2023 Adjusted Pythagorean Record: ACC

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. 

Once again, here are the 2023 ACC 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, ACC teams are sorted by the difference between their actual number of wins and their expected number of wins according to APR.

Using the somewhat arbitrary standard of a game a half, no ACC teams significantly over or underachieved relative to their APR in 2023. 

More Than a Feeling

*Editors's Note

I write (or at least draft) these posts several days or weeks in advance, so this was written prior to Jeff Hafley taking the Green Bay defensive coordinator job. That's an interesting choice for the Packers considering the defenses Boston College put on the field. 

Is Boston College a team on the rise or are the Eagles destined to get their head coach fired after 2024? On the one hand, the Eagles rebounded from their first losing season under Jeff Hafley to finish 7-6 in 2023. They are led by a talented and mobile young quarterback in Thomas Castellanos. Castellanos passed for over 2000 yards and rushed for over 1000 yards while accounting for 28 total touchdowns. With another year of experience under his belt, the Eagles should move up a rung or two in the conference pecking order and be one of the better mid-level teams in the ACC. But on the other hand...

While the Eagles finished bowl-eligible in 2023, they won a lot of close games. Five of their six regular season wins came by a touchdown or less. And most of the teams they beat were not very good. They beat Holy Cross (a good FCS team) by three, Army by three, Virginia by three, Connecticut by seven, and Syracuse by seven. They did beat Georgia Tech by fifteen in Atlanta, but that was by far their best regular season performance outside of their near comeback against Florida State. They won a lot of close games against mediocre to bad teams. And while Castellanos played well in spurts, he was also very erratic. He tossed 14 interceptions on the season. Only three FBS quarterbacks threw more. And while Castellanos is young enough to expect improvement, the other side of the ball was in veritable shambles. In ACC action, the Eagles allowed nearly seven yards per play (6.99) and 34 touchdowns, both worst in the conference. But perhaps the biggest indictment toward any pro-Eagles optimism has been their Vegas power rating over the past few seasons. 

Their have been three full college football seasons since the 2020 campaign was impacted by Covid. During those three seasons, Las Vegas bookmakers have made the Eagles betting favorites in ACC play three times. That is easily the lowest total of any ACC team in that span. 

Only Virginia and Syracuse come close to the betting line futility Boston College has endured over the past three seasons (note Virginia has also played one fewer game as their ACC finale against Virginia Tech in 2022 was canceled). While the betting line and the betting market are not perfect indicators of team strength, they serve as a solid proxy for how good teams are. The line and the market are updated after each game so the evaluation of a team can look very different in November than it did in August. Despite being bowl-eligible in two of those three seasons, the market never warmed to the Eagles. Perhaps they will remain undervalued by the betting market in 2024, but I think this serves as a giant red flag and solid indicator to bet against Boston College, both in the preseason over/under win total market and the point spread market early next season.