by Brian Fremeau

We’ve been talking about the LSU Tigers almost every week this season, so it might seem like they were the only national championship contender. There are still 21 other undefeated teams through the first four weeks of the year, but none have made a weekly impression quite like the Tigers. The resume is everything you’d expect of the number one team in the land. LSU has taken down three solid programs away from Death Valley, and the Tigers were in total control down the stretch of all three games.

Entering the year, there were question marks about the LSU offense, especially with the last-minute suspension of presumed starter Jordan Jefferson. However, the offense has been as effective as it needs to be under Jarrett Lee, and the defense and special teams have carried the load as expected. Turnovers, short fields, pinning the opponent deep -– LSU has been a consistent winner for years with the same formula, so we shouldn’t be surprised by its effectiveness in 2011.

Speaking of consistency over the years, the Tigers victory over West Virginia marked the 36th straight victory for LSU against regular season non-conference opponents. It tied the second longest streak since the split of Division I. The Miami Hurricanes, then independent and playing an entire season of non-conference games, were undefeated over 36 straight regular season games from 1985 to 1988. Kansas State owns the record with 39 straight non-conference regular season victories from 1993 to 2003.

The significance of the record is dubious without considering the quality of the competition faced. The Wildcats, for instance, rarely faced quality competition out of conference. Since LSU’s streak stretches the length of the FEI era (the Tigers most recent regular season non-conference loss was in 2002; we have FEI ratings dating back to 2003), I figured I’d calculate the toughest cumulative strength of non-conference schedules over the entire span.

I posted individual season strength of schedule data over the summer dating back to 2003, and noted that LSU ranked second in average strength of schedule over the last eight seasons. But that total SOS includes bowl games and top competition in the SEC. Which teams played the toughest non-conference schedules in the same span? (Only teams that played an FBS conference schedule in every year since 2003 were considered, though games against independents and teams that joined FBS during the span were included in the SOS calculations).

A reminder: FEI strength of schedule represents the likelihood that an elite team would go undefeated against a given slate of opponents.

The LSU Tigers should be commended for winning 36 straight non-conference games, but cumulatively, their 36 opponents represented the 89th toughest slate compared to other programs non-conference schedules since 2003. An elite team would have had a 26.5 percent chance of going undefeated against LSU's non-conference regular season schedule since 2003. The same elite team would have had only a 1.0 percent chance of going undefeated against Florida State's schedule, tops among all AQ conference teams. The second longest active non-conference winning streak also dates back to 2003, and is owned by Wisconsin, winners of 32 straight. The Badgers just happen to have the second weakest cumulative non-conference regular season schedule over that span. An elite team would have a 62.4 percent chance of going undefeated over the same 32 game stretch.

Punting for Points

It was mentioned by others, but Tigers punter Brad Wing deserves a game ball and more for his performance against West Virginia on Saturday night. Wing punted six times during the game, and all six resulted in field position for the Mountaineers at or inside their own 11-yard line. The LSU field position advantage for the game was extraordinary: 0.693, or nearly 70 percent of the total starting field position value for both teams in the game. An average offense against an average defense would have scored 36.3 points with LSU’s starting field position and only 16.0 points with West Virginia’s. Teams that have an FPA of better than .600 win 90 percent of the time. LSU’s FPA for the game would have ranked 10th among all games played in 2010. The average final score in the top ten FPA games last season was 49-14.

How much value did Brad Wing contribute? We can calculate the value of every punt exchange based on the average expected field position value following a punt from a given yard line. The value of pinning the opponent deep impacts not only the ensuing possession but also the possession after that. On average, each LSU punt added 0.5 points in scoring margin value, a total of three points for the game. That’s not an eye-popping value in the context of the total score, but it is as good as it gets for punt team value. The only way for a punt team to generate more value per punt is to create a turnover on the return.

FEI Watches a Game: LSU vs. West Virginia

Unit Value Split totals for every FBS game can be found here.

FEI Week 4 Top 25

The Fremeau Efficiency Index (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. SOS listed here includes 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 RMW) represent the average expected team wins for games scheduled but not yet played.

Only games between FBS teams are considered in the FEI calculations. Since limited data is available in the early part of the season, preseason projections are factored into the current ratings. The weight given to projected data will be reduced each week until Week 7, when it will be eliminated entirely. Offensive and defensive FEI ratings will also debut in Week 7.

These FEI ratings are a function of results of games played through September 24. The ratings for all FBS teams can be found here.

Posted by: Brian Fremeau on 28 Sep 2011

16 comments, Last at 08 Dec 2012, 3:23am by john123456