ND's offense: Bad? Yes. Worst ever? Maybe not.

There's been a lot of schadenfreude-ian talk in recent weeks about how Notre Dame's offense might be the worst in college football history.  One Florida blogger has devoted a special category just to tracking the alleged statistical evidence of this dubious distinction. And the talk hasn't just been coming from the Domer-haters. Even the venerable Fighting Irish blog Blue-Gray Sky conceded last month that ND's offense "could go down in history as one of the worst ever produced, if not THE worst."

Now, I'm not going to sit here and defend Notre Dame's offense. It's been terrible. Awful. Bloody abysmal. But to claim, on the basis of nothing more precise or meaningful than an absolute, context-free measure of yards per game, that it might be the OMG WORST OFFENSE EVER!!!, is an indictment of lies, damn lies, and statistics, more than it's an indictment of Notre Dame's putrid offense (which is bad enough without being indicted for crimes it didn't commit, for heaven's sake).

Let me explain what I mean. Every year -- heck, every week -- you hear these sorts of stats being bandied about. "Notre Dame is ranked 119th in total offense." "UConn is ranked 3rd in scoring defense." "Hawaii is ranked first in scoring offense." "Texas A&M is ranked 9th in rushing offense." "Nebraska is ranked 112th in total defense." "Kansas is ranked 5th in total defense." And so on.

What does it all mean? I'm tempted to say "nothing," but I won't: these stats are generally indicative of something, for sure. Just not nearly as much as the people parroting them assume.

Yes, Notre Dame's offense is really bad, and yes, Nebraska's defense is really bad. Yes, UConn has been winning games with its stifling defense, and yes, Texas A&M can move the ball down the field. No question about any of those things. But those are general impressions, not precise statistical facts. To parrot these "rankings" -- and the yardage totals that underlie them -- without context or critical analysis, pretending that the numbers themselves have some intrinsic meaning beyond giving you a general sense of whether a team's offense or defense is good or bad, is just plain stupid.

This isn't the NFL. College football teams don't play anything remotely resembling equal schedules. Depending on what conference a team plays in, and what their out-of-conference schedule looks like, they may be able to rack up massive yards while barely trying (cough cough, Hawaii), or they may have to grind it out all season long. So it's patently ludicrous to compare the yardage numbers produced by the offense or defense of, say, Notre Dame or Washington (the #2 and #1 toughest schedules in the country, respectively, according to Sagarin) with those of, say, UConn (the #75-ranked schedule) or Kansas (#106) or Hawaii (#160). It's an apples-to-oranges comparison. You might as well say that, because Newington High School scored 47 points on Friday, and the New England Patriots only scored 24 yesterday, NHS is therefore more prolific on offense than the Patriots. It's total nonsense. Schedule strength matters.

Now, again, I'm not defending Notre Dame, nor am I blaming the Irish's tough schedule for their woes this season. Particularly in light of Saturday's loss to Navy, I couldn't do that if I wanted to. And I don't want to. Objectively, the Irish's offense does suck. But it's also objectively silly to claim that it might be the worst ever because, through eight games against eight tough opponents, the Irish were averaging 187.63 total yards, worse than the 214.00 total yards averaged by Rutgers in 2002 -- when the Scarlet Knights played only the 51st-toughest schedule in the country!

Maybe Notre Dame's offense really is the worst ever, but the "total yards devoid of context" statistic does not, and cannot, prove it. In fact, I think "yards devoid of context" is just a dumb stat, period. Why not rank teams' offenses by dividing the total yards for each game by the opponent's total yards surrendered for the whole season, and then averaging the per-game results together to produce a percentage for the whole season? And do the reverse for defensive stats? It wouldn't be perfect -- it would be the equivalent of a strength-of-schedule rankings without an "opponents' strength of schedule" component -- but it would be a heck of a lot more meaningful than what we have right now. (And Notre Dame might still be last in the country; I don't know and I don't care. My point isn't to defend the Irish. It's to defend mathematical reality from the lies and half-truths of faux-statisticians who don't know what they're talking about.)

Incidentally, although the Irish lost to Navy, they did gain 375 yards against the Midshipmen -- 309 of them in regulation -- raising their season average from 187.63 to, if my math is correct, 208.44. (Even if the game hadn't gone to overtime, it still would have raised the average significantly, to 201.11.) That puts '07 Notre Dame within easy striking distance of '02 Rutgers with games against Air Force, Stanford and Duke still to go. That's not exactly something to be proud of ("GOOOO IRISH!!! BEEEEEAT A 1-11 RUTGERS TEAM FROM FIVE YEARS AGO THAT LOST TO 1-11 BUFFALO!!!"), but it does suggest that the absolute, utter awfulness of those early offensive numbers was, as any rational person could have told you, partly related to the toughness of the first two-thirds of ND's schedule. (And yet Sunday Morning Quarterback is still, today, saying Notre Dame has "the worst offense of the decade." Yeah, on the basis of a statistical framework that is obviously fatally flawed. Harumph.)

Comments

Hyperbole, thy name is internet.

[Becky]

Hyperbole, thy name is Bob. Bob is the dumbest name ever.

[Josh C]

First off, the whole thing about "worst ever offense" is just the college football world piling on the Yankee's of college football when they are down. If it was not Notre Dame and "the great" Charlie Weis (who comes off to me at least as a collosal jerk), people would not be talking about it. The rest of the world is enjoying kicking Notre Dame while they are down and while it's not fair, it's also not likely the program will be this bad for another 40+ years.
However, while ND did get 375 yards of offense, Navy has one of the worst defenses in college football. Navy is giving up on average 39 points per game and 450 yards to opposing offenses. The week before Navy's defense gave up 59 points and 581 yards to 1-AA Deleware in a regulation home loss. ND's offense was comparably bad to the other teams that have played Navy.

I agree that the coverage of this is somewhat overdone, but ND's offense is really bad and outside maybe Syracuse, I can't think of a major program in recent history that has talent being so inept on the offensive side.

[David K.]

I did not realize they had the #2 toughest schedule, that does make me a little more sympathetic to ND's plight. And while I agree with Brendan that they have a pretty bad offense this year, i can think of a school who probably has had worse (Duke).

[Brendan Loy]

Good points, Josh. I especially like your last line: "I can't think of a major program in recent history that has talent being so inept on the offensive side." I think that's the key element. There's no way Notre Dame has the worst offense in history when compared to the worst teams to come out of Florida International, Louisiana-Lafayette, Buffalo, etc. Those teams may have had better numbers, but only because they play much, much easier schedules. However, those teams don't recruit the kind of talent Notre Dame does. As compared to other teams with reasonable amounts of recruited talent, certainly the Irish have gotta be the worst ever or very close to it. Indeed, if you were to calculate the yards per recruiting "star," I daresay it wouldn't even be close...

[Josh C]

One thing on ND's schedule. I'm not buying into the hype that there schedule is radically different in strength from teams in major conferences. ND is playing 4 cream puffs, a handfull of middeling teams from major conferences and probably 3 teams that will finish the year ranked (USC, Michigan, and BC and all three of those teams have issues). That is not really different from what most major teams will play.

The difference comes in timing. Most teams get their creampuffs at the beginning allowing them to iron out some of the issues that ND has. I think that ND might look a little better at this point if the creampuffs came first on the schedule.

ND has no one to blame for that; it's one of the few bad things that comes from its unique status as an independent. ND wants to play all those Big 10 teams and they only have openings at the beginning of the season so the schedule ends up frontloaded. Plus evey team gets UP for playing ND; ND is not going to catch many teams going through the motions unprepared and unmotivated to play.

[Brendan Loy]

I think that's basically right, Josh, though it so happens that more of ND's good opponents were having "up" years than usual this year (in contrast to, say, 2005, when an unusual number were having "down" years), so I think they'll still end up with a pretty darn good schedule. However, my point is that all these statements about ND's horrible offensive numbers were being made based on the stats through the first 7-8 games, and at THAT time, there's no denying the comparative difficulty of ND's schedule. Now, if the numbers are still that bad after 12 games, we may be having a different conversation. But of course, they won't still be that bad after 12 games, for precisely the same reason that the schedule ranking won't be as good: the schedule is front-loaded.

[Josh C]

I grant you that most of the teams that ND has played has decent defenses ( http://sports.yahoo.com/ncaaf/teams/nnx ), but I don't think that the schedule is that bad; Not that many of the teams are having up years. Beyone the 3 ranked opponents (none of which are exactly national title contenders; i.e. good but not dominating this season) Penn State is 4-3 in the big 10 (mid pack); Michigan State is 1-5 in the Big 10; Purdue has yet to beat a team with a winning record; UCLA is all over the place and one of the worst coached teams in college as I'm sure you know; and GT is in the middle of the pack in ACC. You start looking at the teams and there is no way that ND should have 1 win. ND is outclassed in talent in maybe 2 of those games; looking at it... I'm at a loss for how they are that bad.

[Condor]

Worst ever? Maybe not. But offensive? Yes...er...no. That's exactly the problem.

[Josh C]

here is a link to an interesting comparison and analysis of ND and BC's O-lines and something of an inditement of Weis' development of the O line

http://atleagle.blogspot.com/2007/09/tale-of-two-offensive-lines.html

[Brendan Loy]

Oh, I agree. "You start looking at the teams and there is no way that ND should have 1 win." Absolutely. No question at all about that. I, too, am at a loss, as I've said before here. I wasn't trying to suggest anything to the contrary... and perhaps I was wrong to suggest they're all having "up" years. But at least nobody is having a drastic "down" year, with the arguable expcption of UCLA. So they ended up playing eight consecutive games in back-to-back-to-back-etc. weeks against decent-to-good teams. But that in no way excuses or even explains the putrid performance. The only thing I question is the significane of the difference between the offensives numbers hovering around 200 and the more common bottom-of-the-barrel yardage averages in the mid-200s. I think that difference is mostly explained by the schedule to date. But we're comparing awful teams to other awful teams there, so by no means am I suggesting that Notre Dame isn't awful. :)

[David K.]

Plus evey team gets UP for playing ND; ND is not going to catch many teams going through the motions unprepared and unmotivated to play.

I think this is exagerated, especially in recent years. Maybe for the games like USC and Navy, but I don't think teams treat Notre Dame as special in most cases anymore.

http://www.latimes.com/sports/college/football/la-sp-bush6nov06,1,3516327.story?coll=la-headlines-sports-coll_footb&ctrack=1&cset=true

[Klug]

Can anyone tell me if ND stood behind Navy for their alma mater this year?

[Brendan]

Yes.

Becky,

Who is Bob?

[Klug]

Thank you, Brendan.

[Angrier and Angrier]

By the way. I would just like to point out my psychic powers from earlier in the season...

"Well, the entire ND season basically comes down to the Penn State game. If Jimmy "The Dill" Clausen gets hammered and ND ends up losing by a similar margin as they did to GT, Weis is going to be in a world of hurt. Hell, NAVY might even give ND a run for its money this season.

Posted by: Angrier and Angrier | Sep 5, 2007 1:42:47 PM"

Angry,

I thought you were an ND fan?

[Angrier and Angrier]

Not a fan, but not a hater. After seeing ND's performance against GT in the opener, and NAVY's improvement in recent years, I thought NAVY might have a chance. Little did I anticipate the season ND would have.