Improved Scoring Efficiency Equals Staying Power for Miss. State
If you cannot score and score efficiently then the odds of you being an elite football team decrease drastically. I know you’re sitting there thinking to yourself, ” thank you Captain Obvious”, but when you break down the game of football, it’s really all about scoring more points and allowing fewer points than the other guy which is the reason you’ve seen a revolutionary boom in offensive strategy and production over the last 10-15 years in college football.
But what is actual scoring efficiency and why is it so important? Scoring efficiency is simply the total points a team scores, divided by the total plays run on offense. Dave Bartoo with the College Football Matrix breaks this down in his new 2015 college football preview, which you can get for free by clicking here.
A quick example is if your team ran 1,000-plays in a 13-game season and scored 480-points, your offensive scoring efficiency would be (480/1,000) = 0.48
Mississippi State finished 2014 ranked 27th nationally in this category with an OSE (Offensive Scoring Efficency) of 0.43
As Bartoo states in his magazine:
"Offense rules in college football. Fans like it, the playoff committee gravitates to it and it wins games, a lot of games. Five of the last seven national title winners had top three offensive scoring efficiency stats and all of them were top 20. Every winner averaged over .40 points per play on offense, and all but one title game loser did the same. Looking back, all but one of the teams in the national title game, the last six years have averaged over .36 points per play and in the top 50, the year prior to making the title game."
This is a very powerful stat and as Dave stated, five of the last seven national title winners had top three OSE for that year. Here is the top 16 from last year.
All four participants in the college football playoff are on this list, and the National Championship game competitors are in the top three.
To make even more sense of this as it pertains to Mississippi State, the Bulldogs were 9-0 at one point last year, ranked number-one in the country and had a OSE of .497, which is good enough for eighth or ninth on the list. Had they kept that OSE, the odds of them being a playoff participant would have drastically improved. But – down the stretch the Bulldogs struggled and finally dropped to their final ranking of 27th at .43
I know that doesn’t sound like a lot when comparing .497 and .43, but in this context it is huge.
Based on past champions and even runner-ups, you need to be in the high forties or even in the fifties to be a strong contender for a national championship. Below you can see the National Champions OSE and the runners up and the bottom graph shows what those teams were the year prior and the interesting trend is mostly marked improvement from one year to the next OR already being in contention and boosting that number a bit.
The Bulldog offense amassed at least 500 – yards of offense in nine of 13 games last year and at least 30 points in 10 of those games, but it wasn’t quite good enough when you are talking about playing for a national championship. If the Bulldogs can get their running back situation ironed out and have continuity along the offensive front, this offense should be as dynamic as the one from last year. The biggest difference is going to be can this team score points in the red-zone when needed the most, or will they stall.
That’s what ultimately led to the Bulldogs failed attempted comeback at Alabama and led to their first loss. It’s really simple for the Bulldogs – generate an OSE higher than .43 OR maintain that 0.49 from midseason last year and you’re right back in the National Championship picture. It really is that simple.