yeah. I like yards per play. Gets closer to the real story behind the numbers. My favorite one though is points per game.
2003 14.5
2004 27.1
2005 21.0
2006 18.3
2007 37.9
2008 28.5
2009 10.4
2010 17.4
2011 23.4
2012 27.6
2013 24.8
2014 26.4
2015 27.8
2016 23.2 (18.4 before Saturday. i think the asterisk is necessary for the sake of trend)
Points are also good but I like yards better because points can be affected by a lot of things out of the defenses' control.
If a team gives up a big return or a turnover giving the other offense great field position but the defense stuffs them and they kick a FG, that's a great job by the defense but they give up three points. But if the defense gives up a 60 yard drive but the other team misses a FG, the points look good but the defense could have been better.
Not a huge difference but also the two pick-sixes from Saturday make the points per game look worse than the defense was. And also points per game is definitely affected by pace of play while yards per play is not (basically). Especially when we moved conferences from the no-huddle wide open Big XII to mostly slow-paced, run the ball B1G.
All that being said, the YPP and PPG numbers we listed are fairly similar.