2023 Yards Per Play: Pac-12

The next two weeks will be bittersweet as we wave goodbye to the Pac-12. It would be foolhardy to say the Pac-12 is gone for good (the WAC after all is back -- sort of), but for the next few years at least, FBS will be one conference short. 

Here are the 2023 Pac-12 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 Pac-12 team. This includes conference play only, with the championship game not included. The teams are sorted 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 2023 season, which teams in the Pac-12 met this threshold? Here are Pac-12 teams sorted by performance over what would be expected from their Net YPP numbers.

Washington significantly exceeded their expected record based on YPP while their Apple Cup rivals in Pullman underachieved relative to their YPP numbers. The Huskies finished an incredible 6-0 in one-score Pac-12 games. After dominating Cal in their conference opener (beating the Bears by 27 points), Washington won their final eight Pac-12 games by a combined 49 points (no victory by more than ten points). This continued an amazing trend for teams coached by Kalen DeBoer. In his nine seasons as a head coach, his teams are an incredible 26-6 in one-score games! 

He has an unenviable task in following Nick Saban at Alabama, but he might be the man for the job. On the other side of the state, the Cougars finished 1-4 in one-score conference games and also boasted the worst in-conference turnover margin (-8) of any Pac-12 team. 

Lincoln's Home Cooking

For the first time in his head coaching career, Lincoln Riley faced some adversity in 2023. The Trojans highwire act from 2022 (combine great offense with bad defense and force timely turnovers) nearly earned them a spot in the College Football Playoff, but the turnover fortune shifted and the Trojans lost five regular season games in 2023. It was very nearly six, but Southern Cal escaped their nerdy brethren from Berkley thanks to a failed two-point conversion. The five losses were more than double the previous regular season high for any Lincoln Riley coached team and for the first time in his career, one of his teams finished unranked. But perhaps the biggest story was how poorly his Trojans performed at home. 

During his first six years as a head coach, Riley's teams lost just twice at home. Both losses came during his time in Norman (to Iowa State and Kansas State respectively). The Trojans surpassed that total in 2023, losing to Utah, Washington, and quite embarrassingly to crosstown rival UCLA. The Trojans also struggled at home against the betting line as compared to previous seasons. 

During his career, Riley's teams have tended to be massive home favorites, so their home ATS record, while much less sterling than their outright record, was still solidly above the breakeven number for gamblers (52.4%). The Trojans were a dumpster fire at home ATS in 2023, hemorrhaging cash like Truth Social. 

The move to the Big 10 may cause some logistical issues for a team based in Los Angeles, but I like the Trojans to bounce back in 2024. Lincoln Riley has a proven track record and I'm inclined to see 2023 as an outlier rather than a new normal. Expectations are muted with the loss of star quarterback Caleb Williams, but I could easily envision the Trojans eclipsing their modest preseason win total (7.5).