives from midfield or closer this year, the Broncos had scored 19 times, 18 of which were touchdowns. They have been lethal on short fields in 2010, but eight yards later, they had squandered the second-best field position of the night and punted the ball back to Colin Kapernick and the explosive Nevada offense.

And then there were the missed field goals. Had the first one been successful, we might well have blamed a Nevada loss on the blocked field goal that concluded their first possession of the second half. Instead, the two Boise State misses were the costliest individual plays of the game. As coach Chris Petersen has said, there were many other plays that could have been made to change the outcome. But there aren't many other plays in a football game that have such a direct impact on score value.

The last thing worth mentioning is how the drive summary breakdown may not be a great fit for all drives in every game. Note the relative value of starting field position, offensive value, and field goal value in Boise State's final possession in regulation. The Kellen Moore bomb and diving catch by Titus Young were unbelievably valuable plays, but the drive summary doesn't recognize them as such. Starting field position on a team's own 38-yard line might be worth two points on average, but not with only 13 seconds on the clock. The Moore/Young play probably deserves more than 20 percent of the potential value of that drive.

Likewise, note the fixed value of 4.20 automatic points for starting field position in overtime. It may be appropriate to value overtime drives from the opponent's 25-yard line the same as in regulation. But the goal of Nevada's final possession wasn't a touchdown since they only needed a field goal to win. These kinds of particularities in drive context might need to be examined for future drive summary analysis.

Three and Out

Previous drive stat splits and team resumes:

• Week 3: Three-and-outs, Available Yards, and Explosive Drives
• Week 4: Reaching the Red Zone, Methodical Drives, and Late and Close Efficiency
• Week 5: Converting 10+ Yard Drives Into Scores, Points Per Possession, and Scoring After Three-and-outs
• Week 6: Yards Per TD Drive, Playing With 2- or 3-Score Lead, Third Downs Per First Down Series
• Week 7: FEI Team Resumes for South Carolina, Arizona State, and Utah
• Week 8: FEI Team Resumes for Oregon, Wisconsin, and Georgia
• Week 9: FEI Team Resumes for Iowa, Miami, and Baylor
• Week 10: FEI Team Resumes for Arkansas, Michigan State, and Texas
• Week 11: FEI Team Resumes for Pittsburgh, Texas A&M, and San Diego State
• Week 12: FEI Team Resumes for Mississippi State, Nevada, and Florida International

In the tables below, the Game Efficiency, Offensive FEI, Defensive FEI, and "Game" FEI (GFEI) for each team in each game is provided. The ranking of those individual unit and game performances is also provided. Note that there have been 663 FBS vs. FBS game played to date, meaning that there have been 1,326 individual game performances for each category.

The opponent FEI ranking is also provided, as well as a general relevance factor (Rel) for the particular GFEI, OFEI, and DFEI results for that team in that game. As stated in the FEI principles, my system rewards playing well against good teams, win or lose, and punishes losing to poor teams more harshly than it rewards defeating poor teams. In the formula, the relevance factor is partly a function of the relative ratings of the two teams. Across all games, the least relevant results receive about one-eighth as much weight as the most relevant results. For simplicity, I've generalized the relevance data here into three equally distributed categories, High, Med, and Low.

Has there been any team playing better football in the last two weeks than Stanford? I discussed last week a few of the reasons the Cardinal jumped ahead of Oregon in the FEI ratings, despite the fact that Oregon beat Stanford 52-31 on October 2. That head-to-head matchup is one thing, but Stanford's games versus four other Pac-10 foes -- Arizona, California, Oregon State, and Washington -- were the best GFEI ratings posted against those teams.

It's interesting to note the relevance value of each game for Stanford. Individually, the importance of a given Low relevance game may only be 40 percent as relevant as the Oregon game, but the total relevance of those games is still greater than that of the Oregon, USC, and Notre Dame games combined.

Ohio State turned in the single best opponent-adjusted defensive performance of the year on Saturday against hated rival Michigan. The Wolverines turned the ball over (via fumble, interception or downs) on five of their first seven drives against the Buckeyes. Like Stanford, Ohio State ranks ahead of the one team it lost to, Wisconsin. Unlike Stanford, the Buckeyes likely wouldn't be much higher in the FEI ratings if it had won that game.

With Boise State's loss last week, TCU moved into position to potentially grab a BCS championship game bid if Auburn or Oregon were to slip. FEI doesn't think the Horned Frogs are worthy of that distinction, having not played a single opponent currently ranked in the Top 40. Only Kent State, Middle Tennessee, and Bowling Green share that distinction. The current FEI Top 25 faced an average of 4.9 Top 40 opponents each.

If you have a suggestion for an FEI team resume you'd like to see, drop me a line on Twitter (@bcfremeau) or in the comment section here. I'm happy to answer data inquiries or provide team resume tables for bloggers interested in investigating the data themselves.

FEI Week 13 Top 25

The principles of the Fremeau Efficiency Index (FEI) can be found here. FEI rewards playing well against good teams, win or lose, and punishes losing to poor teams more harshly than it rewards defeating poor teams. FEI 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. FEI represents a team's efficiency value over average. Strength of Schedule (SOS) is calculated as the likelihood that an elite team (two standard deviations above average) would win every game on the given team's schedule to date. SOS listed here does not include future games scheduled.

Mean Wins (FBS MW) represent the average total games a team with the given FEI rating should expect to win against its complete schedule of FBS opponents. Remaining Mean Wins (FBS RW) represent the average expected team wins for games scheduled but not yet played.

Offensive FEI (OFEI) and Defensive FEI (DFEI) are the opponent-adjusted ratings of all non-garbage-time drives from scrimmage. Field Position Advantage (FPA) is the share of the value of total starting field position for the season earned by each team against its opponents. Field Goal Efficiency (FGE) is the point value per field goal attempt earned by the field goal unit.

Only games between FBS teams are considered in the FEI calculations. The FEI ratings published here are a function of the results of games played through November 27.

FEI ratings for all 120 FBS teams are 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 through 2009 ratings. There are also now separate pages for offensive and defensive FEI ratings for 2010.

Posted by: Brian Fremeau on 01 Dec 2010

9 comments, Last at 03 Dec 2010, 7:19pm by cfn_ms