Analytics: Recap of Wisconsin Football vs. Buffalo
Analytics deep dive from the Buffalo game.
A win is a win, and for Wisconsin Football, that is no different for their Week 1 Performance vs. Buffalo. It certainly wasn’t as clean and dominant a win as some were expecting. The Offense struggled in the 1st half, with 4/6 Drives ending with No Scores & 3/6 not getting into Buffalo territory. The Defense was solid, but again, just like with the Offense, it wasn’t DOMINANT. They gave up an easy scoring drive following UW’s first score and let up a FG going into halftime that, coupled with Buffalo receiving the 2H kickoff, definitely sapped some gaining UW momentum.
The Second Half was a much different picture. UW outscored Buffalo 24-7, and that 7 Points was due to a late 4Q INT from Tanner Mordecai, leaving the Bulls with a fantastic starting field position inside the UW 15. Outside of that, Wisconsin played phenomenally in the 2H and the 3Q in particular. They had 217 Rushing Yards in the 2H, by my count, to go along with 3 Rushing TDs! And 4/7 drives resulted in scores, almost a complete inverse of the first half.
Without that late pick from Mordecai, I believe the narrative would be very different about this Week 1 Performance. Instead of a hair-on-fire attitude about Mordecai and a narrative building that him and this offense aren’t up to snub, we’d be singing a much different tune.
Alas…he threw it, and everyone is thinking about pulling out their hair preemptively. So, let’s dive into the analytics to potentially rid you of that thought!!
Play Calling Distribution:
1st Down:
Didn’t see a ton of PA/RPO passes on 1st Down, and I think this speaks to what the gameplan was offensively. Very vanilla. Pretty basic concepts.
2nd Down:
Copy and paste through each down and the Play Calling looked similar from a Play-Type standpoint. We didn’t see a ton of PA/RPO passes on any down. Very vanilla, very basic concepts, and we still put up 38 Points!!!
3rd Down:
A little more Passing on 3rd down, which makes sense as our AVG Yards-To-Go was 7.33 on 3rd Down. We’re not going to run the ball often in those situations. We didn’t see a ton of PA/RPO passes. This makes sense with 3rd & Longs because it won’t have the same intended impact.
EPA x Down For Wisconsin Football:
1st Down:
2nd Down:
3rd Down:
UW Ran the heck out of the Football, as you can see here. Only on 3rd downs, which we know were 3rd & Longs mostly, and runs on those downs without picking up the 1st quite negatively impact EPA. Did Running the ball “hurt” us as an offense!! Incredible stuff!
But ask yourself, why might that be???