Comparing Nebraska's SOS to Past Teams' SOS

[It'sNotAFakeID]

I don't know where to put this, so I'm making a separate thread for discussion. We've gone through this already: yes, 4-6 is definitely failing expectations and yes, Riley and the coaching staff (and they'll be the first to tell you that they're not meeting their own expectations) must be assigned some of the blame for the season. But, the losses have been close, heartbreaking, and just plain weird. But have they necessarily been to as bad of teams a our perceptions would lead us to believe?

There are two schools of thought in trying to determine how good a team is (using rankings, that is). The first looks at the team's ranking at the time of the contest; in a sense, that captures how good the opponent is now. The second looks at the team's ranking at the end of the season, which sort of captures how the team was overall. Other more sophisticated ways of analyzing the opponent strength exist, but for the sake of time, I'll take a (crude) look at each of the during the season and end-of-the-season ranked teams Nebraska has played since 2002. With Wisconsin, Northwestern, Iowa, and Michigan State in the Top 25, and BYU on the fringe of the Top 25, it's my guess that Nebraska's schedule might've been more difficult than previously thought and that the losses (although awful) might not be as awful as they looked.

2002

Penn State: Penn State was unranked when Nebraska played them in 2002. The Huskers got thumped by the Nittany Lions, losing 40-7 to a team that would eventually finish ranked 10th in the country.

Iowa State: Iowa State was ranked 19th when Nebraska lost 36-14 to the Cyclones in Jack Trice Stadium. That Cyclone team would wind up finishing the year 7-7 and unranked.

Texas: The Longhorns were ranked 7th in the country when they came and beat the Huskers 27-24 in Lincoln. Texas finished the season ranked 9th in the country.

Kansas State: Kansas State found themselves ranked #11 when they beat the Huskers in Manhattan by 36 points. The win spring-boarded the Wildcats to a 10-2 season, good enough to be called the 6th best team in the country.

Colorado: The #13 Buffaloes came to Lincoln in 2002 and beat Nebraska by 15 points, 28-13 before finishing the season ranked 14th in the country.

Synopsis: Nebraska finished 0-4 against currently ranked teams and 0-4 against teams that wound up ranked at the end of the season. During the year, Nebraska faced 3 teams that ended the year in the Top 10 and 4 teams that ended the year in the Top 15. When ~30% of your games are against Top 10 competition, that makes for a tough year. Unfortunate that Nebraska was unable to come out on top in any of those contests, would've made a 7-7 season seem a lot better than it was.

Next Up: 2003

 

[brophog]

Just a hint:

You'll never approximate a real strength of schedule piecemeal like this. You can say game x is tough this way, but not that schedule y is. You can have a schedule with 1 or 2 very good teams be weaker than a schedule of all average teams. It's just how probabilities work.

 

[Guy Chamberlin]

I do think it's more instructive to consider where teams ended the season ranked than their ranking at kickoff.

A lot of anticipated early-season matchups expose an over-ranked team that slides out of relevance.

If I'm reading brophog correctly, it's a good point. It can be harder to run the table on a stretch of 6-6 and 7-5 opponents then score an upset of a higher ranked team.

What's weird about Nebraska is that they didn't look all that different against Michigan State than they did all year. Forgetting Purdue -- a good idea anyway -- they've played the same game with slightly different results. You couldn't tell that MSU was a #8 team and Illinois a #50 team. The Wisconsin and Southern Miss games could have easily tipped the other direction. The Miami team seems psycho -- they could beat almost any team but probably won't. BYU can challenge any team and go to a nice bowl, but may not finish ranked.

In the final analysis, I don't think Nebraska had a tough schedule this year. Just a tough season.

 

[It'sNotAFakeID]

Just a hint:

You'll never approximate a real strength of schedule piecemeal like this. You can say game x is tough this way, but not that schedule y is. You can have a schedule with 1 or 2 very good teams be weaker than a schedule of all average teams. It's just how probabilities work.

Yeah and I acknowledge that this is by and large a not very scientific look at SOS and understand that a schedule of all average teams could possibly be tougher than a schedule with 1 or 2 very good teams (i.e., Boise State's schedule when TCU was in the Mountain West was probably not as difficult as a schedule devoid of ranked teams but full of middle-of-the-road to slightly above average unranked teams).

During the season ranks/end of the season ranks seem to be the important criterion to a majority of people, however (it is, at least, the easiest to understand for a majority of people). Another way (the traditional way of calculating SOS) is to take (2*opponent's records) + opponents opponent's record)/3.

There's a lot of ways to calculate SOS and I don't think we've stumbled across the perfect way to calculate it yet. So we'll press on doing this until I reach 2015, it'll be a slow go with end of the semester work needing to take precedent, but maybe after I'm done looking at SOS this way I'll go back and compare it to the formulaic SOS.

 

[Undone]

What's weird about Nebraska is that they didn't look all that different against Michigan State than they did all year. Forgetting Purdue -- a good idea anyway -- they've played the same game with slightly different results.

I have to really disagree with that.

Against Illinois, Langsdorf had Tommy bombing the ball downfield on first down multiple (failed) times that led us to eventually go 3 & out. Terrible offensive game plan and play calling when Ozigbo had such great stats when he was actually given the ball. That game was an embarrassing failure by our offensive coaching staff, and was really the first game where most of us started questioning Riley/Langsdorf's ability to see that running the ball was going to be pretty critical in this transition year, regardless of whether or not they wanted to admit it.

 

[brophog]

There's a lot of ways to calculate SOS and I don't think we've stumbled across the perfect way to calculate it yet.

I agree. Case in point, I listed about a half dozen examples in a thread a few days ago and there was a sizable difference in the rankings for just the two teams I listed. That post had at least 4 methods represented, and that's not a complete listing of known techniques.

Best of luck in your endeavors.

 

[Guy Chamberlin]

What's weird about Nebraska is that they didn't look all that different against Michigan State than they did all year. Forgetting Purdue -- a good idea anyway -- they've played the same game with slightly different results.

I have to really disagree with that.

Against Illinois, Langsdorf had Tommy bombing the ball downfield on first down multiple (failed) times that led us to eventually go 3 & out. Terrible offensive game plan and play calling when Ozigbo had such great stats when he was actually given the ball. That game was an embarrassing failure by our offensive coaching staff, and was really the first game where most of us started questioning Riley/Langsdorf's ability to see that running the ball was going to be pretty critical in this transition year, regardless of whether or not they wanted to admit it.

By "that" I meant playing to the level of each opponent in extremely close games.

For what it's worth, Nebraska had 34 running plays and 31 passing plays against Illinois, and 36 running plays and 33 passing plays against MSU.

I thought the Illini game was a crappy day to be passing the ball, but Illinois chucked it 45 times themselves.

Against MSU, Tommy completed some of the passes he didn't against Illinois.

Also, winning helps your perspective a lot.

Word from the Illinois game is that Tommy wasn't checking down receivers or using his run option as much as the coaches wanted, and the mad bomber thing was largely of his own making. At least that's how the game announcers were interpreting Langsdorf's sideline gestures with Armstrong.

 

[Undone]

Good post.

Regarding 'winning helps your perspective a lot,' I can honestly say though that had our defense shut them down on their comeback drive and we win 13-7...that's still a horrendous day by our offense, no matter whose fault it was (and I still say Langsdorf is largely at fault). So, it wouldn't honestly have changed my perspective in any way on the offensive failure that was that entire game.

 

[Guy Chamberlin]

Good enough to win every game.

Bad enough to lose every game.

Honestly, a lot of the games blur together.

 

[74Hunter]

I do think it's more instructive to consider where teams ended the season ranked than their ranking at kickoff.

A lot of anticipated early-season matchups expose an over-ranked team that slides out of relevance.

If I'm reading brophog correctly, it's a good point. It can be harder to run the table on a stretch of 6-6 and 7-5 opponents then score an upset of a higher ranked team.

What's weird about Nebraska is that they didn't look all that different against Michigan State than they did all year. Forgetting Purdue -- a good idea anyway -- they've played the same game with slightly different results. You couldn't tell that MSU was a #8 team and Illinois a #50 team. The Wisconsin and Southern Miss games could have easily tipped the other direction. The Miami team seems psycho -- they could beat almost any team but probably won't. BYU can challenge any team and go to a nice bowl, but may not finish ranked.

In the final analysis, I don't think Nebraska had a tough schedule this year. Just a tough season.

While we may not agree on much, I think you're pretty spot on here.
Miami......ehhh.....that's looking more and more like a terrible loss.