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Welcome back to our first weekly stats post of 2015! Those of you unfamiliar with these posts or new to the blog will soon come to realize something about me: I love stats like the titular character in Goldmember loves gold.
Two years ago, I did these posts with an eye toward projecting to the future in the hopes that we might be breaking records. In retrospect, it was a lot of wasted time and effort for little to no gain. So now, like last year, I'm just going to give you a flavoring of what we've done so far and where our various units rank nationally. Maybe later in the season we'll project things out when we have a few more games under our belt (and Seth Russell either is or isn't #onpace for 60 TDs in a season).
Note: Sports-Reference.com changed the way their widgets work, so I'm going to give them another shot for the offensive stats. We'll see how it goes.
Baylor Team Summary:
Passing | Rushing | Total Offense | First Downs | Penalties | Turnovers | |||||||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Split | G | Cmp | Att | Pct | Yds | TD | Att | Yds | Avg | TD | Plays | Yds | Avg | Pass | Rush | Pen | Tot | No. | Yds | Fum | Int | Tot |
Offense | 3 | 20.7 | 31.7 | 65.3 | 387.3 | 5.7 | 48.7 | 379.7 | 7.8 | 3.3 | 80.3 | 767.0 | 9.5 | 14.3 | 19.3 | 1.0 | 34.7 | 13.0 | 114.3 | 0.7 | 1.3 | 2.0 |
Defense | 3 | 15.0 | 25.0 | 60.0 | 161.7 | 1.0 | 47.3 | 156.7 | 3.3 | 0.7 | 72.3 | 318.3 | 4.4 | 8.0 | 9.7 | 2.7 | 20.3 | 9.7 | 75.7 | 1.0 | 1.0 | 2.0 |
Difference | +5.7 | +6.7 | +5.3 | +225.6 | +4.7 | +1.4 | +223.0 | +4.5 | +2.6 | +8.0 | +448.7 | +5.1 | +6.3 | +9.6 | -1.7 | +14.4 | +3.3 | +38.6 | -0.3 | +0.3 | 0.0 |
A ton of offense and a ton of penalties-- that's Baylor Football in a nutshell virtually every year. Add in a few more turnovers than you'd like and a defense that is holding opponents to 4.4 yards per play on the season, and that's Baylor Football in 2015.
So far, the big jump from last season is in the rushing averages, which are up more than 2 yards from the same time. We're also throwing the ball insanely well, with two QBs averaging more than 13.8 adjusted yards per attempt and a combined 17 TDs on the season through the air. That's pretty good, I guess. Nearly 35 first downs per game isn't too shabby, either.
Baylor National Ranks in Offensive Categories
(Big 12 Ranks in Parenthesis)
Scoring Offense: 1 (1)
Total Offense: 1 (1)
Passing Offense: 7 (3)
Rushing Offense: 1 (1)
Tackles for Loss Allowed: 9 (2)
Team Passing Efficiency: 1 (1)
Pass Yards/Completion: 3 (1)
First Downs Offense: 14 (3)
The Quarterbacks
50 of 80, 12 of 15 ... these are the kinds of neat even numbers that I love. And the 218.9 and 217.5 are the kind of insanely high numbers that I love, too. Basically, I love everything about this chart.
Like I said above, I'm not going to bother projecting things out at this point since we're working with such limited sample sizes, but just know that I've done it in my own mind, and it's sexy.
Running Backs
Your eyes doth not deceive you-- that's redshirt freshman TWill2.0 second on the team in rushing attempts so far this season. Sure, that's mostly due to him being The Garbage Man in blowouts this season, but he's got something. Don't wait to get on the bandwagon.
You know who else has something? Johnny Jefferson. It really feels like he might be ready for The Leap this year based on what we've seen, and I love his change-of-pace. He's got a top end that I'm not sure Shock can touch, and that's a weapon we didn't have last year. I also just watched him catch a pass out of the backfield in the Rice game.
Shock is Shock. There's not much more else to say.
Wide Receivers
That's a lot of receivers, a lot of TDs, and a lot of yards per catch (where, as everyone predicted, Gus Penning leads the way). It's honestly kinda funny to look at these numbers and realize that we're three games in when our leading receiver has just 17 catches (or 5.667 per game). That's one fewer than TCU's Josh Doctson had against Texas Tech. Just funny.
Baylor National Ranks in Defensive Categories
(Big 12 Ranks in Parenthesis)
Total Defense: 33 (4)
Scoring Defense: 57 (6)
Team Sacks: 17 (3)
Pass Efficiency Defense: 67 (7)
Tackles for Loss: 1 (1)
Pass Defense: 21 (2)
Rush Defense: 62 (5)
First Downs Defense: 28 (5)
I still haven't found a great place to get defensive stats, so we're using BaylorBears.com's. Eh, what can you do?
Sacks are down a little bit on the year (but trending upward!), while tackles for loss are up.