The Ashton Jeanty Week: Week 0-1 Advanced Stats And A Look To Week 2

The first official week of CFB is in the bag!

First off I hope you all had a great Labor Day weekend and official start to the college football season. Me personally, my team is already 0-2 so…. I guess it can only go up from here? (Spoiler alert: it probably wont!) Hopefully your team fared better than my Florida State Seminoles.

As I mentioned last week, I wanted to switch things up this year and touch a little on the previous week, while also touching on the week to come. This is also just to help me as my schedule is hectic during the season. Without further ado, let’s crunch some numbers!

During the season if you would like to see an advanced box score of a certain game, simply email (CFBNumbers@gmail.com) or DM on Twitter (@CFBNumbers) and I will happily provide you any number related thing you desire.

Top 10 Most “Exciting” Games of Week 1

So what does “exciting” mean in this table? Its basically adding up all win probability swings throughout a game. Games with back and forth lead changes, and late game comebacks will appear at the top of the list more often than not. Think of it like a roller coaster. The most exciting ones either have really big drops or take you all over the place.

This is a slightly different win probability model than the one used to create the excitement index, but it helps illustrate the point. For the most exciting game of week 1, we see ODU, a 20.5 point underdog, take the lead well into the 4th quarter against South Carolina. Shortly after this peak, ODU fumbled inside its own 10 (for the 2nd time that night) and South Carolina was able to put away the Monarchs.

The other way a game can be “exciting” is a game like UNC-Minnesota, where the lead changed hands a couple times, and the game never really got out of hand for either team. In the end, Minnesota missed a potential game winning field goal and UNC was able to survive on the road.

Expectations vs. Reality

One of the best ways to gauge how your team did is to judge whether or not they covered the spread. I know not everyone is a bettor, but the betting market can still be valuable information. It is one of the most accurate measures of team strength that you can find relatively easy.

This graph takes those spread lines (as well as the point total for the game) and creates a teams implied points for that game. So, for example, if a team is a 10 point favorite and the point total for that game is 60, the betting market is saying they expect that team to score 35 points while allowing 25 points. Once we have those implied points, we can judge it against the actual score to see whether a team beat its betting expectations on offense and defense.

The further right you go on this graph, the better your offense did relative to expectations. The further up you go, the better your defense did. Texas Tech was not expected to get into a shootout with FCS Abilene Christian, but they did!

QB Play: Power 5

Here is how our QBs played through the first week (or two weeks for those that played on week 0). ESPNs QBR is a play by play efficiency metric that is adjusted for strength of opponent, while PFF Grade is a film based metric that scores each play on a scale from -2 to 2.

The way you interpret this chart is top right = good no matter how you draw it up. Bottom right QBs had a high efficiency, but the tape may have shown that their supporting cast played a big role in that efficiency. Top left, on the other hand, shows a QB that was solid during the game but probably got let down by his teammates, either with drops or missed assignments (think a WR batted a ball up creating an easy INT for a defender. QBR would ding that play, but PFF grade would not if the pass was a good pass). Your overall winners for the P5 this week include Payton Thorne, Jaxon Dart, Hudson Card and of course Cam Ward for his performance against the Gators.

QB Play: Group of 5

On the Group of 5 side, Chandler Morris and Kirk Francis were your G5 kings of the week, Along with Ethan Hampton for his 5 TD performance against Western Illinois, as well as NFL Draft hopeful Seth Henigan.

Stat of the Week: Ashton Jeanty

Ashton Jeanty is the potential RB1 in next years draft, and WOW did he get off to an amazing start in 2024. His 267 yard, 6 TD rushing performance clocks in at 9th on the list of most expected points added on rushes in a single game in the CFP era. For those wondering, Jaret Patterson, Buffalo legend, rushed for 710 yards and 12 TDs in the two games listed on this graph.

Week 2 Implied Points

Coming back to the implied points concept explained above, here is what vegas thinks your team will score/give up in week 2. Ole Miss is expected to continue its scoring barrage, this time on Middle Tennessee State. Likewise, Ohio State is a 38 point favorite against Western Michigan. If you team is to the right the sloped line, you’re expected to win your matchup this week. If you’re to the left…. just pretend that Vegas is wrong this week!

Week 2 QB Matchups Of The Week

Here are the top weekly QB matchups this week. To create this table, we use ESPN’s QBR (Being that we are only 1-2 games into the season, the “top” matchups could look a little weird at times). Personally, im intrigued by a couple matchups here:

• Jalen Milore and Byrum Brown are two of the best QBs on the ground. When they played last season, Brown went for 93 yards on the ground and the game was 3-3 deep into the 3rd quarter. I can’t imagine we see that type of game again, but I would expect some explosive runs from each.

• Dylan Raiola and Shedeur Sanders. Sanders went for 445 yards, 5 TDs and 1 INT en route to a 81.8 QBR performance against NDSU, while Dylan Raiola went for 238 yards and a pair of TDs in his college debut. Also if you haven’t seen Raiola play, he might remind you of a certain Kansas City Chiefs QB

Thats all for now!! I hope you enjoy the new article format. Admittedly this was a lot more fun to write than the previous iteration of weekly recaps last year. Will see ya next week after week 2!

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