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STAT Watch: Florida

Using the fancy stats to take a look at the Gators

By Jake Nazar
NCAA Football: South Carolina at Florida Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports

I actually wrote a STAT Watch piece for the Florida game back in October, when the game was supposed to be played. Thanks to Jeremy Foley, I missed out on those page hits then. But here we are nonetheless. Last week the stats indicated Arkansas maybe could pose a threat for LSU with their passing game, but if the Tigers were ready to go they’d come out comfortable winners. It was even better than that for LSU as they put in a completely dominant performance. Now we shift our focus to how the Gators match up for this weekend’s game.

This Season:

A note on these stats: The offensive and defensive S&P+ marks are calculated as adjusted scoring averages and for the situational ratings, above 100 is good and below 100 is bad. Links to an explanation on the various stats here: http://www.footballoutsiders.com/stats/ncaa

http://www.footballoutsiders.com/stats/fei

http://www.footballoutsiders.com/stats/fplus

  • S&P+ (Percentile): 84.8% (17th in FBS)
  • Offensive S&P+: 25.1 (90th in FBS)
  • Offensive Run S&P+: 88.4 (115th in FBS)
  • Offensive Pass S&P+: 102.0 (64th in FBS)
  • Defensive S&P+: 13.7 (4th in FBS)
  • Defensive Run S&P+: 126.4 (11th in FBS)
  • Defensive Pass S&P+: 127.5 (8th in FBS)
  • FEI: .074 (43rd in FBS)
  • F/+: 22.4% (29th in FBS)

lorida is not good. The defense is good. It’s great, in fact. They’re great against both the run and the pass. It’s great from both an explosiveness and per play success standpoint, as they rank high in IsoPPP and Success Rate. They force negative plays pretty well in addition. It won’t be easy for LSU to score a lot on this Florida defense, although they did hang 28 offensive points on the Gators last year. The issue for UF is the offense. Which is just absolutely dreadful. They run it about as poorly as any team in America and while the passing was better, it’s still pretty poor. And now they’re using a backup QB. There is just nothing they do well. S&P likes them more than FEI and F/+ because they play very good special teams, but overall they’re not rated particularly highly in those metrics. S&P+ has LSU as an 11 point favorite for the game and that seems like a fair line, but I think if LSU can pierce the Florida defense the way they did last year this could turn into a rout. I don’t think Florida’s offense can get anything going, particularly with a back-up QB. And the stats back that up.