OWH: Real talk on turnover margin

[Saunders]

Some Nebraska fans — especially the ones who really loved former coach Bo Pelini and his staff, or the ones who don't like current athletic director Shawn Eichorst — really hate hearing it, but the 2015 season was emblematic of stuff that had been happening since NU joined the Big Ten. At the time the Huskers joined, the league was a bit of a wreck, with major changes at the flagship football programs — Michigan and Ohio State — and a Sandusky-sized tsunami about to hit Penn State.

That turmoil — plus Iowa middling around while it tried to build facilities that kept the Hawkeyes competitive in recruiting — assisted Nebraska to its 25-15 record. Some fans — of the winners win, losers lose mentality — don't like hearing that, either. But it's important, necessary context.



So is this: According to cfbstats.com, Nebraska was the only Power Five team in 2015 to rank below 100th nationally in both takeaways and giveaways.
Takeaways: 15 (T-105th)
Giveaways: 27 (T-116th)
Turnover margin: minus-12 (T-117th)
Since 2011, nine other Power Five teams enjoy that distinction. None finished better than 8-5.
http://www.omaha.com/huskers/blogs/real-talk-on-turnover-margin-the-full-extent-of-nebraska/article_dd260822-4dd8-11e6-9718-9fe7bdce962f.html

Ugh........... Fix the turnover margin, and we start winning... alot.

 

[Red Five]

Ugh........... Fix the turnover margin, and we start winning... alot.

Exactly. This has been a problem for the last handful of years.

To make the next step, this needs to improve.

 

[RedSavage]

 

[Redux]

It's easily our biggest problem and has been for some time. Only injuries would rank 2nd behind it in my book.

 

[Mavric]

He spends the first four paragraphs telling us how turnover margin isn't that indicative of wins and losses. Then goes with this transition:

So turnover margin isn't generally a definitive characteristic of winning or losing in all of college football. Nebraska's turnover margin over five years is minus-38. That's the worst in the Big Ten. Nebraska has the fourth-best conference record — 25-15 — since 2011.


But when you drill down into Husker football, you'll find that it's become enormously important. And this is why turnover margin, while not definitive and reliant on things like luck, is almost certainly the X-factor in Nebraska's 2016 season.

So all the stats say it's not that big of a deal and the last several years of our history say they haven't been a big deal but now he's going to try to convince us that it is for Nebraska. And not just important. "Enormously important." Don't get me wrong, I think we need improving in that area. Just seems like an odd way to go about writing that article.

I don't know ... perhaps I'm just being too cynical. But it sure seems to me like Sam likes Riley so much that he's always going out of his way to point out how bad he has it.

Really all those bad losses this past year are Pelini's fault because he used up all Nebraska's luck:

The bill on sloppy football — all the giveaways and carelessness on offense, the slowly declining defense that kept giving up big plays — came due in 2015. Nebraska hit its credit limit. The Huskers kept handing over the credit card to the salesperson, and the card started getting declined. It was nearly inevitable — the losses, that is — that it'd happen once the 2015 team showed they more or less planned to be the same program they'd tried to be in 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014.


NU's bubble burst like any other market eventually would.

And it was much easier when we first joined the B1G than - apparently - it was last year. Yes, Michigan, Ohio State and Penn State were down to some degree. But we were still a combined 6-2 against them so we largely took advantage of that. And how does that mean anything when we didn't even have to play Ohio State, Michigan or Penn State last year? That's about as easy of a schedule as you can get.

Some Nebraska fans — especially the ones who really loved former coach Bo Pelini and his staff, or the ones who don't like current athletic director Shawn Eichorst — really hate hearing it, but the 2015 season was emblematic of stuff that had been happening since NU joined the Big Ten. At the time the Huskers joined, the league was a bit of a wreck, with major changes at the flagship football programs — Michigan and Ohio State — and a Sandusky-sized tsunami about to hit Penn State.


That turmoil — plus Iowa middling around while it tried to build facilities that kept the Hawkeyes competitive in recruiting — assisted Nebraska to its 25-15 record. Some fans — of the winners win, losers lose mentality — don't like hearing that, either. But it's important, necessary context.

He's not providing context. He's trying to invent context that isn't there. If it was the difference of 2-3 wins and we were playing some of the same teams, yes, that makes a difference. But when you're trying to make excuses for the difference between winning 62.5% of your conference games and 37.5% of your conference games, that's quite a reach.

And then he just slides this gem in there:

To wantonly give away the ball again in 2016 would be a kind of trigger, if you will. A trigger that opens the door to all of those weaknesses in the program, including a defense that has been middling-to-poor for several years.

Nebraska's rank in Yards per Game Allowed and actual Yards recently:

2011 - #37, 350.7

2012 - #35, 360.6

2013 - #39, 370.7

2014 - #53, 383.7

2015 - #64, 400.4

Not that a defense ranked in the 30s is great but that's hardly "middling-to-poor." Ranking above 50 is probably middling-to-poor but two years is not several. And after crowing about context so much earlier, he completely leaves out the context that the offenses that we faced in 2015 were definitely on the middling-to-poor side, for sure worse that many we'd seen previously. I guess he's only worried about context when it suits his purpose.

 

[Saunders]

The article meanders a bit, but the point about turnovers isn't wrong. Last summer, Hail Varsity did a study on the top 25 teams over the previous 5 years based on win percentage, and charted their turnover margin. NU was in the 20-25 range, and they were the only team with a negative turnover margin, and it was a really drastic difference compared to the other teams.

 

[Red Five]

Really all those bad losses this past year are Pelini's fault because he used up all Nebraska's luck:

The bill on sloppy football — all the giveaways and carelessness on offense, the slowly declining defense that kept giving up big plays — came due in 2015. Nebraska hit its credit limit. The Huskers kept handing over the credit card to the salesperson, and the card started getting declined. It was nearly inevitable — the losses, that is — that it'd happen once the 2015 team showed they more or less planned to be the same program they'd tried to be in 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014.


NU's bubble burst like any other market eventually would.

This isn't the first time Sam has said this. He used this analogy multiple times last year in articles and his podcast. He had some underlying stats (yards/play maybe?) that point out that Nebraska is basically the same team as it has been since we entered the B1G.

 

[Red Five]

The article meanders a bit, but the point about turnovers isn't wrong. Last summer, Hail Varsity did a study on the top 25 teams over the previous 5 years based on win percentage, and charted their turnover margin. NU was in the 20-25 range, and they were the only team with a negative turnover margin, and it was a really drastic difference compared to the other teams.

Hail Varsity has done a lot of stuff on this over the years, and recently had 2 write ups at the end of June.

Nebraska’s Decade-Plus of Mind-Melting Turnovers - Has a bunch of stats outlining how bad we have been in TO margin since 2004. And a cool interactive graph that charts winning % vs TO margin. Nebraska is the biggest outlier by far.

Hot Reads: A Comfortable Margin - A quick summary of what the average P5 conference champ looks like regarding TO margin:

The average season-ending turnover margin for a Power 5 champion the last 13 years is +8.77. As a reminder, that’s a number Nebraska has yet to hit since that 2003 season. The Huskers’ best margin between 2004 and 2015 is +5 and it’s Nebraska’s only positive margin during that span. Between 1995 and 2003 (nine seasons), the Huskers topped that 8.77 average four times: 1995, 1996, 1998 and 2003.

Of the past 73 conference champions, 82.2 percent (60 teams) finished on the plus side, 2.7 percent (2) finished even and 15.1 percent (11) won their conference titles with a negative turnover margin.

In most cases, that’s negative in name only. The average for the 11 negative-margin teams is -2.4, which is probably close enough to even to call it a wash.

 

[MichiganDad3]

What happened to Bo's philosophy? When he was DC for Solich the Huskers had 32 interceptions.

 

[Red Five]

What happened to Bo's philosophy? When he was DC for Solich the Huskers had 32 interceptions.

From the first link above:

it’s worth noting that the 2003 team’s 47 takeaways is a slight outlier. Washington had 48 that year and those two totals are still the first- and second-most for any team, regardless of games played, this century. Forcing that many turnovers is rare.

 

[MichiganDad3]

What happened to Bo's philosophy? When he was DC for Solich the Huskers had 32 interceptions.

From the first link above:

it’s worth noting that the 2003 team’s 47 takeaways is a slight outlier. Washington had 48 that year and those two totals are still the first- and second-most for any team, regardless of games played, this century. Forcing that many turnovers is rare.

I was very excited about the 2003 defense. Bohl was terrible the year before, and then Bo comes in and gets 47 TOs. I was under the delusion that Bo would only get better since that was his first year as a DC. I figured 50 TOs would be an average year

 

[Kiyoat Husker]

What happened to Bo's philosophy? When he was DC for Solich the Huskers had 32 interceptions.

From the first link above:

it’s worth noting that the 2003 team’s 47 takeaways is a slight outlier. Washington had 48 that year and those two totals are still the first- and second-most for any team, regardless of games played, this century. Forcing that many turnovers is rare.

I was very excited about the 2003 defense. Bohl was terrible the year before, and then Bo comes in and gets 47 TOs. I was under the delusion that Bo would only get better since that was his first year as a DC. I figured 50 TOs would be an average year

I don't think that his one year here in 2003 was indicative of his philosophy or scheme on defense. He basically had an incredible amount of athletic talent in the back 7, and he "freed them up" to go make plays. I think that he did a good job coaching them, but the scheme he installed post-2008 was different.

Josh Bullocks had 10 INT by himself, Super-Demorrio had 128 tackles and 11 sacks, Barrett Ruud had 149 tackles, not to mention Fabian Washington, Daniel Bullocks, T.J. Hollowell, and Jerrell Pippens. LOTS of future NFL guys running around back there.

 

[Mavric]

The article meanders a bit, but the point about turnovers isn't wrong. Last summer, Hail Varsity did a study on the top 25 teams over the previous 5 years based on win percentage, and charted their turnover margin. NU was in the 20-25 range, and they were the only team with a negative turnover margin, and it was a really drastic difference compared to the other teams.

As I said earlier, I'm not saying he's necessarily wrong about the turnovers. I just found it an odd lead in. Why spend your first four paragraphs showing the opposite of the point you're trying to make? And then not really dis-proving it. Just one outlier that really only had (possibly) a drastic effect in one season.

 

[Mavric]

And you can actually make a pretty good argument that all the turnovers last year weren't that direct of an effect on our record. If we don't completely botch the ends of the BYU, Illinois and Wisconsin games, that would have been 8 wins without changing the turnovers at all. Turnovers definitely dug us in a hole at Purdue but I would argue they were not the cause of us being way behind but rather the effect of perhaps the most ill-conceived game plan in the history of Husker football. We only had one turnover against Northwestern (granted it was a biggie) but could easily have won that game. And even the Miami and Iowa games we could have still won despite multiple turnovers.

So we could (should) have easily won 8 games without and change in turnovers and probably should have been 9 without the debacle in West Lafayette. So while the turnovers definitely didn't help, we still should have been able to overcome most of them to have a respectable season.

 

[Saunders]

And you can actually make a pretty good argument that all the turnovers last year weren't that direct of an effect on our record. If we don't completely botch the ends of the BYU, Illinois and Wisconsin games, that would have been 8 wins without changing the turnovers at all. Turnovers definitely dug us in a hole at Purdue but I would argue they were not the cause of us being way behind but rather the effect of perhaps the most ill-conceived game plan in the history of Husker football. We only had one turnover against Northwestern (granted it was a biggie) but could easily have won that game. And even the Miami and Iowa games we could have still won despite multiple turnovers.

So we could (should) have easily won 8 games without and change in turnovers and probably should have been 9 without the debacle in West Lafayette. So while the turnovers definitely didn't help, we still should have been able to overcome most of them to have a respectable season.

True, but we also played a weak schedule.

We were -12 in TO margin, so if we simply committed one less TO per game (putting us at even), we're very likely a 9-10 win team rather easily. Then, if you simply force more turnovers, you're looking at a +12 (ala Iowa) and are suddenly in the running for the playoff, all without being that much more talented.

And that's why the comparisons between Nebraska and Iowa last year being similar even though they had different records make sense. Iowa just didn't commit turnovers, and they gained a more than us. Iowa forced 27 turnovers, and committed 15. Nebraska got 16 turnovers, and committed 27. That's the difference.