Week 8 FEI Ratings

by Brian Fremeau

Thursday night, Florida State’s nightmare season was careening toward a catastrophic new low. The Seminoles had entered the game against the Tarheels saddled with their worst ACC conference start in their history (0-3), and legendary head coach Bobby Bowden was facing a firestorm of scrutiny from the fan base and haters alike. A middling first half on Thursday left the Seminoles trailing by 11 at halftime, and an early third quarter short-field touchdown by the Tar Heels increased the deficit to 24-6. If you were like me, you had seen enough.

I turned on the TV in the morning to catch the final score -- 30-27 Seminoles. Quarterback Christian Ponder had executed four straight scoring drives (3 touchdons and one field goal) in the second half, none from particularly enviable field position and nearly all on the strength of his arm and legs alone [1]. The much-maligned Seminoles defense did its part as well, although against weaker opposition. North Carolina ranks 91st in Offensive FEI, but 20th in Defensive FEI. The 18-point deficit erased by Florida State is the largest second-half comeback of the 2009 season. (Northwestern has overcome two large first-half deficits: 25 points to Indiana, and 18 points to Purdue.)

This season has featured plenty of fantastic finishes. In the past weekend alone, undefeated Iowa scored on the final play of the game to beat Michigan State, and Alabama blocked a last-second winning field goal attempt to escape against Tennessee. Notre Dame has played in six-straight games this year decided by a touchdown or less. Eleven teams have had at least two-thirds of their games come down to a final possession.

These aren’t abnormally high numbers, however. It may seem like teams have struggled to put away opponents more than usual this year, but in nearly 50 percent of all FBS vs. FBS games played so far, the winning team never trailed. There have been 10,342 total game possessions played to date and the team that went on to win the game trailed only 1,403 of those possessions (13.6 percent). Two score leads have been especially safe. Teams with a lead of at least nine points at any point in a game have a winning percentage of 86.9; a lead of at least nine points in the first half has led to victory 84.1 percent of the time.

With that context, I was curious about the consistency of teams throughout the course of a game. I ran two new sets of Offensive and Defensive FEI ratings, calculating performances in each half independently to identify differences in team performances, both positive and negative. As with all FEI calculations, garbage possessions are not included.

The teams at the top of the FEI ratings have been generally consistent in first and second half performances this season. Alabama ranks among the most consistent in the nation. Iowa has played better second half offense. Cincinnati and Florida have played stronger defensively as the game wears on. There have been several teams, however, that have performed dramatically different in first and second halves this year.

Interestingly, it's the Florida State defense that appears among the top five in terms of stronger second half performances than first half performances. Christian Ponder has been outstanding throughout many games this year, and the Florida State offense was clicking on all cylinders throughout the explosive first halves against both BYU and Georgia Tech. The defense, however, has been a liability out of the gate. In its last four games -- all narrow final score margins -- Florida State has surrendered almost twice as many first half points (80) as second half points (41). The Seminoles have made sufficient defensive adjustments at halftime in most games, but too often it has been too late.

Week 8 FEI Top 25

The principles of the Fremeau Efficiency Index (FEI) can be found here [3]. 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 no longer included in the calculations. Current FEI ratings are a function of results of games played through October 24th.

FEI ratings for all 120 FBS teams are now listed in the stats page section of FootballOutsiders.com. Click here for current ratings [4]; the pull-down menu in the stats section will also get you to 2007 and 2008 ratings.