2025 Yards Per Play: Big 10

Two conferences down, seven to go. This week we head to the midwest and the bane of Paul Finebaum's existence, the Big 10. 

Here are the 2025 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 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 2025 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.

Minnesota significantly exceeded their expected record based on YPP (more on them later) while Michigan State and Maryland significantly underachieved. Minnesota was 3-1 in one-score Big 10 games and finished with a solid turnover margin in Big 10 play (+6), but another reason for the discrepancy between their actual record and expected record based on YPP was their lack of competitiveness against the better teams on their schedule. In three games against Iowa, Ohio State, and Oregon, the Gophers were outgained by over four yards per play! In their other six Big 10 games, they were more respectable (outgained by roughly .45 yards per play). Granted they probably should not have gone 5-1 in those six games, but Minnesota was a slightly below average Big 10 team in 2025 that put up some real stinkers against the toughest competition. For Michigan State and Maryland, the easy explanation is close game performance. The Spartans and Terrapins combined to finish 0-5 in one-score Big 10 games. Michigan State also had issues on special teams. A blocked punt against Nebraska put them in an early hole and a punt return touchdown by Iowa was crucial in a game the Spartans lost by three points. Meanwhile, Maryland struggled in situational football. The Terrapins converted just six of their nineteen fourth down attempts in Big 10 play (32%) while their opponents were eight of fourteen (57%). Maryland also struggled to turn red zone trips into touchdowns, converting for six points on nine of twenty-three trips in Big 10 play (39%) while their opponents got into scoring position a lot more often (41 trips) and converted at a much higher rate (26 touchdowns).  

They Won How Many?

Minnesota finished with a winning record for the sixth time in nine seasons under PJ Fleck. They finished with eight wins, but didn't come close to appearing in the Big 10 Championship Game or the College Football Playoff. But I'm here to tell you it was an historic season nonetheless.

The Golden Gophers finished with a winning Big 10 record (5-4) despite being outgained by more than a yard and a half per play by their conference opponents. Since 2005, they posted the worst Net YPP of any team that finished with a winning conference record. 

Surely this means the rent will come due in 2026. Minnesota is bound to regress and not only finish with a losing Big 10 record, but potentially finish near the bottom of the Big 10 standings. Not so fast. The sample size is small, but the previous five teams on this list did not fall as hard and fast as I anticipated. 

The five teams in question collectively won two additional conference games the next season with three of the teams improving their conference record. What, aside from the small sample size, could possibly explain this? I think the answer is coaching acumen. Four of the five teams on this list were coached by current (Barry Alvarez and Bill Snyder) or future (Chris Klieman and Kyle Whittingham) College Football Hall of Famers. Good coaches tend to overachieve relative to their statistics. PJ Fleck may not end up in the College Football Hall of Fame, but he has been at Minnesota for nine years (66-44 record) and has developed a winning culture in Minneapolis.