Graphing the SEC, 2023 Week 2

For data definitions and disclaimers, take a look at my rundown in the first article in this series: Graphing the SEC, 2023 Week 1

Alright, a relatively miserable week 2 in the SEC should lead to some fun facts, even in the shorter format of this article.

For the headliner: Alabama and Texas played what some might call “a good game” ... and apparently that meant a defense-inclined matchup, because their efficiencies in week 2 are literally at the rock bottom of this list. If it’s any consolation for Tide fans — it’s not for me, but your mileage may vary — the Tide are slightly on top here with basically a decimal rounding delineation.

Remember that this definition eliminates “garbage time,” what little there was in this game, so may be slightly different than the SR’s you see in our usual Graphing the Tide articles. Speaking of, I’ll be by later with the full post about this miserable football game.

Other efficiency notes in the SEC:

• Florida lead with an astounding 79% SR over cupcake McNeese State. I suppose in a reverse-case of the Tide, this team got cleaned out in an ugly game the week prior and wanted to show that it’s a real big boy team. I suppose I can hope that Alabama does this next weekend, but these cupcake matches are showing pretty little predictability so far.
• LSU, Arkansas, South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, and Mizzou also played cupcakes, putting them predictably towards the top of this list. The only surprise there is the somewhat middling efficiency that Grambling state got off of LSU
• Oklahoma had respectable efficiency — yes, I added in Texas and Okie to “the SEC,” per an intriguing request from a commenter last week — vs. their not-really-a-cupcake. The same goes for Vanderbilt, though in a losing effort.
• Kentucky’s “cupcake” went toe-to-toe with the wildcats; Eastern KY pretty much kept up with ‘em on both the scoreboard and in efficiency. Ouch.
• Texas A&M lost big but actually did edge out The U in efficiency. It happens! The opposite happened to Mississippi state, who beat Arizona despite an efficiency gap.
• (I literally just learned that Miss State played Arizona last night. Looks like one of our SEC brethren decided to beat a P5 OOC team with a pulse after all)/
• Auburn’s efficiency differential looks a lot better than their pathetic scoreboard result vs. P5 basement dweller Cal.
• Ole Miss was hangin’ out down there with Bama, though they managed to finally win their game in the end.

And onto the Explosiveness table ...

The explosiveness table is strange. Especially seeing Alabama and Texas both leap to the top of this list after that monstrosity of a game. I guess you could say the game was somewhat “explosive” at times — mainly in the 4th quarter, and mostly in very painful ways for me personally — but I think we’re seeing more of a quirk of this IsoPPP metric.

See, it only looks at “points per play” (PPP) for plays that were successful (Iso for “isolate those plays”). So given how inefficient both teams were in this game — the two bottom teams on the prior graph — practically the only plays that were deemed successful at all were those long bombs and broken plays. So, yeah those plays were explosive and the IsoPPP is quite high ... but I wouldn’t really give that compliment to either offense yesterday (and especially not the Tide’s).

Other conference notes from this Explosiveness table:

• Yes, in the subtitle I said that Bama and Texas were both at the top of this chart and the bottom of the other one, but that’s technically not true: South Carolina was mighty explosive against their cupcake, which is oh so impressive after they dragged in this list and got pantsed last week against UNC.
• Similar to Bama/Texas, Ole Miss’s stats were flipped here, with a respectable explosiveness born partially out of inefficiency
• Florida was about as un-explosive as is possible, especially in such a huge win. This was surely in part the flipped version of the SR-vs-IsoPPP I’ve been talking about here; they were so efficient that most plays were considered when calculating the points per. Similar effect for their opponent and their inflated IsoPPP here (see: Alabama and Texas).
• SEC East “threats” Georgia and Tennessee were timid here against cupcakes, which is interesting because they were middling (not high) in the efficiency table. Tennessee was similarly very un-explosive last week, which is weird given their offense last season.
• Arkansas was really un-explosive too, which is weird given that they put up a good IsoPPP against their previous cupcake in Week 1.
• Miami was ultra explosive against Texas A&M. Hah!
• Auburn was not explosive, and was again quite bad in their game they somehow won.

I’ll be along shortly with a deeper dive on the Alabama Texas game. As always, holler if you’ve got reactions, ideas, or other thoughts here. Roll Tide.