Drive Efficiency

by LaFortune Teller , South Bend, Friday, February 27, 2009, 14:29 (6299 days ago) @ Jay

Thanks for the plug, Jay. And yes, I agree that the drive's the thing.

Football Outsiders does tremendous NFL research on play-by-play data, and are just scratching the surface with college PBP. But one of the most fundamental data points in a football game is very much drive-specific: starting field position. In pro football, the difference between a good, productive offense and a bad, unproductive offense is equivalent to only five yards of starting field position per drive.

In college, the elite offenses distance themselves even more from the pack, but the point remains. Part of the reason 2007 was so cataclysmic was because ND was giving up nearly 10 yards of starting field position per drive in many games. As hapless as the Irish looked that season offensively, they weren't appreciably worse than their opponents in long field drives. Against ND, their opponents only scored nine more points on the season than did the Irish in drives begun inside the offense's own 30-yard line.

In 2008, Notre Dame was better in terms of field position efficiency, but there is still a ton of room to improve. For a visual of the value of field position offensively and defensively consider these charts from a piece I wrote for FO after USC's loss to Oregon State last season (http://www.footballoutsiders.com/fei-ratings/2008/fei-week-5-ratings):

Figure 1: Offensive Efficiency by Team Field Position

Figure 2: Opponent's Next Possession Efficiency by Team Field Position

"On average, teams score on fewer than 20 percent of their drives begun inside their own 15-yard line, as illustrated in Figure 1. The difference in score expectation between a drive beginning from a team's own 5-yard line and its own 20-yard line is nearly ten percent. And that's just the effect on the offense. Figure 2 represents the score expectations of the opponent's next possession after a team's own drive, by field position start. Starting a drive deep in one's own territory is the only area of the field that significantly impacts the average success of the opponent's next possession. A punt downed inside the opponent's 5-yard line is as valuable offensively as it is defensively, if not more so."