Tramel's ScissorTales: Big 12 efficiency ratings show OU & OSU offenses play too fast
"Slow down, you move too fast," Paul Simon wrote back in 1966. Those lyrics come from "The 59th Street Bridge Songs," but you probably know it by a different title. "Feelin' Groovy."
And the OU and OSU offenses most definitely were not groovy in this 2022 football season.
Which leads to a question. Did the OU and OSU offenses play too fast this season?
Or maybe it's not a question. Maybe it's a statement. The OU and OSU offenses played too fast this season.
The 2022 Cowboys had a renewed emphasis on the hurry-up offense, figuring Spencer Sanders' experience would work to OSU's advantage. And maybe it did. I don't know.
The 2022 Sooners returned to their hurry-up ways with Jeff Lebby's arrival. In recent years, Lincoln Riley's offenses played much more traditional. Heck, the Sooners were much more downtempo than uptempo.
How pronounced were the fast-paced offenses in Norman and Stillwater?
OU and OSU each had 120 full offensive possessions in nine Big 12 games.
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That's almost a full possession per game more than the next Big 12 team on the list, Texas Tech, which had 113. Texas Christian was fourth with 105. Kansas State, Baylor and Kansas each had 99.
Here's why the pace was problematic in Norman and Stillwater. It didn't work.
My final Big 12 efficiency ratings show that OU and OSU rank 8-9 in Big 12 offense. The Sooners check in at an efficiency rate of .321, which is putrid by Sooner standards and far below the established Big 12 mediocre line. The Cowboys' offensive efficiency of .258 is just awful. It's a wonder OSU scratched its way to a 4-5 conference record.
And here's another reason to curse the hurryup offenses. They compromised their defenses.
OSU finished fifth in Big 12 defensive efficiency, with opponents operating at a .306 clip. That's rock-solid defense; frankly, the Cowboys were in the company of the Big 12's best defenses. The No. 1 Big 12 defense was Texas, at .272. The Cowboys were a lot closer to first place than sixth place.
The Sooners struggled defensively, but that's not particularly new. OU finished seventh in conference defensive efficiency, with opponents sporting a .378 rating. That's close to the Sooners' .365 rating of last season and near the .362 of the 2017 Sooners, OU's best overall team since 2008.
But the defenses for OSU and OU faced a heavy burden. Constant action. They were called upon to play much more defense than were opponents.
Stat of the year: the Cowboy defense faced 129 full possessions. That's 14.3 possessions per game! That's nuts.
OU's defense faced 123. The next-closest Big 12 defenses faced 112 (TCU) and 111 (Tech), respectively. Baylor faced 95. Kansas 96.
Metrics like my efficiency ratings account for such hardships and tell the true story of a defense. But think of the collateral damage done to defenses when asked to carry such a load.
OSU ranked 114th in NCAA total defense, giving up 440.8 yards per game. OU ranked 120th, 450.5.
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Those are fraudulent statistics and should be cast into the sea of forgetfulness. Judging defenses on yards per game is the work of simple minds. It's no different than gauging pitchers by earned runs allowed per game, as opposed to per innings pitched.
Yet defenses get battered in the marketplace for total points allowed or total yards allowed. Psychological scars can develop. Coaches must go into overdrive to minimize the damage, and fans can get irrational, not realizing what's actually happening.
What happened this season in Norman and Stillwater is that the offenses did little to help the defenses, and the offenses didn’t produce anyway.
It's one thing if your hurryup offense scores 50something points a game, like Sam Bradford's breakout 2008 Sooners. It's quite another if you're playing fast and not getting the job done.
OU's offense was mediocre. Even throwing out the 1¾ games the Sooners played without Dillon Gabriel, OU's offensive efficiency was .369, which would place just seventh in the Big 12. And it's not like Gabriel was the only starting quarterback who missed time with injury.
OSU's offense was downright bad. Sanders missed 1¾ games, but even with him, the Cowboys' offensive efficiency of .275 was a non-starter.
The hurryup offenses didn't work. Even worse, they hurt their defenses.
Slow down. You moved too fast.
Here are the final efficiency ratings for 2022.
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Big 12 offensive efficiency ratings
1. Kansas State .455: Surprise, surprise. K-State has the Big 12's best offense. The Wildcats thrived with Adrian Martinez at quarterback, then thrived with Will Howard at quarterback. Take a bow, Chris Klieman and Collin Klein. Klieman fired offensive coordinator Courtney Messingham, replacing him with Klein, the folk hero who quarterbacked KSU to the 2012 Big 12 title.
2. TCU .440: Huh. The Big 12's top two offenses meet in Arlington for the conference championship. Who saw that coming?
3. Texas .432: Not a bad rating for a team with a disappointing quarterback. What if Quinn Ewers was more productive?
4. Kansas .379: More endorsement of KU coach Lance Leipold. Not only did he get the Jayhawks into the upper half of Big 12 offenses, he did so despite losing quarterback Jalon Daniels early in the season. Jason Bean was an excellent backup.
5. Baylor .374: Solid offense for the Bears. Not great, but solid.
6. Texas Tech .372: Give the Red Raiders more credit than you give Baylor, which had the services of quarterback Blake Shapen all season. Tech had to navigate through three quarterbacks, due to injuries, and original starter Tyler Shough is quite effective, as the Sooners found out Saturday night in a 51-48 overtime loss.
7. West Virginia .330: The Mountaineers won three Big 12 games, and the winning pitcher was different in all three games. J.T. Daniels vs. Baylor, Garrett Greene vs. OU and Nicco Marchiol vs. OSU.
8. Oklahoma .321: This is OU's worst offensive rating since a .304 percentage in 2013, but that season was a much more defensive league. That Sooner offense ranked fourth in the conference that year.
9. Oklahoma State .258: How bad was this offense? Almost as bad as the 2014 Cowboys (the year J.W. Walsh was injured in Game 2), who sported a rating of .227.
10. Iowa State .205: Just a little bit of offense would have made a big difference for the Cyclones.
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Big 12 defensive efficiency ratings
1. Texas .272: Whoa. This is not good for the rest of the Big 12 in 2023. If the Longhorns have instilled a defensive culture, Steve Sarkisian could do great things.
2. TCU .281: Good defense for the Frogs. Credit Sonny Dykes' d-coordinator, Joe Gillespie, hired away from Tulsa. The Horned Frogs a year ago had a defensive efficiency rating of .510.
3. Kansas State .289: The Wildcats had their moments when they were vulnerable -- OU, TCU, Texas -- but they made up for it with some dominating defense.
4. Iowa State .295: Probably the Big 12's best defense. The Cyclone defense didn't get to play against the Cyclone offense.
5. Oklahoma State .306: The untold story of OSU football. The Cowboy defense was solid. A big drop-off from the historic 2021 OSU defense, but before the season, if you had told Mike Gundy he would have the Big 12's No. 5 defense, with an efficiency rating this solid, there would have been shouting on the hills of glory.
6. Texas Tech .360: Not bad. Not awful. About where the Red Raiders always land these days.
7. Oklahoma .378: The first four Big 12 teams on OU's schedule were K-State, TCU, Texas and Kansas. The teams that ended up 1-2-3-4 in Big 12 offense. Explains the Sooners' .519 defensive efficiency at that point.
8. Baylor .400: Wow. The Bears took a tumble from a year ago, when they had a .278 rating and were the Big 12's No. 2 defense.
9. West Virginia .465: Neal Brown looks like he'll keep his job. No help from the defense.
10. Kansas .505: Lance Leipold's magic didn't extend to defense. Maybe next year.
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Projected scores
These numbers allow us to project a score for each matchup every week, using the efficiency numbers for a team and its opponent, factoring in average number of possessions and possessions faced each week. So let's check in on the Big 12 title game.
Kansas State vs. TCU: Wildcats 30-29. In all the years I've been charting efficiency, these are the closest numbers I've seen. Offense and defense production quite similar; possessions per game quite similar.
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Boo Corrigan explains why USC ranked over Ohio State
The penultimate College Football Rankings were announced, and all you need to know is the top six: No. 1 Georgia, No. 2 Michigan, No. 3 Texas Christian, No. 4 Southern Cal, No. 5 Ohio State and No. 6 Alabama.
CFP committee chairman Boo Corrigan, athletic director at North Carolina State, again conducted a teleconference. Here are his answers, with my responses.
Q. Boo, we all obviously saw the Ohio State-Michigan game and the second half in particular went bad for Ohio State. What's your view of that game? Was it more that it was a blowout 45-23 or it was a close game until it got out of hand at the end? Also kind of a second part of that, how much does the committee try to guard against recency bias?
Corrigan: “The recency bias is something we do talk about on a regular basis to make sure as we're going through this that we're looking at everything and looking at the full body of work. It was talked about in the committee room that going into really early in the fourth quarter the game was still close. That being said, you can't completely dismiss the way the fourth quarter ended with Michigan kind of taking over the game there late. There's a lot of respect for Ohio State in the room and the wins they've had this year, so again, taking the full body of work, it was certainly something we looked at, but … it's a blowout, let's move on.”
Tramel: Good to know the committee is aware of recency bias. No, really. If college football really is the best regular season in sports – it's not, but that’s what the lords maintain – then a game in September should count the same as a game in November. It was big of Corrigan to not “completely dismiss” the fourth quarter of Michigan-Ohio State. What should be dismissed is the first half. Who cares that the Buckeyes led 20-17 at halftime? No kicker ever received a point or two because his field-goal attempt was bound for the middle of the goal posts until it sliced near the end. Michigan-Ohio State was textbook domination. The better team slowly wore down the inferior team.
Q. What caused the committee to this week jump Utah up three spots as opposed to Washington only one spot, which changed the order of those two teams?
Corrigan: “As we looked at it, Utah's win over Southern Cal as Southern Cal continues to move up as well as the win over Oregon State, a couple of their losses to UCLA and Oregon. I think the other side of it is the Washington loss at Arizona State was surprising to everyone in the room. But when you're looking at the entire body of work, you've got to take everything into account. As we talked about it and talked over those Pac-12 teams in that area, it was a topic of conversation, and that Arizona State loss really stood out.”
Tramel: I can’t disagree with the committee. I had Utah No. 9 and Washington No. 11 this week. The Pac-12 behind USC is difficult to rank. Utah, Washington, Oregon, UCLA and Oregon State all are good teams, with a lot of jumbling. And Corrigan makes a great point. USC and Oregon State had excellent wins Saturday. That emboldens the schedules of teams that played them. UW didn’t play USC. However, I fail to see why the committee was motivated this week by the Huskies’ loss to Arizona State. That loss was on Washington’s resume’ last week.
Q. This is what it's all about, right, Michigan winning on the road at Ohio State and Georgia at home against Georgia Tech, I'm just curious about the conversations. You keep Georgia at No. 1; how vehement were those conversations, and why did you conclude the way you did?
Corrigan: “Well, again, a lot of conversation specifically about that, the Georgia-Michigan and Michigan's big win on Saturday. Again, Georgia did nothing against Georgia Tech for people to look at that game in a way that it was a watershed moment, if you will, for Georgia. Georgia over the entire season, the win over Oregon, the win over Tennessee, the win over South Carolina and Mississippi State gives them four wins over teams ranked in the top 25, and Michigan, even with that win, has a win over Ohio State as well as a win over (Penn State), two great wins, but the four wins versus the two wins, taking over the whole body of work, we ended up with Georgia No. 1 and Michigan No. 2.”
Tramel: Good answer. That’s why I’ve got Georgia ranked ahead of Michigan. More good wins.
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Q. How secure is TCU's place in the field regardless of outcome Saturday?
Corrigan: As we looked at TCU, we have them as the No. 3 team in the country, 12-0, 6-0 against teams .500 or better, some real quality wins that they have, and they continue to win games. They continue to find ways to win games. Their defense has gotten stronger and stronger, and really where we are this week, where do we have them this week, and we have them clearly at No. 3 this week.”
Tramel: It was a clunky answer, but that’s because it was a silly question. Corrigan is not going to speculate about the future. That’s like asking him how secure is the New York Stock Exchange? He doesn’t know.
Q. With Ohio State 5 and a pair of SEC teams 6 and 7, is that more based on Ohio State just having one loss, or did anything come into play the fact that Ohio State plays one additional conference game in the regular season versus the SEC?
Corrigan: “What we're doing has nothing to do with conferences. We don't look at that from that standpoint. It could come into play around strength of schedule, those types of things, but it's not something we sit there and how many conference games teams are playing. We try to evaluate every team on an individual basis as we go through this, and as we looked at it, Ohio State and their two good wins over Penn State and over Notre Dame overshadowed Alabama and Tennessee from the standpoint of two close losses for Alabama, a couple good wins over Texas and Mississippi State, and then with regards to Tennessee, I think that loss against South Carolina really weighed with the committee.”
Tramel: Ohio State clearly belongs ahead of Bama. Slightly better wins, fewer losses, and the loss (to Michigan) is more than respectable. But it’s interesting that Tennessee is being penalized for that blowout loss at South Carolina. The committee does not like blowout losses if it’s not to a blueblood. Ohio State will get a break for losing 45-23 at home to Michigan. Tennessee will not get a break for losing 63-38 at South Carolina.
Q. Alabama and Tennessee; they are one spot apart. Tennessee beat them head-to-head, and usually that's supposed to be one of the determining factors. Is Alabama ahead of Tennessee because the magnitude of Tennessee's loss to South Carolina and losing its quarterback Hendon Hooker, and is there anything that could change that evaluation in the final standings?
Corrigan: “Well, one, it was very much debated amongst the committee, and a lot of conversation around that. The value of head-to-head is certainly one of the criteria that we look at. We're looking at a full body of work, and when you look at two losses by Alabama, including one on a last-second field goal to Tennessee, and then somewhere in there you've got to measure the loss that Tennessee had to South Carolina, and as we went through that, that was part of the determination as to why to have Alabama ahead of Tennessee.”
Tramel: It’s a valid question and didn’t get a valid answer. The Tennessee-Bama ranking matters, right? Georgia and Michigan are in the four-team playoff no matter what. But if TCU and USC both lose Saturday, it opens the door for teams ranked 5-6 to potentially move up. It matters that Bama, and not Tennessee, is No. 6.
Q. This is maybe more of a philosophical question, though it does apply to this field. When you have a top four that are all playing in conference championship games and then you have a team or teams, the only ones that could plausibly move into the top four are not playing in conference championship games, you referred to that as a “bonus game” on the broadcast, but I guess it wouldn't be a bonus to a team that lost and then got pulled out of the top four. Is the committee open to that? Would the committee be comfortable holding that 13th game against a team and I guess sort of rewarding a team that had not played that 13th game?”
Corrigan: “As we look at that, we're going to come back in here on Friday and get together and watch games on Friday and Saturday and go back into the room and make sure that we select the right four teams, and quite frankly the right 25 teams to be ranked, and certainly that's going to be part of their body of work. That championship game will be part of their body of work. That will be part of the determination as we go through this whole process.”
Tramel: Corrigan gets a pass. This is the system. It soon will change, and that’s good. But it’s a fabulous question without an answer. That’s why the soon-coming 12-team playoff will be cool. The top four seeds in the new format will be conference champions. That means we will have five championship games (Big 12, Southeastern, Pac-12, Big Ten and Atlantic Coast conferences) determining the top four seeds. Using this season as a model, literally every team in those championship games except Purdue (which plays Michigan) would have a path to a top-four seed – TCU-Kansas State, Georgia-Louisiana State, USC-Utah and Clemson-North Carolina.
Q. Talk about the committee's discussion between Ohio State and USC at 4 and 5. Obviously you were asked about the recency bias, but two losses to highly ranked teams; what was the differentiation there?
Corrigan: “Well, I mean, Ohio State has nice wins over Penn State and Notre Dame, and again, that Michigan game was a whole lot closer early in the fourth quarter than it was, but then you look at USC and their recent wins over UCLA and Notre Dame, they also have a win over Oregon State. Their one loss is, you probably remember this, a two-point conversion against Utah in an emotionally charged game. As we looked at the full body of work of both teams, we came out with USC in the No. 4 spot and Ohio State in the No. 5 spot.”
Tramel: Sometimes, the committee opens a crack into some of its goofy discussions. Like USC-Utah, an “emotionally-charged game.” What game is not emotionally charged? Alabama-Austin Peay? And what does that have to do with anything?
Q. Just to follow up, you mentioned the two-point conversion in the Utah-USC game. Was the deciding factor between USC and Ohio State, the fact that USC had lost a very close game whereas Ohio State had a 22-point loss?
Corrigan: “No, I think you've got to take into account the way USC is playing right now, the wins over UCLA, the win over Notre Dame, the win over Oregon State earlier in the year, and you need to measure that against … Ohio State and their win over Penn State and Notre Dame. Again, it's a full body of work, but it was more a point of we're looking at every aspect of both teams and trying to make the best determination.”
Tramel: SC has three good wins, Ohio State has two. Deal with it, Buckeyes.
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Mailbag: Lincoln Riley recruiting
My Tuesday ScissorTales on Lincoln Riley spurred more discussion about the former Sooner coach.
Rich: “An interesting article would be how poorly he recruited recently, and that is why we have very few upperclassmen playing or even on the team that he recruited. We have like three guys off the 2019 recruits that even played. Very few from 2020 doing much. That is like 40 or 45 guys. And he hit on like five.”
Tramel: It’s a valid point. As I’ve written, OU has yet to produce an all-American who signed on while Riley was head coach. And none seem to be on the horizon.
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The List: Filling the SGA gap
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander has missed only one Thunder game all season, a 116-106 home loss to Minnesota back in October. But SGA took a nasty tumble Monday night in New Orleans and might be on the shelf Wednesday night when the Thunder hosts San Antonio.
The Thunder will be hard-pressed to generate offense without Gilgeous-Alexander, the NBA’s third-leading scorer. It got me to thinking. Who is OKC’s best offensive player this side of Gilgeous-Alexander?
I didn’t arrive at any easy answer. This is my best guess, but I’m open to debate. The top five Thunder offensive players aside from SGA:
1. Jeremiah Robinson-Earl: Surprised? I was. But JRE has the Thunder’s second-best true-shooting percentage (.603) among players who have played at least 125 minutes, trailing only SGA. He’s shooting 40.3 percent from 3-point range. And Robinson-Earl's offensive rebounding rate of 8.2 also is a Thunder-best. Robinson-Earl is not a volume scorer; he’s averaging 8.6 points per game.
2. Santa Clara Williams: Santa Clara is fourth on the squad in true-shooting percentage (.579), with an assist rate of 14.4 (the percentage of Thunder baskets he assists while on the floor). He’s averaging 9.8 points a game.
3. Josh Giddey: Giddey’s raw numbers are stark, to the negative. A .499 true-shooting percentage, and a team-worst 19.5 turnover rating. But Giddey’s assist rate of 26.7 trails only SGA, and he gives the Thunder an uncommon talent when quarterbacking the squad, with his passing ability and size on drives to the rim. Giddey averages 14.4 points a game.
4. Aleksej Pokusevski: Poku’s .577 true-shooting percentage is punctuated by his .426 3-point percentage, and he’s a decent offensive rebounder. On this team, that will get you ranked high. Poku is averaging 9.8 points a game.
5. Aaron Wiggins: Wiggs has made 41.9 percent of his 3-point shots, and his .596 true-shooting percentage is third-best on the squad. He’s only averaging 6.7 points a game and has played in only 15 of OKC’s 24 games, but he’s a solid player.
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Rhule seems great for Nebraska
A year ago this week, when Joe Castiglione was looking for a football coach, I put out a list of my favorites for the job.
I had South Carolina coach Shane Beamer No. 3. I had Brent Venables No. 2.
Rhule had a job at the time, head coach of the Carolina Panthers, but it wasn’t going great. Rhule never seemed like a pro coach to me. He seemed like a perfect college coach.
Smart. Exuberant. Personable. Great pedigree.
The first time I met Rhule, at the 2017 Big 12 Media Days, I was stunned. His personality is in the top five of any coach, any level, I’ve encountered in 44 years in this business.
And oh yeah, Rhule can coach a little, too, witness his Baylor days.
Fast forward to this week. Rhule, fired in October by the Panthers, was hired by Nebraska.
I’m not ready to say the Cornhuskers are about to leave their long nightmare of football futility. Scott Frost seemed to be the perfect coach for Nebraska; his record was 16-31 when he was fired in September, a quarter of the way through his fifth season in Lincoln.
But I am ready to say that Nebraska got the best coach available. Rhule was a big winner at Temple; his Owls went 10-3 and 10-4 in back-to-back years, 2015-16. The last time the Huskers were in a bowl game, the 2016 Music City, Temple was in a bowl game three days earlier coached by Rhule.
Since then, Rhule rebuilt Baylor football, culminating in a Sugar Bowl appearance, and coached the NFL's Panthers. And now he’s in Lincoln.
Rhule, like always, was a hit when he addressed the Corn Kingdom for the first time. I won’t repeat his entire 2,708-word opening statement – my editors would kill me – but here’s a snippet of how Rhule captivates his audience.
“It was 1983. I was 11 years old. Diehard Penn State fan. The year before, Penn State had won the national championship. Now some people in this room might disagree with that, but for me they had won the national championship. My dad was a teacher and minister, and we were living in New York City and had a chance to go see the Kickoff Classic.
“I had a chance to talk to Coach (Tom) Osborne (this week) and relayed this story, and I was watching the Penn State Nittany Lions take on the Nebraska Cornhuskers, and on that day, Nebraska won 44-to-6. I can still remember walking back to the subway with tears in my eyes wondering why Nebraska had to do that to us.
“Fast forward to 1994 and walked on at Penn State and found some ways to get on the team and play, and we had an undefeated season in the Big Ten and beat Oregon 38-to-6, and Nebraska went out and played the University of Miami and beat them and once again there were tears in my eyes as we finished without a national championship and Nebraska did.
“I think about last Saturday morning and my wife. Trev (Alberts) talked about grinders. Just so everybody knows who my wife Julie is, my wife Julie woke up yesterday at 6 a.m., put three dogs, three kids, drove 12 hours back to Charlotte and got there at 11 o’clock, ironed the kids’ clothes until 12:30, was up at 4, and she is here smiling. She is a grinder. She is the best.
“The University of Nebraska that once brought tears to my eyes when I was 11, that brought tears to my eyes when I was in college, it brought tears to my wife’s eyes because she has been telling me throughout this whole process since the very first day I got a phone call about a job from a university and different people had been coming at us, she has said this place, these people, this is the right fit for us. This is the right fit for our family.
“So on behalf of my family, the most important thing in the world to me, my wife Julie, my son Bryant, my daughters Vivienne and Leona, thanks for paying attention to me, guys.”
There was much more, but you get the gist. Sure, Rhule won only the press conference. But he won the press conference at Baylor, then quickly built a really good program out of a dumpster fire.
I don’t know if Nebraska can get back. I know the Huskers can’t get back to the Osborne glory days of the 1990s. But maybe the Huskers get back to being a solid Big Ten program. Maybe they can get back to being an occasional Big Ten contender.
Every year, I rank all the new coaching hires in college football. It’s early in the carousel. Lots of jobs haven’t been filled yet. Lots of jobs haven’t even come open but will.
Yet I know this. I know Matt Rhule at Nebraska will rank No. 1.
Berry Tramel: Berry can be reached at 405-760-8080 or at btramel@oklahoman.com. He can be heard Monday through Friday from 4:40-5:20 p.m. on The Sports Animal radio network, including FM-98.1. Support his work and that of other Oklahoman journalists by purchasing a digital subscription today.
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Big 12 football efficiency ratings show OU, OSU offenses play too fast
