College Football Analytics: Week 7 Recap

Advanced stats for some of the games of the week

This college football season has flown by so fast. We’re already past the halfway point and are barreling towards the bowl season. If you wanted to get an idea of who the playoff contenders are, I used an algorithm to rank the remaining 0-1 loss teams. As for this week, here are some of the notable games of the week!

*Note* During the season if I miss a certain game in my recaps, simply email (CFBNumbers@gmail.com)or DM on Twitter (@CFBNumbers) and I will happily provide you any number related thing you desire.

Also, I use Expected Points Added rather frequently in these recaps. If you need help digesting the decimals, I wrote about how to make it easier to read EPA/Play numbers.

Oregon 24 - California 17

Oregon survives its typical weekday scare game this year. This time they take down California with a nice helping from the run game. A big shout out to the Oregon OL, who averaged 4.6 line yards per carry and only suffered a 6.5% stuff rate. Oregon is still a one loss team with a clear path to the Pac-12 championship, and with that win over Ohio State, should have a realistic path to the playoff.

Cincinnati 56 - UCF 21

Coming into this season, this was game everyone circled as the game that trips up Cincinnati. Well, the Bearcats snuffed any upset talk quickly, and never looked back. The Citronauts couldn’t get anything going with QB Mikey Keene and the passing game, losing -0.404 EPA/Pass. Turnovers also played a big role in UCF’s demise, losing -12.528 EP to turnovers. This is a big win for the Bearcats, and it looks like we could finally see a group of 5 team in the playoff.

Georgia 30 - Kentucky 13

Stop me if you’ve heard this before: Georgia dominates another opponent. This time the unlucky victims were an undefeated Kentucky team. Honestly hats off to Kentucky QB Will Levis for averaging positive EPA through the air, that’s an achievement in itself against this defense. Offensively, Georgia had the type of performance they need in order to truly be legitimate title contenders. If the Georgia offense averages 8.4 yards per play and is successful around half of the time, forget about beating the bulldogs.

Purdue 24 - Iowa 7

Well well well, the turnover tables have turned! Iowa loses 12.271 EP to turnovers, and gets upset by the always upset minded Purdue. Hearing your undefeated team isn’t actually good and suffers from a fatal flaw is one of the worst things to hear, so I understand Hawkeye fans feelings coming into this game. Unfortunately, their run of winning despite suboptimal offensive performances has come to an end.

Oklahoma State 32 - Texas 24

The wheels have officially come off of the Texas train. They lose to an Oklahoma State team that is sneakily a one loss team. Turnovers were a plaque to the Longhorns, losing them 13.8 EP during the game. Oklahoma State was more explosive, and a touch more efficient, albeit still negative EPA. Will we continue to hype up a bout with Oklahoma in Bedlam despite Oklahoma dominating the matchup? That remains to be seen.

LSU 49 - Florida 42

In what would become Ed Orgeron’s last game as the Head Coach of the Tigers, LSU takes down the Florida Gators in Death Valley. This game busted wide open for the Tigers after a string of Gator turnovers. Hard to win a football game when you lost almost 20 expected points to turnovers. Florida may have won the yards per play battle, but when you add in context (a la EPA), LSU wins that battle by a considerable margin. It’ll be interesting to see who fills the LSU role. Do you go big name hunting, or go for an up and comer?

Ole Miss 31 - Tennessee 26

Tennessee had a chance to win and put the world on notice, but the Volunteers couldn’t quite cut the mustard (because someone threw a bottle of mustard on the field….whatever Netflix will sign me to a comedy deal). Ole Miss usually relies on the passing game to get it done, but today it was the rushing game providing the much needed efficiency necessary to win the game. Tennessee really didn’t do anything bad, but also didn’t provide enough high explosive plays to win the game.

The UCONN SHOUTOUT

UCONN 21 - YALE 15

THE UNIVERSITY OF CONNECTICUT HAS WON A COLLEGE FOOTBALL GAME!!!!!! Congrats to the Huskies for winning their first game since October 26th, 2019. Who cares if its Yale, and who cares if it’ll probably be their only victory this season. Celebrate the victories when they come, no matter how big or small.

The UTEP Bowl Eligible Game

Congrats to the UTEP Miners for reaching bowl eligibility by defeating Louisiana Tech to get to 6-1 on the season. This has been a tremendous year for the program, and I can’t wait to see if they end up getting to 10 wins.

Power 5 QB Performances

Group of 5 QB Performances

If you’re wondering where your QB is, they either did not reach the minimum play requirement, or there was no ESPN QBR data available at the time of this graph creation.

If you want to dive in to the data like I do, check out @CFB_Data and @cfbfastR on Twitter, where you can learn how to get started in the world of College Football data analysis!

If you want to see more charts and one off analysis, follow my twitter page, @CFBNumbers

Cover Photo: Bobby McDuffie/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images