2022 Yards Per Play: Big 10

Two conferences down, eight to go. We head to the midwest this week and examine the Big 10, home of two playoff participants (and zero playoff wins) in 2022. 

Here are the 2022 Big 10 standings. 

So we know what each team achieved, but how did they perform? To answer that, here are the Yards Per Play (YPP), Yards Per Play Allowed (YPA) and Net Yards Per Play (Net) numbers for each Big 10 team. This includes conference play only, with the championship game not included. The teams are sorted by division by Net YPP with conference rank in parentheses.

College football teams play either eight or nine conference games. Consequently, their record in such a small sample may not be indicative of their quality of play. A few fortuitous bounces here or there can be the difference between another ho-hum campaign or a special season. Randomness and other factors outside of our perception play a role in determining the standings. It would be fantastic if college football teams played 100 or even 1000 games. Then we could have a better idea about which teams were really the best. Alas, players would miss too much class time, their bodies would be battered beyond recognition, and I would never leave the couch. As it is, we have to make do with the handful of games teams do play. In those games, we can learn a lot from a team’s YPP. Since 2005, I have collected YPP data for every conference. I use conference games only because teams play such divergent non-conference schedules and the teams within a conference tend to be of similar quality. By running a regression analysis between a team’s Net YPP (the difference between their Yards Per Play and Yards Per Play Allowed) and their conference winning percentage, we can see if Net YPP is a decent predictor of a team’s record. Spoiler alert. It is. For the statistically inclined, the correlation coefficient between a team’s Net YPP in conference play and their conference record is around .66. Since Net YPP is a solid predictor of a team’s conference record, we can use it to identify which teams had a significant disparity between their conference record as predicted by Net YPP and their actual conference record. I used a difference of .200 between predicted and actual winning percentage as the threshold for ‘significant’. Why .200? It is a little arbitrary, but .200 corresponds to a difference of 1.6 games over an eight game conference schedule and 1.8 games over a nine game one. Over or under-performing by more than a game and a half in a small sample seems significant to me. In the 2022 season, which teams in the Big 10 met this threshold? Here are Big 10 teams sorted by performance over what would be expected from their Net YPP numbers.

Purdue and Michigan were the only Big 10 teams that saw their expected record differ significantly from their actual record. Both the Boilermakers and Wolverines overachieved and whaddaya know, they also happened to play in the Big 10 Championship Game. Michigan was a somewhat fortunate 2-0 on one-score Big 10 games while Purdue was 4-1 in such contests. 

Picture It, Ireland, 2022

Nebraska and Northwestern played one of the first college football games of the 2022 season in Ireland. The Cornhuskers and Wildcats were looking to rebound from disappointing 2021 campaigns. Both schools finished at the bottom of the Big 10 West with identical 1-8 conference records. Northwestern was legitimately bad, but Nebraska was better than their record by almost any statistical measure. The opener was big for both teams. For Northwestern, it was an opportunity for the Wildcats to prove the Covid-delayed 2020 season was not a fluke. The Wildcats finished 6-1 in Big 10 play that season, qualified for the Big 10 Championship Game, and finished tenth in the final AP Poll (their first top ten finish since the historic 1995 season). However, sandwiched around that division title were identical 1-8 Big 10 records in 2019 and 2021. For Nebraska, 2022 was Scott Frost's last chance to succeed at his alma mater. Frost was hired after leading UCF to an undefeated record and dubious national title claim in 2017. However, in his first four seasons in Lincoln, the Cornhuskers lost nearly twice as many games (29) as they won (15). Frost made some staff changes heading into 2022, most notably tabbing Mark Whipple to be his offensive coordinator. The Cornhuskers also bid adieu to enigmatic quarterback Adrian Martinez and replaced him with Texas transfer Casey Thompson. There was a little preseason buzz for Nebraska and the Cornhuskers entered the game against the Wildcats as a double digit favorite. Nebraska built a double digit lead in the third quarter, but faltered in yet another close game, losing 31-28. And Frost, much like Fleishman, was in trouble. But I didn't come here to write any additional epitaphs on Scott Frost's tenure at Nebraska. I want to talk about the team that won the game in Ireland.

After Northwestern upset Nebraska, most Wildcat fans probably thought they were in store for a nice rebound season. After a bye, Northwestern's next three games were all at home against Duke (under a first year coach with low expectations), Southern Illinois (FCS), and Miami of Ohio. A road trip to Penn State immediately followed that homestand and Ohio State was on the schedule in November, but theoretically, Northwestern should have banked enough wins to be in contention for a bowl bid at the end of the season. That was not the case. Northwestern dropped all three of those winnable home games and then proceeded to lose all eight of their remaining conference games. In doing so, they joined a somewhat exclusive club, becoming just the fifteenth BCS/Power Five conference team since 2005 to win their conference opener and lose the rest of their conference games. 

The club gets even more exclusive when considering the fact that Northwestern pulled an upset in their conference opener. Only eight other teams pulled an upset in their conference opener and lost out in league play. 

Like the other eight teams on this list, Northwestern did not fool the betting market. The Wildcats were double digit underdogs in their final eight conference games.