Stat Watch - Auburn

Last week, like the game itself, can be flushed for Stat Watch. You really just don’t learn much from rent-a-win games. We will learn a lot from this week though, with LSU going to the Plains to take on Auburn, one of the top ranked teams in the country, but with a pretty interesting statistical profile. Since it’s Week 1, and until there’s enough games played to compile enough data for this year’s stat’s, we’ll take a look at last year’s advanced stats profile for the Auburn Tigers, but also some of the minimal data we have for this year so far. We’ll also make a new addition, on the suggestion of LSU Jonno in the comments. The data will be in a table with one column for Auburn’s and another for LSU’s, to compare the two.

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, here and here:

This Season:

Last season LSU and Auburn were teams with similar profiles, but Auburn just did everything a tick better. LSU did great at some of the individual unit levels on offense, but overall was a solid, but not great offense. Auburn was the same, but a bit better. LSU was a great defense, but Auburn was better, maybe the best in country. They were the best defense in the country against the pass, which is where things could get dicey for LSU this weekend. Much of this is due to how dominant their front seven is and how they force the offense into uncomfortable situations and tee off. But with LSU’s offensive line struggling the way it has, that’s no comfort. LSU’s defense projects to keep them in the game though, as they rank higher than Auburn this year even with the very small sample. With LSU’s front seven being what it is, that’s probably where the game will be decided. Which front seven is better and can force the team’s decent but iffy passing games into mistakes.