You probably don't need advanced stats to tell you that Texas played poorly against Oklahoma State. Here they are anyway.
This review is based off of Bill Connelly's Five Factors to winning football games. The five factors are efficiency, explosiveness, field position, turnovers, and finishing drives.
End of half drives and garbage time situations are not included in any of the efficiency, explosiveness, drive finishing, or field position calculations. A game is considered to be in garbage time if the scoring margin is greater than 28 points in the 1st quarter, 24 points in the 2nd, 21 points in the 3rd, or 16 points in the 4th. This game entered garbage time during the 4th quarter.
This advanced stat glossary will come handy to those of you who are less familiar with the five factors.
Efficiency
I used success rate to measure efficiency. This is an idea that was first made popular by the excellent book The Hidden Game of Football.
| Team | Success Rate | Run SR | Pass SR | Standard Downs SR | Passing Downs SR |
| Texas | 51.47% | 52.38% | 50.00% | 60.00% | 27.78% |
| OSU | 44.12% | 40.54% | 48.39% | 45.24% | 42.31% |
| National Avg. | 40.20% | 41.00% | 40.20% | 45.80% | 30.30% |
Texas used an efficient offense to give themselves a clear efficiency advantage over Oklahoma State.
Texas' offensive success rate of 51.5% was over 11 percentage points higher than the national average. The Longhorns were fairly balanced, with both the passing game and running game recording success rates of at least 50%.
As has been the case thus far this season, Texas was ruthlessly efficient on standard downs, but struggled to keep up the pace in obvious passing situations. While the difference between Texas' efficiency on passing downs vs. standard downs has been extreme, it isn't entirely surprising given the physicality of the UT's running game and their reliance on a true freshman quarterback to make throws when their forced into passing downs.
Despite their passing downs struggles, this Texas offense has exceeded all reasonable expectations thus far in 2016. The Longhorns should improve their efficiency on passing downs as Shane Buechele gains more experience.
Texas' defense did not have nearly as good of a day.
Oklahoma State's offense was fairly efficient on Saturday, with a success rate that was about 4 percentage points above the national average.
The Texas defense did a decent job from an efficiency standpoint against the run and on standard downs, but they struggled against the pass and on passing downs. I highlighted passing downs defense as an area of concern in my post-Cal review, and allowing a passing downs success rate 12 percentage points higher than the national average did nothing to allay those concerns. Texas will not be able to keep up in Big 12 play if they cannot find a way to get off the field when they force opponents into passing situations.
| Team | 1Q SR | 2Q SR | 3Q SR | 4Q SR |
| Texas | 58.82% | 59.26% | 42.86% | 0.00% |
| OSU | 47.62% | 42.11% | 33.33% | 53.85% |
Texas' offense was less efficient in the 2nd half by a considerable margin. This was also the case two weeks ago against Cal, but it's probably still too early to be concerned about Sterlin Gilbert's ability to make adjustments. Injuries to D'Onta Foreman and Chris Warren III had a huge impact on Texas' 2nd half efficiency. Both of those guys played like studs on Saturday before they were forced to exit the game, and the Longhorns are going to take a noticeable efficiency hit when they are not available.
Let's hold off judgment until we have a larger sample of second halves in which Gilbert has Texas' best weapons at his disposal.
Explosiveness
Two weeks ago, I measured explosiveness by counting the number of explosive plays (as defined by Houston coach Tom Herman) generated by each team. This method is fine, but as BON's hoops guru Jeffery Haley pointed out, it does a poor job of isolating explosiveness from efficiency.
An effective measure of efficiency should tell you how frequently an offense is generating "good" plays (Success Rate accomplishes this nicely), and an effective measure of explosiveness should complement your efficiency measure by telling you how big a team's "good" plays are.
Simply counting "big plays" isn't a great way to determine how potent a team's successful plays are due to the fact that it does not tell you if a team is generating big gains because they are efficient or if they are doing so because they're making the most out of their big play opportunities.
Bill Connelly isolates efficiency from explosiveness by using IsoPPP to measure explosiveness. IsoPPP measures the expected points added per successful play. This is one of my favorite stats in football, and would be my preferred explosiveness measure if I had a good expected points model.
This week, I'm attempting to control for efficiency by using yards per successful play to measure explosiveness. Additionally, I have included the percentage of success plays that would qualify as an explosive play under Tom Herman's big play definition (passes of at least 16 yards and runs of at least 12 yards).
Without further ado, here's a look at Saturday's explosiveness stats (warning: they are not pretty).
| Team | Yards per Successful Play | Yards per Successful Run | Yards per Successful Pass | XP to SP |
| Texas | 13.51 | 12.23 | 15.69 | 25.71% |
| OSU | 17.60 | 10.73 | 24.47 | 53.33% |
Texas' offense did an okay job of generating explosive plays against Oklahoma State, especially when one considers the fact that the Longhorns barely tested OSU's secondary with deep shots. Texas' backfield combination of Forewarrened was absolutely incredible, with both backs ripping off huge gains on Saturday.
Unfortunately, the heroics of Warren and Foreman were not enough to compensate for a defense that was incapable of limiting big plays.
Texas did a poor job of preventing explosive passing plays against Cal two weeks ago, but I was willing to take a wait and see approach before making any conclusions about Texas' pass defense. Charlie Strong's defenses have traditionally been great at limiting big passing plays, and the Longhorns were solid in that regard the first two weeks of the season. At the time, it was perfectly reasonable to think of the Cal game as a blip on the radar.
Perhaps I should have been more concerned after the Cal game, because Texas was terrible at preventing explosive passing plays against Oklahoma State. The Cowboys averaged a whopping 24.47 yards per successful pass, and two-thirds of their successful passes were at least 16 yards long. Mason Rudolph and company deserve a lot of credit for how well they played on Saturday, but there is no excuse for Texas' talent laden secondary to perform that poorly.
Texas' poor pass defense will (rightfully) draw the majority of the fanbase's criticism in the coming days, but the defense also needs to get better at preventing big plays on the ground. OSU's Justice Hill had 5 carries of at least 12 yards against the Longhorns, highlighted by a 30 yard touchdown run in the first quarter. On the day, Hill averaged a very respectable 6.2 highlight yards per opportunity.
Field Position
| Team | Average Starting Field Position |
| Texas | 77.33 |
| OSU | 70.38 |
Oklahoma State held a slim advantage in the field position battle against Texas. The Cowboys' field position advantage was worth about .25 expected points per drive. Over the course of the entire game, that works out to be worth approximately 3 points.
Turnovers
Turnovers are essentially random, and lady luck has not been on the side of the Longhorns this season.
On average, a defense recovers 50% of fumbles that it forces, and intercepts about 20% of defensed passes (interceptions + pass break ups). A team's interception ratio and fumble recovery rate fluctuate from year-to-year, and there is almost no correlation between turnovers forced over the course of a season.
While the rates at which teams recover fumbles and intercept passes they defense is random, teams do have some control over creating (on defense) and preventing (on offense) turnover opportunities. Good pass defenses can generate turnover opportunities by sticking to an opponent's receivers and defensing their pass attempts. The correlation between the ratio of defensed passes to opponent passing attempts between 2012 and 2013 was 0.43, which does imply that some defenses are better than others at creating interception opportunities. Likewise, a team with good quarterback play is less likely to throw passes that are defensed by an opposing secondary, which limits the amount of opportunities an opponent has to create turnovers.
This is about the only thing that a team has control over in terms of turnovers, as there is almost no year-to-year correlation with forced fumbles.
It's possible to approximate a team's expected turnover margin based on turnover opportunities using the following back-of-the-envelope calculation:
Expected turnover margin = ((.2*PassesDefensed + .5*FumblesForced)-(.2*OpponentPassesDefensed + .5*Fumbles))
Here's a look at Texas' turnover opportunities through their three games:
| Passes Defensed | Forced Fumbles | Passes Defensed Against | Fumbles |
| 12 | 6 | 7 | 2 |
Texas generated more turnover opportunities than their opponents over the course of their first three games of the season. With completely neutral luck, Texas' expected turnover margin would have been +3. Instead, they came into Stillwater with a turnover margin of -3 on the season.
In college football, a turnover is worth about five points on average, which means that Texas "lost" about 30 points due to poor turnover luck in their first three games of the season. For reference, Maryland's* 2015 turnover luck "only" cost them 5.45 points per game.
*Maryland had some of the worst turnover luck in college football in 2015.
Texas' trend of poor turnover luck continued against Oklahoma State, but it wasn't as impactful against the Cowboys as it was against Cal. There were no fumbles in Saturday's game, and OSU defensed only one more pass than Texas. With average turnover luck for both teams, the expected turnover margin is essentially even.
Indeed, Texas was a bit unlucky have a turnover margin of -1 against Oklahoma State, but it is worth noting that Jordan Sterns' 3rd quarter interception was slightly less costly than the average turnover. An incompletion would have resulted in a Texas punt on the following play, so Oklahoma State would have gained possession of the ball one way or the other. The only difference between the interception and a punt was the field position that Oklahoma State gained. An average Michael Dickson punt would have resulted in the Cowboys setting up on their own 47 yard line as opposed to the Texas 1 yard line. This difference in field position was worth approximately 3.75 points to Oklahoma State.
The Longhorns' turnover luck in this game was not insignificant, but it was a hardly the determining factor in the final outcome.
Finishing Drives
A scoring opportunity is defined as any drive that includes a 1st down inside of the opponent's 40 yard line or any touchdown that is greater than 40 yards.
| Team | Drives | Scoring Opportunites | Points per Scoring Opportunity |
| Texas | 12 | 6 | 5.17 |
| OSU | 13 | 8 | 5.88 |
| National Avg. | 4.67 |
We saw more of the same on Saturday in terms of drive finishing. The Longhorns had another above average day in the drive finishing category, largely due to a running game that is a threat to score from any part of the field. Capitalizing off of scoring opportunities is not too difficult when you have a 245 pound quarterback who is a nuclear weapon in short yardage situations and a pair of running backs that seem to be good for at least one long touchdown gallop a game.
As good as Texas was at finishing drives on Saturday, Oklahoma State was even better. Of course, finishing drives is easy if the only thing that can stop your ball carriers is the goal-line. Texas' inability to prevent explosive plays limited their opportunities to keep Oklahoma State from finishing scoring opportunities with touchdowns. Four of the Cowboys' six touchdowns came via big plays.
Texas is going to have to force more field goals if Charlie Strong has any hope of retaining his job, and that is only going to happen if they can make major improvements in regards to limiting explosiveness on defense.
Individual Statistics
Oklahoma State
Mason Rudolph, James Washington, and Jalen McCleskey were Oklahoma State's standout players on offense. All three of these players were both efficient and explosive, and they pretty much did what they wanted the entire game.
| Cmp | Att. | Yds. | TD | Int. | YPA | Success Rate | |
| M. Rudolph | 19 | 28 | 392 | 3 | 0 | 12 | 48.39% |
| Targets | Catches | Catch Rate | Yards | Yards per Target | Yards per Catch | Success Rate | |
| J. Washington | 6 | 4 | 66.67% | 91 | 15.17 | 22.75 | 50.00% |
| J. McCleskey | 4 | 4 | 100.00% | 109 | 27.25 | 27.25 | 75.00% |
| J. Seales | 4 | 3 | 75.00% | 49 | 12.25 | 16.33 | 75.00% |
| B. Jarwin | 4 | 4 | 100.00% | 50 | 12.50 | 12.50 | 50.00% |
| B. Sanders | 4 | 1 | 25.00% | 3 | 0.75 | 3.00 | 0.00% |
| C. Lacy | 3 | 3 | 100.00% | 52 | 17.33 | 17.33 | 100.00% |
| K. Brown | 1 | 1 | 100.00% | 38 | 38.00 | 38.00 | 100.00% |
| R. Childs | 1 | 0 | 0.00% | 0 | 0.00 | N/A | 0.00% |
| Z. Veatch | 1 | 0 | 0.00% | 0 | 0.00 | N/A | 0.00% |
Justice Hill was not quite as impressive as OSU's star trio, but he did have a nice game at running back for the Cowboys. His efficiency (in terms of success rate) was fairly average, but he was able to combine that with above-average explosiveness.
| Rushes | Yards | YPC | Success Rate | Opp. Rate | Highlight Yards/Opp. | |
| J. Hill | 25 | 135 | 5.4 | 40.91% | 40.00% | 6.20 |
| B. Sanders | 6 | 12 | 2 | 50.00% | 16.67% | 0.50 |
| M. Rudolph | 5 | 22 | 4.4 | 40.00% | 40.00% | 1.25 |
| R. Childs | 2 | 12 | 6 | 33.33% | 50.00% | 4.50 |
| J. McCleskey | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0.00% | 0.00% | N/A |
Texas
Shane Buechele was clearly out-dueled by his Oklahoma State counterpart, but all-in-all he had impressive outing. 7.2 yards per attempt and a passing success rate of 50% is about the maximum that you can expect from a true freshman quarterback making his first road start in conference play, and that should have been more than enough to win the game.
Buechele did a nice job of spreading the ball around to his receivers. No individual receiver stood out on the day as a result.
| Cmp | Att. | Yds. | TD | Int. | YPA | Success Rate | |
| S. Buechele | 21 | 33 | 239 | 1 | 1 | 7.24 | 50.00% |
| Targets | Catches | Catch Rate | Yards | Yards per Target | Yards per Catch | Success Rate | |
| J. Oliver | 7 | 4 | 57.14% | 37 | 5.29 | 9.25 | 25.00% |
| J. Heard | 5 | 4 | 80.00% | 37 | 7.40 | 9.25 | 60.00% |
| A. Foreman | 5 | 3 | 60.00% | 19 | 3.80 | 6.33 | 40.00% |
| J. Burt | 4 | 2 | 50.00% | 16 | 4.00 | 8.00 | 66.67% |
| D. Leonard | 4 | 2 | 50.00% | 55 | 13.75 | 27.50 | 50.00% |
| L. Humphrey | 1 | 1 | 100.00% | 8 | 8.00 | 8.00 | 100.00% |
| C. Johnson | 1 | 0 | 0.00% | 0 | 0.00 | N/A | N/A |
| D. Duvernay | 1 | 1 | 100.00% | 6 | 6.00 | 6.00 | 0.00% |
| D. Foreman | 1 | 1 | 100.00% | 21 | 21.00 | 21.00 | 100.00% |
| K. Porter | 1 | 1 | 100.00% | 2 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 0.00% |
| L. Joe | 1 | 1 | 100.00% | -1 | -1.00 | -1.00 | N/A |
| A. Beck | 1 | 1 | 100.00% | 39 | 39.00 | 39.00 | 100.00% |
Forwarrened is without a doubt the most underrated backfield tandem in college football, and based off of Saturday's performance, they might just be the best. Texas will be without Chris Warren III for at least the next game (and probably more), but it sounds like D'Onta Foreman will be available for the OU game. Hopefully D'Onta will be able to carry a larger load than he's been asked to thus far in his college career, because the drop off between Warren and Kyle Porter is significant.
| Rushes | Yards | YPC | Success Rate | Opp. Rate | Highlight Yards/Opp. | |
| D. Foreman | 17 | 148 | 8.71 | 58.82% | 52.94% | 8.67 |
| C. Warren | 10 | 106 | 10.60 | 80.00% | 70.00% | 7.43 |
| S. Buechele | 8 | 16 | 2.00 | 0.00% | 37.50% | 0.67 |
| K. Porter | 7 | 29 | 4.14 | 0.00% | 28.57% | 6.25 |
| T. Swoopes | 6 | 24 | 4.00 | 50.00% | 33.33% | 3.00 |
| M. Dickson | 1 | 6 | 6.00 | 100.00% | 100.00% | 0.50 |
*Notes: Sacks are counted as passing attempts and are factored into the yards per attempt figure presented with the passing stats.
Opportunity Rate is the percentage of a runner’s carries that gains at least 5 yards. It is a measure of a runner’s efficiency, although I also like to use success rate to judge a runner’s efficiency.
Highlight Yards per Opportunity is a measure of a running back’s explosiveness. You can find its definition in the advanced stats glossary that I linked earlier in this post. The national average for highlight yards per carry is about 5 yards. For more context on these rushing stats, I encourage you to check out 2015’s rushing stats.
Final Thoughts
Teams that win the efficiency battle by 5-10 percentage points win about 75 percent of the time, but that wasn't enough for Texas on Saturday. Oklahoma State was able to overcome an efficiency deficit by winning each of the other four factors.
This Texas defense is giving a crash course on how to waste a really good offense. We're going to be in for a long afternoon at the state fair on Saturday if Texas cannot figure out a way prevent big plays and to capitalize when they're ahead of the chains on defense.
