Kansas Review

Wow.

Well, its a good thing this game was played in Atlanta. I’m not sure they have enough rock chalk in all of Kansas to tally all those touchdowns. (hey-oh! ok, maybe not my best work there...)

The offensive numbers were staggering. I mean silly stupid. We had more 10+ yard gains (20) against Kansas than 5 teams have so far this season. We had more 20+ yard plays (14) than 67 teams have so far this season. We had more 30+ yard plays (9) than 100 teams have so far this season. We had more 40+ yard plays (5) than 106 other teams have this season.

There are only 7 teams in the country that have as many 50+ yard plays this season as we did against Kansas (4). Clemson, Houston, Oregon and Washington St. each have 5. Florida State, Fresno State, and Nebraska each have 4.

We had more 60+ yard plays (3) than all but 5 teams have this season. Four of those teams have exactly 3 on the season (Clemson, Florida International, NC State, Oregon). Only one team has more 60+ yard plays all year than we did against Kansas alone. Washington St. has 4.

There have been 38 plays of 70+ yards, by all teams combined. Georgia Tech has 6 of them. The national average is 0.27. So we have as many such plays as about 23 other teams, on average. I have not added up all the numbers, but it appears we (probably) have much such plays than any other conference.

It is really difficult to put into perspective exactly how good our offense was. Here are some numbers:

	GT Offense vs. Kansas
Points	66
Points Per Possession	6
Yards	768
Yards Per Play	13.47
Maximum Possible Total Yards	815
Percentage of Yards Gained Compared to Yards Possible	94.23
Rushing Yards	604
Yards Per Rush	12.1
Passing Yards	164
Yards Per Attempted Pass	23.4
Yards Per Completion	41
Percentage of Plays that were TD’s	15.79%
Percentage of Plays - TD or First Down	57.89%
Percentage of Plays - 10+ Yards	35.09%
Percentage of Plays - 20+ Yards	24.56%
Percentage of Plays - 30+ Yards	15.79%
Number of Plays - 60+ Yards	3
Number of Plays run from further than 60 Yards away from Kansas’ End Zone	22
Percentage of 60+ yard plays, of Plays that possibly could have gone 60 yards	13.64%

You get the idea.

We outgained Kansas by 406 yards. Pittsburgh is currently 61st in the country in total yards per game, with an average of 404. 60 teams in the country do not gain as many yards per game as the margin by which we outgained Kansas.

My favorite stats are the points per possession, and the percentage of possible yards that we actually gained. (note, for these calculations, I ignored our final 3 play drive that effectively ran out the clock).

If we had scored a touchdown every single time we had the ball, and thus gained every yard that was possibly available to us, we would have gained 815 yards. We actually gained 768. This number is usually along the lines of you actually gained 400 or 500 yards out of more than 1000 possible. 768 out of 815 is absurd.

6 points per possession is the highest total I’ve ever seen.

More than 1 out of every 2 plays we ran was either a first down or a touchdown. More than 1 out of every 3 plays we ran went for more than 10 yards.

Some of those numbers arent even correct. For example, the 30+ percentage is wrong. We ran 57 plays, but 15 of those came inside Kansas’ 30 yard line. So, only 42 of our plays could possibly have gone 30 yards. 9 of them did. So, more than 1 play out of every 5 that could have gone at least 30 yards did. (I calculated that in the chart for 60+ yard plays, but I only did it because I thought it was funny).

And really, all of these stats are wrong, but several of our plays really went “infinite”. Normally, most or all of your touchdowns are plays where, even if there wasnt an end zone, you only would have gained 3 or 4 more yards before being tackled. Not this game. If there was no end zone, I think they’d still be chasing Orwin Smith.

At one point in the 3rd quarter, Orwin Smith had 20 more total yards than Kansas (note, this stat did not include kickoff return yards).

We scored 28 points in the 3rd quarter, without ever being in Kansas’ red zone. In fact, this game might have hurt our red zone stats, at least in terms of total trips per game. (you have to actually stop in the red zone, and then run another play, in order for it to count as a “trip” to the red zone.)

All of those numbers are fun, and we set a bunch of records (total yards in a game [presumably only because they didnt keep records back when we played Cumberland] rushing yards, yards per carry [this was an NCAA record], longest run in GT history [set for the second time in CPJ’s career - Dwyer’s 88 yard run against Miss. St. was the then-longest] etc...)

But, Kansas’ defense is not real good. I mean, they aren’t as bad as we made them look (I don’t think Parkview is as bad on defense as we made Kansas look), but here are their numbers from their first two games. Which, mind you, were not exactly played against stellar offenses (McNeese St. and Northern Illinois):

Kansas Defense Allowed	McNeese St.	Northern Illinois	Georgia Tech
Points	24	42	66
Total Yards	420	462	768
Yards Per Play	5.6	7.5	13.5

So, they are not good. But, its hard to be disappointed with our numbers, no matter how bad the defense is.

I guess that is what you get when you allow our first team offense to play more than 1 quarter...

How about the defense?

I thought we looked good. We did not dominate Kansas defensively, but we played well. We forced 5 three and outs, another four and out, stopped them on downs once, and forced a total of 7 punts. We also held them to a field goal once when they got in scoring range, which we never managed to do last year.

However, there are areas for improvement.

Third down defense. For the game, we let them convert 9 of 17. Thats a little high. For the first half, we let them convert 7 of 10. That is VERY high.

On their two TD drives of the first half (which allowed them to keep this game close for much longer than it should have been), we forced a total of 6 third downs. Average distance of convert was 4.83. Average gain for Kansas was 11.5 yards. They converted all 6.

That is a lot of chances to get stops, and a whole lot of failure.

Here is a weird stat. Kansas average yards per play, by down:

Kansas (Game)	Yards Per Play
1st	3.78
2nd	5.58
3rd	7.53

On just their two first half TD drives:

Kansas (2 first half TD drives)	Yards Per Play
1st	2.78
2nd	5.44
3rd	11.5

Those numbers are a little frustrating.

Hopefully, its nothing serious. I can’t think of a logical reason a defense would be worse on some downs than others, in the long term. Other than psychological reasons anyway. We need to be tougher. Hopefully, we will. We did tighten up in the second half (after, presumably, Groh made some adjustments). We only allowed them to convert 2 of 7 third downs in the second half, and we also got a stop on 4th and short.

Here is a look at what our defense held Kansas to, in light of what other teams have allowed.

Kansas Offense Gained	McNeese St.	Northern Illinois	Georgia Tech
Points	42	45	24
Yards	447	535	362
Yards Per Play	6.9	5.9	5.2

Maybe not as dominating as I’d like, but not bad. We are significantly better than those two defenses (which we should expect to see, but its good to see that we are in fact). As a side note, without looking, I would assume that Kansas’ lackluster total yards stats against McNeese St. resulted from beating them badly in terms of special teams and turnovers. That results in fewer yards available to gain. The yards per play stats indicate that Northern Illinois’ defense (despite allowing more yards) probably played Kansas tougher.

Not real important though. The key for us is that we faired much better than either.

Kansas defense appears, at this stage, to be very bad. So, our offense’s performance, while very impressive statistically, should maybe be taken with a grain of salt.

The defense, however, maybe not. It remains to be seen exactly how good (or bad) Kansas is. But, all signs to this point indicate that Kansas’ offense actually may be pretty good. They could in fact be one of the better offenses we will face all year.

So, it was good to hold them to 24 points. It was even better to hold them to 17 during non “garbage time”. It was even better to see how close we were to getting stops on their TD drives. Really, we could easily have held them to 3 points through 3 quarters.

We are still a fairly young defense. We are in year 2 of the system, which is better than year 1, but I would still expect to see improvement as the year goes on, both because we are young and relatively unfamiliar with the scheme.

So, seeing a fairly sound defense that makes Kansas (probably at least an “average” offense) work for everything they had to get - overall I would say it was a good sign.

Special Team, I did not see much of anything that was real noteworthy. Kick coverage looks good. Our punt return team looks good. (Love Laskey back there, although he needs to learn to make the first guy miss a little better). Our one punt looked good. Our one field goal looked good. We did run into the kicker and allow them another chance after a miss. Need to clean that up. But, overall, not bad.

At this stage, I would still advise a little caution. We look like we might be a VERY good team. But, we still have not played a good defense, or anything approaching a complete team.

We almost had some costly fumbles against Kansas. We allowed a handful of big plays.

If Kansas is improved this year (even if only slightly) and actually are a halfway decent team, then we might be very good. If they are as bad (or worse) as last year, then we are still almost certainly improved, but maybe not as much as I’d like.

We will know a lot more this time next week. UNC is probably not as good as a lot of the media seem to think. But they are 3-0, and appear to be at least a pretty good football team. They certainly have some NFL prospects, especially in the front seven on Defense. So, we will see how the offense looks against a good defense (finally).

I’m excited, but will be very nervous for that game.

For now though, Go Jackets! And, one more time, wow.