A different look at Tony Franklin's offense

by PowerOfDixieland on Aug 10, 2008 9:24 PM CDT

Greetings, fellow Auburn fans!

The season is a mere 23 days away, and if you're like me, you wish you could go into hibernation for those 23 days and wake up on the morning of August 30 ready to watch College Gameday and a slate of college football action. Who cares if it's Ball State vs. Eastern Michigan! We just want some college football action and can't wait.

Anyways, one of the things that has most Auburn fans boiling over with excitement is the installation of Tony Franklin's new offense. We all got tired of the swift downfall of the "Gulf Coast Offense" as it was called, and needed a change. Three yards and a cloud of dust just doesn't cut it anymore in football.

So in comes Tony Franklin to spread the field and rack up the yards. Everything is going to be great, right? Well, I'd like to look closer at the numbers. Everytime someone brings up Franklin's offense, he points out that our average yardage per game was 327.8 and we amassed 423 yards against Clemson. Almost 100 yards more! The thing that I think too many fans (and analysts, to be honest) believe is that Franklin's system will naturally rack up more yards because it runs more plays. So what I've done is created a table that shows our yardage per game and also our yardage per play. I broke it down by game for extra analysis:

OPPONENT        # PLAYS         TOTAL YDS       YDS/PLAY

Kansas St.      67              291             4.34
South Fla.      70              290             4.14
Miss. St.       68              323             4.75
N.M. St.        71              422             5.94
Florida         70              326             4.66
Vanderbilt      57              404             7.09
Arkansas        76              290             3.82
LSU             63              296             4.70
Ole Miss        74              420             5.68
Tenn. Tech      65              374             5.75
Georgia         65              216             3.32
Alabama         63              282             4.48

Overall         67.42           327.83          4.86

Clemson         90              423             4.70

Oh no! Al Borges' offense actually gained more yards per play than Franklin's! Now, I want to explain the reasoning and what all this data means.

First of all, it must be said that Franklin's offense was installed in just a few practices before the Chick-fil-A Bowl, and we still averaged 4.70 yards per play, against a talented defense like Clemson's no less.
Franklin's offense at Troy averaged 5.55 yards per play. That is a ton of yards per play, but we also must consider the level of defense Troy played. The Sun Belt is definitely no SEC. However, Troy faced two SEC defenses last season in Arkansas and Georgia, and averaged 4.7 and 5.8 per play, respectively. They also played a Big 12 opponent in Oklahoma State and gained 5.8 yards per play. So their games against Georgia and Oklahoma State actually helped their total yards per play average.
Borges' offensive numbers were buoyed by games against New Mexico State, Vanderbilt, Ole Miss, and Tennessee Tech. In every other game they underperformed the season average on yards per play.

So what to make of all this? In my opinion, Franklin won't be the great savior of Auburn football like some believe he will, and Borges wasn't as bad as he sometimes gets painted. Another factor to consider in Borges' offensive ineptitude these last two years is Brandon Cox. I love the guy, but he was a poor quarterback at racking up yards. He did great in leading late drives against Arkansas and Florida (and even Mississippi State to some respects) but I'm glad he's not our quarterback anymore. Regardless, I can't wait for football to start!

Thoughts?

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I forgot to cite

I took my statistics from these sites:

cfbstats.com

Auburn’s official athletics site

Troy’s official athletics site

War Damn Eagle!

by PowerOfDixieland on Aug 7, 2008 9:20 PM CDT 0 recs

Good post!

......No, Borges wasn’t bad. We didn’t have the personnel to run his offense, though. Reflecting on the numbers, and other posts I’ve read, I’m really not sure what will happen, this year. It’s been argued elsewhere, that Franklin’s Troy numbers against UGA, Georgia, and Oklahoma State were inflated because Troy/Sun Belt opponents weren’t taken seriously by those teams.

.....I like what I’ve read on the offense, this week. I still wonder, though, are the QBs rolling up those completions against young corners who are playing off? Playing tentatively? I think we won’t really know till 4 games into the season. If we’re still rolling up 5.5 yards per play in the LSU game, I’ll be sold, and I suspect a lot of other nay-sayers will be, too!

......There’s been much rehash, this week, on tempo and number of plays. To paraphrase Tony Franklin, he likes more plays, because there are more chances to break one. if you’re going to take a 2-yard loss, then just get it over with, and get on to the next play. That reasoning sounds pretty solid, but, by the same logic…

.......Suppose you chart yourself, and you’re turning the ball over 2.5 times in every game; about 60 plays. Traditional wisdom has it that 3 turnovers is likely doom in a football game. If you ratchet up the number of plays, with the same (or worse) turnover ratio, you get more turnovers. At 90 plays, you’re now up to 3.75 turnovers for the game; a likely loser.

.....For this Franklin offense to work, we definitely MUST take care of the ball. AND keep our QBs from getting killed!

by Acid Reign on Aug 9, 2008 10:07 PM CDT 0 recs

I'm not trying to say that I think Franklin's offense will fail

I’m just hoping to avoid any disappointment we might face. Any time I go into something with extremely high expectations, the likelihood I’ll be disappointed increases. I think the offense will be better this season than last, but I don’t think we’ll score 50+ points per game like some do.

Good point on the turnover margin, btw.

War Damn Eagle!

by PowerOfDixieland on Aug 11, 2008 11:20 AM CDT up 0 recs

Great Story...

I moved it to the front page… Thanks for the info… good stuff!

Jay Coulter

by Jay Coulter on Aug 10, 2008 9:25 PM CDT 0 recs

You said it yourself...

Your average yards per play comparison includes outliers for Auburn like NM State, Vanderbilt, Tenn Tech and even Ole Miss. I believe Troy last year could have hung with if not in fact beaten these teams outright consistently.

Take away the outliers, and Troy’s numbers look good. And don’t forget that Clemson was a top 10 defense in many respects. Averaging 4.7 ypp and racking up 400+ yards on that defense after only 8 practices is nothing to sneeze at.

by iamrbrooks on Aug 10, 2008 10:52 PM CDT 0 recs

Franklin's is better -- at least based on one game...

I did a quick average of the Borges offense excluding the cupcakes, and using teams roughly similar in quality to Clemson (had a winning record, at least).

Against, GA, LSU, FLA, MISS ST, BAMA, ARK, and SOUTH FLA, Borges’ offense averaged 4.26 yds/play! Compare that to Franklin’s 4.7 against Clemon, and that’s a bigger difference. (Obviously, any statisticians out there will say this isn’t valid b/c we’re only using one data point - Clemson - for this argument)

Comparing # of plays, you end up with 4.26 yds/play x 67 plays = a miserly 285 yds/game against top teams, while Franklin produced 4.7 yds/play x 90 plays = a more respectable 423 yds/game. And that 423 was with only minimal familiarity with the offense, so I think we can expect big things this year.

by brianjhouse on Aug 11, 2008 12:13 PM CDT 0 recs

Averages of yards per play...

...is only relevant if you assume that you always run the same number of plays per game. But as was pointed out, Franklin’s system increased by 33% the number of plays run per game typically during the 2007 season, so naturally, you’ll get the more desired result of more yards per game.

Obviously, comparing a whole season’s stats versus one game isn’t statistically credible, but it’s fun to play with. Let’s re-visit it by mid season and see. Personally, I’m optimistic…

by War Eagle Atlanta on Aug 11, 2008 1:11 PM CDT 0 recs

I think yards per game is only relevant if you run the same number of plays per game

The 90-play bowl game gave us a season-high 423 yards in total offense, but only 23 points including one overtime. We only had one turnover and only missed one field goal. On the other hand, against Florida, we gained 326 yards in total offense and scored 20 points in regulation. We turned it over once and they turned it over twice. In yards per play, however, we ganed 4.70 on Clemson and 4.66 on Florida, pretty much equal.

One of the fundamental goals of football is to keep the chains moving by achieving 1st downs. You can get a first down in every set of downs by getting 4 yards per play. If you only get 2 yards per play, you could rack up 400 yards by running 200 plays, but still probably wouldn’t be successful. Extreme example, I know, but I think it fits my case.

War Damn Eagle!

by PowerOfDixieland on Aug 11, 2008 1:45 PM CDT up 0 recs

But still...

We’re talking 90 plays instead of 60. That’s a pretty significant increase—33%.

While yards don’t necessarily equal points (for reasons you laid out) we’ll still play the percentages and take as many yards as we can get. But what do you think Tubs tells the offense before every game: Let’s go average 5 yards a play or let’s go gain 500 yards?

by War Eagle Atlanta on Aug 11, 2008 4:01 PM CDT up 0 recs

Maybe a better way to gauge Franklin's offense would be yards/possession

Because, as I understand it, we will be getting several more offensive possessions per game than we did under Borges (those 7-minute drives, remember?). I’m not finding those stats anywhere, but let’s say we got ten possessions per game last year under Borges and 15 this year under Franklin. That 400 yards/game looks like 40 yards/possession last year and 26.67 this year.

Just so everyone knows, I’m not trying to say that Borges is better than Franklin or that our offense will suffer this year, I’m just trying to get a better understanding of the differences between the systems by looking at the numbers.

War Damn Eagle!

by PowerOfDixieland on Aug 11, 2008 4:28 PM CDT up 0 recs