Stat Watch: BYU

We’re back for another year of LSU Football and that mean Stat Watch returns for it’s second year. For those who don’t know, Stat Watch is where I use the advanced stats - or fancy stats for some of you - to take a look at LSU’s opponent for the upcoming week. These stats consist of the S&P rankings you can find from Bill Connelly, and the ones from Brian Fremeau at Football Outsiders. Since this is just week one - albeit BYU did play last week - I’ll be looking at how the Cougars fared last season and where they ranked preseason this year.

Last 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): 70.6% (37th in FBS)
• Offensive S&P+: 29.5 (64th in FBS)
• Offensive Run S&P+: 112.4 (35th in FBS)
• Offensive Pass S&P+: 91.4 (90th in FBS)
• Defensive S&P+: 23.6 (29th in FBS)
• Defensive Run S&P+: 126.4 (7th in FBS)
• Defensive Pass S&P+: 96.8 (77th in FBS)
• FEI: .109 (28th in FBS)
• F/+: 19.8% (31st in FBS)
• Preseason S&P Ranking: 4.1 (48th in FBS)

BYU is fine. That’s probably the best way to describe them based on these stats. They’re slightly above the middle of the pack, while being really, really great in one category and really, really bad in a few others. LSU should beat this team, and comfortably. S&P+ has them as an 18.5 point favorite. But it could be tricky at some points. We know LSU is going to want to run the ball with Derrius Guice to start and BYU has a phenomenal run defense. It’ll be up to Danny Etling to try and take advantage of a weak secondary through the air. On the defensive side, Dave Aranda’s defense should dominate. Should is the big word here. It’s up to LSU to make it happen.