by Bill Connelly

I'm nothing if not habits-based. Now that projections have been phased out, the 2012 numbers are standing by themselves, and the opponent adjustments are at least somewhat viable (since everybody has played between six and eight games), it is once again time to revisit the concept of Adjusted Points and the story it can tell.

What are Adjusted Points? Each year I try to explain it well, and each year I find I didn't really do so. Here's what I originally said about it in 2010:

I have always loved the relatability of a lot of baseball stats. WAR (Wins Above Replacement) boils a complicated measure down to, basically, how many wins a player is worth. Measures like EqA (Equivalent Average) give you something more telling and accurate than, say, batting average. But since people know what a good or bad batting average is, they scale it to where it resembles batting average. Something like DIPS (Defense Independent Pitching Stats) takes figures more reflective of pitching quality and equates them to an ERA-type measure.

Clearly, FO readers have begun to figure out what good or bad DVOA, F/+, S&P+, etc., ratings look like, but the casual reader still might be a little thrown by it. As I was looking into ways to improve our F/+ performances against the spread, I began to wonder what S&P+ might look like in a different format. What would it tell us if we looked at a single-game S&P+ performance in terms of a point figure? This would give us an opponent-adjusted, tempo-adjusted (since S&P+ is a per-play measure) way to judge offenses, in a more recognizable form.

The idea is simple, really. Take a team's single-game performance in terms of Off. S&P+ and Def. S&P+ and boil it down to a score one might better understand, a number to which one can more easily relate. If you read Varsity Numbers regularly or pay reasonable attention to S&P+, then saying that Alabama's single-game S&P+ scores against Tennessee last Saturday were 133.7 on offense and 151.6 on defense might mean something to you. But saying that 133.7 Off. S&P+ equates to scoring about 40.9 points versus a perfectly average opponent, and that a 151.6 Def. S&P+ score is like allowing 15.7 points to a perfectly average opponent, makes the numbers more accessible by comparing them to the actual score.

In an era where so many teams run at mach speeds, adjusting for both pace and opponent becomes a necessity. It is easy to be wooed by the gaudy stats posted by offenses attempting 100 plays per game (and it can certainly be fun to watch), but if our goal is to truly figure out who is good and who is bad, these adjustments become a must. Take, for instance, West Virginia. The Mountaineers have dominated a good portion of the season's overall narrative, first for their scary offensive performances, then for their absolutely horrific defensive showing. Adj. Scores tell us a story similar to what actual scores tell us, but when you strip pace from the equation and you take into account the level of offenses and defenses West Virginia faces on a week-to-week basis, the extreme aspect of the narrative is removed a bit.

• Real Score: West Virginia 69, Marshall 34 | Adj. Score: West Virginia 57.2, Average Opponent 22.8
• Real Score: West Virginia 42, James Madison 12 | Adj. Score: West Virginia 45.7, Average Opponent 27.1
• Real Score: West Virginia 31, Maryland 21 | Adj. Score: West Virginia 41.3, Average Opponent 35.1
• Real Score: West Virginia 70, Baylor 63 | Adj. Score: West Virginia 42.8, Average Opponent 33.4
• Real Score: West Virginia 48, Texas 45 | Adj. Score: West Virginia 34.3, Average Opponent 28.1
• Real Score: Texas Tech 49, West Virginia 14 | Adj. Score: Average Opponent 36.3, West Virginia 32.1
• Real Score: Kansas State 55, West Virginia 14 | Adj. Score: Average Opponent 35.4, West Virginia 20.4

In recent weeks, our eyeballs have told us that West Virginia's offense has begun to press when faced with a) smarter defenses like Texas Tech and Kansas State and b) early deficits. The Adj. Score narrative backs that up but fills in another piece of the narrative, too: while the bottom has fallen out in the last two weeks, West Virginia has been getting progressively worse since the start of the season. Here is the Adj. Scoring Margin for each WVU game: plus-34.4, plus-18.6, plus-6.2, plus-9.5, plus-6.1, minus-4.2, and minus-15.0. The offense has gotten worse in all but one game, and the defense has been pretty poor since Week 3. The defense is indeed bad, but opponents have been slowly figuring out ways to slow down Dana Holgorsen's offense for a while.

In other words, it might be a pretty good time for a bye week in Morgantown.

There's one final note regarding Adj. Points and the story they tell, and I'll start with a quote from last year:

One concept I didn't explain very well the first time around is this: for every game that is played, it is not guaranteed that one team will end up with an Adj. Win and one with an Adj. Loss. Both teams' performances are being compared to the opponent's season averages, so if both teams play well, or if both teams play particularly poorly, then there could be two Adj. Wins in a given game or two Adj. Losses.

I once again used the Adj. Scores concept in my 2012 team previews at SB Nation, mostly to look at full-season trends or the impact of a given injury. But I still got quite a few comments and questions regarding the fact that, in a given game, both Team A and Team B got an Adjusted Win or Loss, and how that must be a mistake. It is not. The idea behind Adj. Score is that, in every given week, we are all playing the same opponent. We compare Team A's performance against Team B to the expected performance of teams playing Team B, and we give them a score compared to this baseline. If both teams play particularly well or poorly, they both get an Adjusted Win or Loss.

Example 1. Michigan's 12-10 win over Michigan State on Saturday produced the following Adj. Scores:
Michigan 30.2, Average Opponent 28.4 (an Adj. Win)
Michigan State 27.9, Average Opponent 13.0 (an Adj. Win)

In averaging 5.3 yards per play, Michigan's offense played reasonably well against a strong Michigan State defense (compared to how teams typically move the ball against the Spartans), even if the score remained low because the Wolverines were settling for field goals. Meanwhile, the Michigan defense played about average against a pretty poor Michigan State offense. On the flipside, Michigan State's offense performed about average versus a solid Michigan defense and held the Michigan offense far more in-check than the normal defense does. Both teams played well enough to beat an average opponent, but only one team was actually allowed to win the game.

Example 2. Wake Forest's 16-10 win over Virginia on Saturday produced the following Adj. Scores:
Average Opponent 20.2, Wake Forest 15.1 (an Adj. Loss)
Average Opponent 20.8, Virginia 15.1 (an Adj. Loss)

Both Wake Forest and Virginia produced solid defensive performances, but for both teams, the negatives on offense outweighed the positives on defense.

Below is an enormous table showing you all of the Adj. Scoring averages for the 124 FBS teams. You will see per-game averages for Adj. Points (offense and defense) and scoring margin, along with a team's Adjusted and actual records. I am also including a small visit from Uncle Mo. The final three columns show you each team's weighted Adj. Scoring averages (where more recent games are given more weight), ranking, and "Momentum," which is in this case defined simply by subtracting the full-season averages from the weighted averages. With only six-to-eight data points, no team's weighted averages stray TOO far from full-season averages, but you can certainly see differences in teams like Wisconsin, Kansas State and Boise State (all improving), along with teams like UConn, West Virginia, Florida State and UCLA (all regressing).

This Week at SB Nation

• Monday
  How is Oregon State so good?
• Tuesday
  The Numerical: Breaking droughts and Heisman hopes
• Wednesday
  Can Georgia pull an October surprise?
  Heisman Horse Race: Market corrections
• Thursday
  You should start watching the Big East (Really!)
  3 (and only 3) reasons Mississippi State can challenge Alabama
  F/+ Picks, Week 9

Posted by: Bill Connelly on 26 Oct 2012

8 comments, Last at 30 Oct 2012, 8:50pm by EaglesFan