TOP is 22 to 8.
- Thread starter dgibbons
- Start date
almost 50% more than they should be on the field. I'd try Hobbs at DE during this game. They still need some large DE's. Hope they see the field next year
It's frustrating for the fan when you don't possess the ball, but it's really only correlated with actually winning; not a strong causal relationship.
What the hell is that? There's a direct correlation between the defense being on the field so much and their hands on hips and lungs pumping. Would you admit to that?
It's like having more points than the other team--that's not a cause, it's a result.
In this case and in this game.... the huge disparity in TOP hasn't played a part? Don't attempt to gaslight me. Please.
I linked to an article which explains this much better than I can probably articulate, but basically drive success rate has a strong causal link to winning, TOP not so much. If we had scored TDs every time we had reached the red zone in this game, we'd be comfortably ahead despite the TOP disparity.
Were talking about this game. I'm not talking about Alabama having slightly less TOP than all their opponents. I'm aware of the stats but the are not 78%-22%. What was our TOP in 2008'-2009'?
In this game, had we scored touchdowns on all of our redzone drives we'd be up 35-31 (with 3:50 left) even allowing for the short field we have them. TOP has little to do with this. If a defense is good, they play well even if they are on the field a lot, and if a defense is poor, in game rest doesn't help. The scatter plots in the article I linked to demonstrate this.
If you look at stats...the lowest TOP average is 26....not 18:36. Don't tell that we had more TOP it wouldn't of helped win the game. If a defense is bad...it's best not to halve them on the field for 41 minutes a game.
Did you notice that your scatterplots had a range of 27-33? So you're talking about a +/- differential of about 6 minutes. That's all fine and good for your typical NFL game where TOP doesn't vary that much. This game doesn't even come close to fitting into the scatterplot. Also, your r^2 on the correlation would be positive in that scatterplot, which indicates there is an effect of TOP on win %.
Why would you have to put this on a scatterplot in order to know this? Lert's do a scatterplot that includes 16-20 minutes per game and see what the winning percentage is there. You wouldn't have to be Richard Feynman to come up with a decent hypothesis.
I never said TOP is meaningless, only it isn't a cause of winning. To say better TOP would have helped us win this game, (shrug) I guess. It's akin to yards gained/allowed. Better teams tend to measure up well in these statistics, but teams win because they produce more positive drive outcomes than their opponents. Bottom line for the bowl game, had we had a couple of drives be more successful (on O or D) we would have won; independent of TOP.
None of the CFP participants rank in the top 25 in TOP (Ohio State is 30 https://www.teamrankings.com/college-football/stat/average-time-of-possession-net-of-ot).
Oregon was notoriously poor in this statistic under Chip Kelly yet wildly successful in terms of W/L.
AF does well in TOP because they run the ball a lot, and that is really the only thing TOP tends to reliably indicate (ie running the ball a lot causes a better TOP rank).
None of the CFP participants rank in the top 25 in TOP (Ohio State is 30 https://www.teamrankings.com/college-football/stat/average-time-of-possession-net-of-ot).
Oregon was notoriously poor in this statistic under Chip Kelly yet wildly successful in terms of W/L.
AF does well in TOP because they run the ball a lot, and that is really the only thing TOP tends to reliably indicate (ie running the ball a lot causes a better TOP rank).
There is literally nobody on this thread who believes TOP and W/L are uncorrelated. Just some egos trying to save face.
