Category Archives: Football

That’s a lot of alphabet soup in the title. FPI (Football Power Index) is an ESPN metric; as such you’ll see it a lot on their coverage, in playoff conversations, etc. S&P+ is a metric used by Bill Connelly at SB Nation and Football Outsiders, measuring what it believes to be the four factors most critical to success (efficiency, explosiveness, field position, and finishing drives) plus turnovers.

Both are useful, among many other ways, in their projected win probabilities which update each week. Bill Connelly released his excellent 2017 Tennessee preview today, which gives us a look at S&P+’s projected odds for Tennessee each week. An FPI projection for Tennessee is also available at ESPN.com.

Before diving into their numbers, think of it this way for your own odds:  what percentage chance would you give Tennessee to win each game?

Add up all those percentages, and you’ll get your projection for Tennessee’s record this year. It’s one thing to say you think the Vols should go a generic 9-3 or 5-7. This way of thinking it through usually involves statements like, “Missouri, we’ll beat them.” The Vols should be favored, no doubt, but there’s a difference in assuming an automatic win (of which there are virtually none in the SEC anymore) and saying you give Tennessee an 85% chance.

The Vols are favored in nine games by both FPI and S&P+. But neither projects the Vols to go 9-3. This is because the percentages on so many games are close enough to 50%, the most likely outcome is the Vols will lose one or two they’re actually favored to win. This is what happens to almost everyone: how many power conference teams who were favored in at least six games never lost to an underdog? Last year, the answer was four:  Georgia Tech, Nebraska, Penn State, and Southern Cal. Saying you think Butch Jones will lose one he shouldn’t is basically saying you think Butch Jones is like most coaches in college football (Jones is 27-6 as a favorite at Tennessee and has covered the spread as a favorite better than anyone other than Missouri in the SEC). Upsets happen.

When you add the percentages, FPI projects the Vols to finish around 8-4; S&P+ projects a finish around 7-5. It’s an interesting neutral perspective. Here’s the comparison with Tennessee’s win probability for each game:

Note the differences:

• How much of a toss-up is Georgia Tech? S&P+ puts it squarely in that category, giving the Vols a 56% chance to win. FPI is much more bullish on the Vols at 68%; other than the 18-point swing in their LSU projections, this is the biggest difference on the board. Vegas has the Vols as a 3.5 point favorite, so I’d say it qualifies as a toss-up.
• I think S&P+’s odds for Florida are too low. Tennessee has had the better team in this match-up three years in a row, and has recruited as well or better than the Gators in that span. Maybe Florida gets elite quarterback play from Malik Zaire to make this difference; I’m not saying the Vols should be favored, but if they played 10 times I think Tennessee wins more than three.
• Everything about the Georgia game suggests a toss-up. And history is the strongest indicator there:  the last six have been decided by one possession, three of the last four on the final play of the game.
• What is Tennessee’s most difficult game after Alabama, LSU, Florida, and Georgia? FPI says it’s at Kentucky (60%). S&P+ gives the nod to Georgia Tech, but by only a singe percentage point over Kentucky (57%). No one likes the timing of that trip to Lexington the week after Tuscaloosa.

If you blindly assume the Vols will win all the games they’re favored in, you’re probably thinking 9-3 or better. If you blindly assume every game other than Alabama and the non-power-conference games are true toss-ups, you’re probably thinking 7-5 or worse. I think the latter assumption is safer, but the truth is usually in the middle. And in this case, the data can support what I believe will be the majority projection of 8-4.

Earlier today Joel had an informative post using Phil Steele’s injury data from last year. The fact that Tennessee led the nation in starts lost to injury last season shouldn’t surprise any Vol fans. But seeing the data presented in this format does give some additionally helpful perspective:

• Tennessee lost 52 starts to injury last year. Only the Vols and Syracuse (50) lost more than 44.
• The median starts lost last year was around 20. This means Tennessee was more than two-and-a-half times less fortunate than the average team with injury luck last season.
• The Vols did this while facing what Steele ranked in his magazine as the 17th toughest schedule in the nation. Shout out to Syracuse, who lost 50 starters while facing the 2nd toughest schedule in the nation (Clemson, Florida State, and Louisville are all in the ACC Atlantic, plus they drew (and beat) Virginia Tech from the Coastal).

“Injuries are a part of football,” you’ll say. Of course they are. But this is the most helpful metric I’ve seen to show how abnormal Tennessee’s season was last year. Every team deals with injuries; no one but Syracuse dealt with this level of attrition, then had to play that schedule.

Injuries are not an excuse, but they are reality. The same is already true for the 2017 Vols with potential starter Chance Hall out for the year. The start and the finish last year left little room for grace and understanding, and this too is simple reality. But perhaps, if the 2017 Vols are able to do something this year we can all celebrate, we might be able to look back on 2016 with at least a little more understanding.

With a more manageable rhythm to the schedule, fewer expectations carrying a decade’s worth of weight, and significantly better odds on the injury front, 2017 should have a chance to be a healthier experience in more ways than one.

A few days ago, Phil Steele posted a ranking of all 128 college football teams by how many starts they lost to injury last season. It will come as no surprise to Vols fans that Tennessee is near the top (or bottom, depending on how you look at it) of the list.

Because Steele’s list is sorted by the fewest starts lost to most, I have taken the liberty of re-ordering it by most to least. The entire re-sorted list can be found here. After re-sorting, here are the top 17:

So what?

The purpose of posting this isn’t to prove that the 2016 season was as bad as it seemed in terms of injuries, although it does do an especially nice job of that. No, the point is to figure out what all of it might mean for the upcoming season. There, Steele comes through again.

According to Steele, the most important conclusion he’s drawn from analyzing this data is this: Over the past decade, there have been 145 teams that both (1) lost 34 starts or more, and (2) had nine or fewer wins. Of those 145 teams, 69% of them did as well or better (measured by win/loss record) the following year, and 57.9% of them did better.

And now you know why I limited the above table to the Top 17. All of them meet the criteria this year that suggests they will do as well or better this fall.

What about NOT having injuries last year?

The other side of the continuum is also what you’d expect, according to Steele. Of 61 teams that lost only five or fewer starts the prior season, 77% had the same or worse record the following year, and 65.6% had worse records.

Not that it matters much to Vols fans, but the teams on the other end of the spectrum are Western Michigan, Louisiana Tech, and . . . Ohio State. The Buckeyes, much like Alabama, may have so much talent on their roster that they are essentially vaccinated against the peril of injuries, but we’ll see.

What does it mean for the Vols in 2017?

So, whether it’s luck or something else, teams that suffer a lot of injuries in one season generally do better the next year, and teams that don’t, generally do worse.

“Generally” is the key word here, of course. If the trend holds, five (31%) of the 17 teams in table up top will still have worse records this season than last, and the Vols could well be one of them.

Plus, college football is a game of relativity. Being who you are matters, but so does playing who you play. So where do the Vols’ 2017 opponents fall on this list heading into the season?

Florida, Missouri, and LSU are positioned to bounce back from the injury bug, much the same as the Vols. Assuming we’re not fretting too much over UMass, everyone else seems somewhat vulnerable on this front, though.

Steele’s data seems to suggest that there’s something more to injuries than just sheer luck, which makes sense. Running full speed into adversity has a way of getting your attention and forcing you to address it, and this data is pretty good evidence that when you have a lot of injuries, you respond by emphasizing injury prevention the following season, and by doing so you improve the situation.

We’ll have to wait and see, of course, but if the 2017 Tennessee Volunteers follow the trend, they could be in for an exciting season.

The Vols are ranked in the preseason coaches’ poll for the third year in a row, just sliding in at #24. But the more relevant note for Tennessee could be the positioning of the other SEC teams in the poll.

The initial poll has Alabama in the top spot, then four SEC teams between 12-16 (LSU, Auburn, Georgia, Florida). Meanwhile the Big Ten has four teams in the Top 10. Arguments over conference supremacy aren’t settled in the preseason poll. But the trend in both leagues does not project well for the SEC when it comes to bowl selections.

The conversation on which league is better usually centers on who’s at the top. But last year there was a significant difference in who’s at the bottom. In S&P+, the SEC’s worst team in 2016 was South Carolina at 79th. The Gamecocks were 6-7. Meanwhile the Big Ten had four teams – 28.5% of the conference – finish worse than that (Maryland 87th, Illinois 95th, Purdue 105th, Rutgers 114th). Illinois and Purdue were 3-9 (as was Michigan State); Rutgers was 2-10.

Being a top-heavy league doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a better league. But it does give your teams a much better chance to make the New Year’s Six.

This year the College Football Playoff semifinals are in New Orleans and Pasadena, which takes almost all the automatic bids to New Year’s Six games off the table. Last year Alabama made the playoff, but the Sugar Bowl was required to take the next best SEC team; thus Auburn got in at 8-4 (and Tennessee would have gotten in at 9-3 had they beaten Vanderbilt). But with the Sugar Bowl in the playoff, only the SEC Champion is required to be taken…and if that champion is Alabama, as most project, and the Tide are in the playoff, the league could be shut out of the New Year’s Six bowls entirely.

And if that sounds drastic? It’s exactly what will happen if the final College Football Playoff poll looks like the preseason coaches’ poll.

You would have something like this:

• Sugar Bowl Semifinal: #1 Alabama vs #4 Southern Cal
• Rose Bowl Semifinal:  #2 Ohio State vs #3 Florida State
• Orange Bowl:  #5 Clemson vs #6 Penn State
• Fiesta Bowl:  #7 Washington vs #9 Michigan
• Cotton Bowl:  #8 Oklahoma vs #10 Wisconsin
• Peach Bowl: #11 Oklahoma State vs #21 South Florida (group of five)

Four Big Ten teams in the playoff/New Year’s Six. And only Alabama from the SEC. This would leave the rest of the league scrambling for the Citrus Bowl, then a bunch of 8-4 again in the SEC’s Group of Six (Belk, Liberty, Music City, Outback, Taxslayer, Texas).

The last time the semifinals were in the Sugar Bowl in 2014, the SEC put both Ole Miss and Mississippi State in the New Year’s Six as at-large selections. This put Missouri, the league’s fourth-highest-ranked team, in the Citrus Bowl. But the last two years, the Sugar Bowl has had to go outside the Top 11 (#12 Ole Miss in 2015, #14 Auburn in 2016) to fill its automatic bid. If that happens again this year, the league could get shut out of the New Year’s Six.

“Four Big Ten teams in the Top 10 will never happen,” you say? They got four in the top eight last year. While Michigan, Ohio State, and Penn State continue to round-robin each other, Wisconsin (presumably) gets the winner in the conference title game; this year they face only Michigan of those three in the regular season. Meanwhile all four get at least two games with the league’s worst with Maryland and Rutgers in the east division and Illinois and Purdue in the west.

The SEC, on the other hand, has a much higher floor (which helps to prevent a higher ceiling). There are no free wins; Tennessee can attest to that. We continue to point out that while Alabama is 40-4 the last three years, look at the next eight SEC teams:

The nature of the beast has turned cannibalistic:  everyone is 8-4 and unhappy. And this year we might feel it even more potently come bowl season:  if the SEC doesn’t get a second team in the New Year’s Six, one of these teams could be headed to the Birmingham Bowl.

In this year especially with the Sugar and Rose out of play, the New Year’s Six will truly take the next best/highest-ranked teams in college football. Will the second-best team in the SEC have a clean enough record to make it?

Yesterday, we ranked the offensive players by which of them was most important to keep healthy. Today, we’ll do the same for defensive players. As we said yesterday, our hope is that no one gets hurt. It’s football, though, and injuries are part of the game, and some position groups are more vulnerable to injuries than others. So while we hope no one misses time, here’s a list of the defensive guys the team will miss the most if they suffer an injury.

6. Shaq Wiggins/Emmanuel Moseley/Rashaan Gaulden/Nigel Warrior

It’s not that these guys aren’t important; they are. And it’s not that they didn’t struggle at times last season; with the exception of Shaq Wiggins (who wasn’t here last year), they did. The relative security we have in the secondary is found (1) in numbers and talent, and (2) in the fact that we believe that the problems last year were due to coaching, which has hopefully been fixed in the offseason.

There are plenty of bodies — in addition to the four guys listed above and Todd Kelly Jr. (discussed below), the unit includes 4-stars Justin Martin, Evan Berry, Micah Abernathy, Marquill Osborne, and Maleik Gray. There are also six other 3-star players in the unit. We’re crossing our fingers that the coaching change in the secondary is going to filter its way through the entire secondary and improve their deep ball coverage across the board. So this unit should not only be improved, they should have the bodies and the talent to withstand normal injury attrition.

5. Jonathan Kongbo/Darrell Taylor

There is a lot of attention on these guys because they’re replacing Derek Barnett and Corey Vereen, but as we’ve said before, the guys behind the guys who are gone are talented. The defensive end position, though, is still not quite deep enough to consider it invulnerable to injury. If either Kongbo or Taylor miss time, Kyle Phillips at least has the resume to presumably step in and contribute without too much drop off, but behind those three, the team would have to look to a group of 3-star freshmen.

4. Todd Kelly Jr.

As I said a minute ago, the secondary is loaded with talent, bodies, and new purpose. Even so, Kelly is the leader back there, and if he goes missing the unit will feel it. The blossoming promise of Nigel Warrior, especially, seems to be yoked to Kelly’s leadership. He needs to stay healthy to keep the unit functioning as one.

3. Kahlil McKenzie/Kendal Vickers

We all have recurring nightmares of life without defensive tackles after last season, but really, the line should be strong and deep enough to withstand usual injury attrition. Assuming Shy Tuttle makes it back to full strength by the beginning of the season, the tackle spots should have at least five bodies available in Vickers, McKenzie, Tuttle, Alexis Johnson, and Quay Picou. And then there’s that group of freshmen that the team can tap into if needed. That said, we witnessed the importance of having plenty of big healthy bodies in the middle last year, so seeing any d-tackle go down will likely trigger flashbacks.

2. Cortez McDowell; and

1. Darrin Kirkland Jr.

The Tennessee linebacking corps really struggled at times last year, although that could have been just what linebackers look like when they’re backing up a defensive line without defensive tackles. Regardless, Kirkland is the leader of the defense, and the team needs him both from a leadership/alignment standpoint as well as a talent standpoint. McDowell, too, is important as the likely second guy on the unit.

There are a lot of experienced and talented guys available, starting with senior Colton Jumper, who not only filled in when the starters were out last year, but played really well. Also available are 4-star sophomores Daniel Bituli and Quart’e Sapp, 3-star Elliott Berry, and 4-star Dillon Bates. Hybrid linebacker/defensive end Austin Smith is also available, and a promising freshmen class is led by 4-star Will Ignont.

Still, if the linebacking unit didn’t appear to do very well last season, it could be because the team played only three games with its preferred starting lineup at the position: Appalachian State (Jalen Reeves-Maybin and Kirkland), Virginia Tech (same), and Nebraska (Kirkland and McDowell). The remaining games featured the following combinations at ‘backer: JRM/Jumper (Ohio, Florida) (and JRM actually missed most of Florida), McDowell/Jumper (Georgia, Texas A&M, Vanderbilt), Berry/Jumper (Alabama), Kirkland/Jumper (South Carolina), and Kirkland/Berry (Tennessee Tech, Kentucky, Missouri).

So, the only time Kirkland and McDowell started together was the bowl game against Nebraska. The good news is that the other guys got a lot of experience and can rightly be referred to as returning starters. But it’s extremely important that Kirkland and McDowell remain healthy this fall.