Dawg Stats is Thinking About Actual Points

Explosiveness is basically “how good are your good plays.” The explosiveness rating averages the EPA of the successful plays. A team’s explosiveness is correlated to actual points scored. Explosiveness was the area of concern that I had with the UGA offense headed into the Auburn game. Since that game, Georgia has improved this metric and in fact leads Alabama in points per successful play (more on that later). Alabama has a better season explosiveness UGA has trended up and has improved success rate. When a team is successful on a higher percentage of plays AND improves the explosiveness – this is peak efficiency.

Here is how the East and West Champs have tracked on these stats this season

-UGA is averaging 32 successful plays on offense and Bama 35.

-UGA has 381 total successful play to Bama’s 424.

-UGA has 488 total points and Bama 512

-UGA 1.3 points per successful play

-Bama 1.2 points per successful play

Georgia needs slightly fewer plays to score points

So let’s look at this from the defensive side

Georgia is first the nation in defensive success rate allowed at 30%. Bama is 17th at 37%.

While the UGA success rate has been on upward trend the defensive explosiveness allowed has been downward trajectory.

Those successful plays allowed don’t add up to points. Now, if we add successful plays allowed per game and points allowed you can see how efficient this defense really is. It takes more plays to score on this defense.

Georgia’s defense is allowing .32 points for each successful play. Penn State is the next best defense according to this at .57. That .25 difference between Georgia and Penn State is same as Penn State and the next 16 teams.