by Brian Fremeau

We’ve reached the midway point of the 2012 college football season, the first opportunity for me to publish the full offensive, defensive, and special teams efficiency ratings. For the first time this season, I’m also happy to share FEI ratings that are exclusively a function of 2012 data and no longer influenced by program ratings, recruiting success, and other factors that comprised the FEI preseason projections. The preseason projected data has now been fully eliminated from the system. That means that Oklahoma State slides out of the top 40, while Oregon State and Kansas State now comfortably reside in the top 5.

The top two teams in this week’s FEI ratings are the same two teams that top the recently released BCS standings. Alabama and Florida may be on another collision course for an SEC championship showdown, with a national championship berth on the line. The Crimson Tide and Gators are the two most likely teams to run the table the rest of the regular season, but there is still a 91.3 percent chance that one or both of them will trip up between now and then.

Notre Dame is the next most likely team to go undefeated according to FEI, but with road trips to Oklahoma and USC on the schedule, there’s still an 80.4 percent chance the Irish will fall. Only ten teams are projected to have a better than 10 percent chance of running the table the rest of the way. Four of those teams are more likely than not to lose two or more games.

There is much more football to be played this season, so any conclusive statements about the BCS standings or these ratings are very premature. And in the wild Big 12, things can change dramatically in a hurry. West Virginia appeared to be an unstoppable force and then fell flat on their faces in Lubbock. Oklahoma watched its championship dreams slip away against Kansas State, but could make up all the ground it needs with elite offensive and defensive play down the stretch.

My gut still thinks Alabama and Oregon are the best bets to play for the national championship at season’s end, but I’m starting to convince myself that surprises may be the norm in the second half of the year.

Visualizing Game Splits

The game splits I publish are designed to quantify the value generated (or lost) by the offense, defense, and special teams over the course of each game that contributed to the final non-garbage scoring margin. I added in field position and turnover splits this season as well.

But that’s just the final output. What does it look like possession by possession? I’ve been playing with a few new data visualizations over the last few weeks, and I’m always looking for feedback from FO readers on them. Here is a snapshot of Alabama’s game splits in each category over the course of the 2012 season so far.

A few preliminary notes:

• Each game is color-coded for the opponent faced, which is something I'm going to have to take a look at fixing since Alabama has already faced several teams that have a similar (blue) dominant color.
• It may not be apparent since the scales on the graphics aren't labeled, but the offense, defense, special teams, field position, and turnover value charts are all on the same scale. Game efficiency is the only one on a unique scale.
• The horizontal axis of each graph is on the same scale, possession by possession from the start of the game to its conclusion.
• The non-garbage portion of each game is drawn in a thick line and concludes with the an outlined circle. The non-garbage portion of each game continues from there and concludes with a smaller dot.

I like where this project is heading, and I really like seeing each chart packaged together for ease of comparison. Alabama is the only team in the country to have had a positive offensive value and defensive value in each game this season. In four games, the offense got off to a quick start, while the defense was consistently dominant from the start in five of six games.

Note the shape of the lines in the field-position chart, where alternating possessions generate a wave of back-and-forth advantages and disadvantages. Note the relatively slight impact of special teams play over the course of each game, with the notable exception of kickoff returns in two games. Note the signicant impact of turnovers, big value bursts at the conclusion of only select possessions.

The game efficiency chart is especially interesting in the way it suggests how it can best be maximized. The more possessions there are in a game, the less efficient a team has the possibility of being. Alabama's most efficient game was against Florida Atlantic, concluding the non-garbage portion of the game in 15 possessions with a score of 33-0. Alabama has had multiple other games in which it was just as efficient out of the gate, but garbage time did not kick in as quickly. Alabama dominated Missouri, but it took 24 game possessions to get to the conclusion of non-garbage time, so it was less efficient overall.

Again, I really value questions and inquiries about this data and these charts in particular, and if they're popular, I hope to continue producing similar graphics for FEI columns the rest of the season.

Week 7 Revisionist Box Scores

This weekly feature identifies the games played each week that were most impacted by turnovers, special teams, field position, or some combination of the three. The neutralized margin of victory is a function of the point values earned and surrendered based on field position and expected scoring rates.

2012 totals to date:

• Net Total Turnover Value was the difference in 52 of 341 FBS games (15.2 percent)
• Net Special Teams Value was the difference in 26 of 341 FBS games (7.6 percent)
• Net Field Position Value was the difference in 34 of 341 FBS games (10.0 percent)
• Turnovers, Special Teams and/or Field Position was the difference in 75 of 341 FBS games (22.0 percent)

2012 Game Splits for all teams, including the offensive, defensive, special teams, field position, and turnover values recorded in each FBS game are provided here.

FEI Week 7 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 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.

Other definitions:

• SOS Pvs: Strength of schedule to date, based on the likelihood of an elite team going undefeated against the given team's schedule to date.
• SOS Fut: Strength of schedule, based on the likelihood of an elite team going undefeated against the given team's remaining schedule.
• FBS MW: Mean Wins, the average number of games a team with the given FEI rating would be expected to win against its entire schedule.
• FBS RMW: Remaining Mean Wins, the average number of games a team with the given FEI rating would be expected to win against its remaining schedule.
• OFEI: Offensive FEI, the opponent-adjusted efficiency of the given team's offense.
• DFEI: Defensive FEI, the opponent-adjusted efficiency of the given team's defense.
• STE: Special Teams Efficiency, the scoring value earned by field goal, punt and kickoff units measured in points per average game.
• FPA: Field Position Advantage, the share of the value of total starting field position earned by each team against its opponents.

These FEI ratings are a function of results of games played through October 13. The ratings for all FBS teams, including FEI splits for Offense, Defense, and Special Teams can be found here. Program FEI (five-year weighted) ratings and other supplemental drive-based data can be found here.

Posted by: Brian Fremeau on 17 Oct 2012

9 comments, Last at 18 Oct 2012, 8:33am by latvinga