Last week we looked at how Big 12 teams fared in terms of yards per play. his week, we turn our attention to how the season played out in terms of the Adjusted Pythagorean Record, or APR. For an in-depth look at APR, click here. If you didn’t feel like clicking, here is the Reader’s Digest version. APR looks at how well a team scores and prevents touchdowns. Non-offensive touchdowns, field goals, extra points, and safeties are excluded. The ratio of offensive touchdowns to touchdowns allowed is converted into a winning percentage. Pretty simple actually.
Once again, here are the 2021 Big 12 standings.
And here are the APR standings with conference rank in offensive touchdowns, touchdowns allowed, and APR in parentheses. This includes conference games only with the championship game excluded. Finally, Big 12 teams are sorted by the difference between their actual number of wins and their expected number of wins according to APR. I use a game and a half as a line of demarcation to determine whether or not a team significantly over or under-performed relative to their APR and by that standard, Texas was the only Big 12 team that significantly under-performed. The Longhorns lost six consecutive Big 12 games after starting conference play 2-0. The primary culprit was close came performance. Iowa State blasted them 30-7 in Ames, but the other five losses all came by eight points or less.
Sonny Dykes and Late Season Swoons
Last week, I offered some reasons for optimism for TCU fans heading into 2022. This week, I'm making a full heel turn and offering reasons for pessimism.
Sonny Dykes has been a head coach for eleven full seasons for three different teams. He has spent time in the Group of Five (Louisiana Tech and SMU) and the Power Five (California). During that time, his teams have shown a remarkable tendency to start off with great records in the first half of the season only to wheeze to the finish line. Here are his records at all three stops against FBS opponents sorted somewhat arbitrarily based on the Gregorian Calendar. Note this does not include his first bowl game as SMU head coach when he took over for Chad Morris after the regular season concluded in 2017. If it did, his November to January record would be one game worse. From August to October, his teams have won about 56% of their games against FBS competition. However, post-Halloween, his teams have won just over 41% of their games. What about the competition, you say? Perhaps the competition ramps up in the season's stretch run. Well, this trend also holds when we look at how his teams perform against the spread (ATS). From August to October their ATS record is practically identical to their straight up record. Once again, post-Halloween, there is an even larger drop off in their ATS record.
Another area where Dykes' teams have struggled in his career is when they have garnered the respect of the liberal cadre of journalists and found themselves in the Associated Press top 25. Dykes has been able to get all three of the schools where he has coached into the AP top 25 which is no small feat. Outside of Dykes' tenure, Louisiana Tech has only been ranked one other time in school history and under his tutelage, SMU was ranked in parts of three straight seasons (2019-2021) after not having been ranked since 1986. However, once they reached the top 25, it was time to abandon ship. While his teams posted a winning overall record once they entered the polls, they did not live up to expectations. Those ATS numbers are horrendous and his teams have performed poorly as both favorites and underdogs. Keep an eye on both of these trends as TCU enters a new era after two decades under Gary Patterson's leadership. TCU has only been in the top 25 for one week in the past three seasons. They lost that week to Sonny Dykes and SMU, so TCU fans will be overjoyed if Dykes can return the Horned Frogs to the top 25. They just might want to put their money on the other team if and when that happens, especially if its late in the season.
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