Diving into the advanced stats can be a great way to both feel more informed about college football and spot some potential betting trends and value before they fully emerge. Better yet, it can make you feel more informed about the college football landscape as a whole. Let's dive into the sea of advanced stats and see what we can find.
Pitt might finally have a defense
The Pittsburgh Panthers enjoyed their biggest win of the season on Saturday, becoming the first team since November 2016 to beat the UCF Knights in the regular season. The score was 35-34, but don't be misled: The Panthers' defense was a primary driver of success.
Success rate is my go-to efficiency measure. It is an on-base percentage for football, tracking how frequently you're gaining 50% of necessary yardage on first down, 70% on second and 100% on third or fourth. The national average for non-garbage time success rate is generally around 42%.
During UCF's 27-game regular-season winning streak, the Knights posted a success rate higher than 42% 22 times. On Saturday, it was 30%. They finally found some big-play success in the second half, which allowed them to mount a comeback, but Pitt stymied the Knights in a way that few teams have. They held Penn State to 17 points the week before and held Ohio to 10 the week before that.
A massively successful defensive coordinator at Michigan State, Pitt head coach Pat Narduzzi engineered some first-year defensive improvement, but over the past three years, the Panthers averaged just a 58.7 ranking in defensive SP+. Through four weeks in 2019, they're 26th. The national scoring average is a hair more than 28 points per game right now, but my SP+ ratings don't project Pitt to allow more than 25.3 points in a game the rest of the season.
Granted, the Panthers probably aren't going to score much either. They're 111th in offensive SP+, and they've shown no consistent level of either efficiency (100th in my marginal efficiency rating, which adjusts a team's success rate for down, distance and field position) or explosiveness (119th in marginal explosiveness). This is a team built to play in low-scoring games.