Is the playcalling about what it was last year? Pretty much. There's a 4% difference, so slightly more passes this year than last.
Rushing play percentage:
This year: 57.85%
Last year: 61.76%
Taking everything in to consideration (I think), how are the yards per carry on the rushing offense this year compared to last year?
This year: 2.9 ypc (# 120 in nation)
Last year: 5.3 ypc (# 18 in nation)
(Earlier I posted 3.38 ypc compared to 5.44, so the difference may be in losses, sacks, etc. Not perfect, but still telling).
Let's rock on to passing.
Team passing rating:
This year 143.0 (# 36 in nation)
Last year: 128.1 (# 69 in nation)
Yesterday's game brought that number down quite a bit. But still significant improvement.
Let's scoot over to the defense. First, total defense (yards per game):
This year: 357.2 (# 38)
Last year: 449.6 (# 88)
Big difference. Huge. But it's not necessarily a stifling defense like some would have you believe.
See how it breaks down in yards per play:
This year: 5.1 (# 43)
Last year 6.2 (# 100)
That's good enough to be competitive with a good offense, and the passing game is competitive, but the rushing isn't.
Our pride and joy (with good reason) has been in our rushing defense). A quick peek:
Rushing yards per game allowed:
This year: 77.0 ( # 6)
Last year: 228.6 (# 106)
Are you kidding me? Wow, what a difference.
Now let's peek in at passing. We'll just use Team Passer Rating, which includes sort of everything and a good overall compass.
This year: 135.5 (# 78)
Last year: 137.7
About the same. Not horrible, but not good.
OK, let's look at turnovers. I hear this is a big thing for us this year.
Interceptions thrown per game
This year: 0.2 per game (#8)
Last year: 0.9 per game
Pretty good so far to cut it down to almost nil.
Fumbles lost per game
This year: 0.8 (# 71)
Last year: 1.3
So we've improved our turnovers lost a total of 0.7 + 0.5 = 1.2 fewer turnovers per game. That's huge.
So how are we doing on the takeaway side? Let's took at takeaways per game, shall we?
This year: 2.2 per game (# 19)
Last year: 1.6 per game
So we've improved that 0.6 per game from last year as well. Add what we're not losing to what we're gaining, and we're improving almost 2 turnovers per game. Wow.
And turnover margin will show it.
This year: +1.2 turnovers per game
Last year: -0.7 turnovers per game
Forgiving the rounding error, again, we're right at 2 turnovers per game improvement.
The last thing I want to look at is penalty yards per game. How disciplined are we?
This year: 41.2 (# 31)
Last year: 43.3
About the same. Not significant.
All stats courtesy of www.teamrankings.com/college-football/stat