Last week we looked at how ACC 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.
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. Also, note Virginia and Virginia Tech's rankings are on a per game basis since they only played seven conference games due to a real world tragedy. 
Finally, ACC teams are sorted by the difference between their actual number of wins and their expected number of wins according to APR.
Georgia Tech (more on them later), Miami, and NC State significantly exceeded their expected APR while Wake Forest, Florida State, and Virginia underachieved. Georgia Tech, Miami, and NC State combined to finish 9-3 in one-score conference games. In addition, those three teams suffered ten double digit conference losses. If they weren't winning close, they were usually getting blown out. Meanwhile, Wake Forest, Florida State, and Virginia were a combined 2-8 in one-score conference games. Virginia was not able to get margin in any of their conference victories, but Wake Forest and Florida State combined to win seven ACC games by ten points or more. The Demon Deacons also finished with the worst in-conference turnover margin (-10) in the ACC which torpedoed their goal of repeating as division champs.
Under Key, Georgia Tech finished with a winning conference record, while they barely won more than a fourth of their games under Collins. At a minimum, Key should have the Yellow Jackets back in bowl contention over the next few seasons. But, just to be thorough, let's look under the hood. Here is how the Yellow Jackets fared in terms of Yards Per Play in ACC play under both men.
The Yellow Jackets scored and allowed touchdowns in ACC play at about the same ratio under Brent Key as they did under Geoff Collins. Under Collins, the Yellow Jackets won about one fewer conference game than we would expect based on the ratio of their touchdowns scored and allowed. Over 26 games they won seven league games instead of eight. Meanwhile, despite allowing more touchdowns than they scored under Key, the Yellow Jackets won four of the seven conference games he coached.
Once again, here are the 2022 ACC standings.
Did Georgia Tech Improve?
The Geoff Collins era mercifully came to an end in late September after an ugly loss to UCF dropped the Yellow Jackets to 1-3. Under interim coach Brent Key, the team rallied, winning four of their final eight games to finish 5-7, their best record since Paul Johnson retired. Key's performance earned him the full time gig, and he appears to have the Yellow Jackets trending in the right direction. To illustrate this point, let's look at Georgia Tech's conference record under both men.
This has to be a misprint. The Yellow Jackets somehow put up a worse YPP Net under Key? Indeed they did. Their defensive improvement was more than offset by an offensive decline. What about my other favorite metric, APR?
How did Georgia Tech pull this off? While the Yellow Jackets did not fare any better under Key than they did under Collins in per play efficiency or scoring and allowing touchdowns, they were markedly improved in the oft ignored area of football: special teams.
The kicking game was a mess under Collins. In three plus seasons, Georgia Tech kickers made less than half their field goals. For comparisons sake, the median team field goal percentage in college football is about 75%. Key turned the kicking responsibilities over to Gavin Stewart after being named interim coach and he converted twelve of his thirteen kicks. Key also apparently allowed his special teams to practice kick and punt protection as the team did not allow any blocked kicks under his watch after allowing 16 under Collins, including four in their first four games of 2022. Did the team even practice special teams under Collins? Probably. That would seem like a pretty big oversight if they didn't, but based on their play, I can't definitively say they did.
Another area where Georgia Tech improved under Key was turnover margin.
In 26 ACC games under Collins, the Yellow Jackets finished in the red in the turnover department 14 times. They were 2-12 in those games. In games where they did not lose the turnover margin, Georgia Tech was a respectable 5-7. Under Key, the Yellow Jackets lost the turnover battle once. In the six games where they were even or in the black, they finished 4-2.
So what do we make of the Brent Key hire? Key's promotion certainly saved the 2022 season (as much as a 5-7 record can qualify as 'saving'). Had the team not fired Collins, its quite possible Georgia Tech would have finished 0-8 or 1-7 in the ACC. The team played hard under Key and although they did not play better on a per play basis, the special teams improved dramatically and the turnover margin reversed course. We should probably give Key credit for identifying the best kicker on the team and for shoring up punt and field goal protection, but turnovers are notoriously fickle. It is highly unlikely that Georgia Tech averages a +1 margin in each conference game going forward under Key. I would like to have seen a bigger swing when it came time to name the full time head coach. I want to stress I am not a journalist or Georgia Tech insider, so I don't know who was a realistic candidate when the school was searching for a head coach. Key is an alum who obviously wanted the job, but an unsustainable turnover margin and a 4-1 record in one-score games made Georgia Tech look better than they were. I wish Key the best, but I think the Yellow Jackets will be in the market for a new head coach by the time the 2025 season kicks off (if not before).
No comments:
Post a Comment