Thoughts and observations before we move on to the Indinia game:
The rushing offense had fans pulling hairs out again, and understandably so. But if one just watch the box score instead of the game, it was hardly a bad day for the run game in the office:
| Rushing | 207 |
| Rushing Attempts | 35 |
| Yards per rush | 5.9 |
That was a
better ypc average than TTUN did against Butgers:
| Rushing | 282 |
| Rushing Attempts | 53 |
| Yards per rush | 5.3 |
I also charted all tOSU runs from the NW game, and the rolling 3-play ypc:
tOSU had bad stretch in the 1Q (culminated in the failed 4th-and-1 rush), but actually recovered or adjusted fairly well afterwards; their rolling 3-play ypc never dropped below the critical 3.5 line until the final drive when they just couldn't wait to get out of Evanston. (If a team is averaging more than 3.5 ypc consistently, it can keep drives alive by rushing exclusively ... without risking it on 4th.) IMO the bad stretch in the 1Q skewed our perception of the rush O adversely.
However, we do have a short yardage problem (dating back to summer camp, or even laster year). Remember this nugget from August?
All the short yardage runs from the NW game (any down, distance < 3):
|
| 1 | 4 | 1 | 3 | Miyan Williams |
| 1 | 3 | 1 | 0 | Miyan Williams |
| 1 | 3 | 1 | 0 | Miyan Williams |
| 1 | 4 | 1 | 0 | Miyan Williams |
| 2 | 3 | 3 | 2 | Miyan Williams |
| 2 | 4 | 1 | 16 | C.J. Stroud |
| 3 | 3 | 3 | 27 | Miyan Williams |
| 4 | 2 | 2 | 2 | Miyan Williams |
| 4 | 3 | 2 | 6 | Miyan Williams |
That was a conversion rate of 5/9, or 55%. Definitely needs more work. If we count consecutive 3rd & 4th down runs as 1 data point, the conversion rate looks a little better at 5/7, or 71%.
For reference, I found an
article charting average 3rd down conversion rate based on distance from Covid-shortened 2020 season:
Now regarding the rush defense, NW gained 200+ yards, but scored only 7 points (61 rush yards on NW's only TD drive in the 1H).
In general, tOSU played bend-don't-break defense. NW would break occasional big runs, especially early in drives, but never had sustained success. This can be visualized in the following chart. NW's run game was very herky-jerky, every spike (big run from NW to start a drive) was followed by a trough below the critical 3-play 3.5 ypc mark (consecutive run stops by tOSU to kill a drive):
The spike-and-plunge pattern actually repeated itself throughout the game, making one wonder whether this was by design from Knowles? Nobody likes to give up yards, but it was a much better alternative than giving up points, especially in an extreme weather game where scoring was a premium. The way to lose a game to an inferior opponent in a low scoring affair is to give up fluky or "cheap" big-play touchdowns. So bend-don't-break would make sense here.
Or, I have another theory that I didn't bother to verify. Was the pattern a result of the DL substitutions? i.e. 1st string DL takes a break, big run from NW; 1st string DL comes back, put out fire. Probably too much work for a game against NW, but if any of you managed to chart the players on the field for each defensive play, this would be an interesting point to look for.
