Texas and West Virginia played an even (albeit sloppy) game on Saturday. There were plenty of reasons to be encouraged by Texas' performance, and there were an equal number of instances in which going full Holgore Moonbear was acceptable. The Longhorns' defense continued to show signs of improvement, and the offense played reasonably well against the best defense in the Big XII, but critical mistakes prevented Texas from notching their 5th consecutive win over a top-12 team.
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.
This advanced stat glossary will come handy to those of you who are less familiar with the five factors.
Efficiency and Explosiveness
| Overall | |||
| Team | Success Rate | Pass SR | Run SR |
| Texas | 47.00% | 43.40% | 51.06% |
| West Virginia | 40.28% | 45.95% | 34.29% |
| National Avg. | 40.20% | 40.20% | 41.00% |
| Standard Downs | |||
| Texas | 51.52% | 42.86% | 57.89% |
| West Virginia | 38.64% | 52.94% | 29.63% |
| Passing Downs | |||
| Texas | 38.24% | 44.00% | 22.22% |
| West Virginia | 42.86% | 40.00% | 50.00% |
| Team | 1Q SR | 2Q SR | 3Q SR | 4Q SR |
| Texas | 42.11% | 54.84% | 54.17% | 34.62% |
| West Virginia | 44.00% | 33.33% | 47.83% | 25.00% |
I use yards per successful play to measure explosiveness. I like this statistic because it isolates efficiency from explosiveness by looking at the magnitude of successful plays only.
I have included the explosive percentile to add context to these numbers. (the number in parenthesis). The explosiveness percentile is based on play-by-play data from the 2015 season.
| Overall | |||
| Team | Yards per Successful Play | Yards per Successful Run | Yards per Successful Pass |
| Texas | 10.28 (20%) | 8.13 (31%) | 12.52 (25%) |
| West Virginia | 11.76 (42%) | 6.25 (9%) | 15.65 (55%) |
| Standard Downs | |||
| Texas | 9.03 | 8.00 | 10.92 |
| West Virginia | 10.53 | 4.75 | 15.67 |
| Passing Downs | |||
| Texas | 13.54 | 9.50 | 14.27 |
| West Virginia | 13.50 | 9.25 | 15.63 |
Texas Offense vs. West Virginia Defense
Texas’ offense had an efficient day against West Virginia, but the Mountaineers’ defense limited explosiveness and as a result held the Longhorns to their second lowest yards per play average of the season.
Texas was efficient as always on standard downs, but they sorely lacked explosiveness. The Longhorns had their least explosive effort on standard downs of the season, gaining only 9 yards per successful play. Texas had one of their most efficient games running the ball on standard downs, led by another warrior-like performance by D’Onta Foreman. The Longhorns needed every single yard that Foreman was able to grind out to stay on schedule, because they had their 3rd least efficient performance of the season throwing the ball on standard downs.
One bright spot for the Texas offense was their play on passing downs. The Longhorns produced their most efficient passing downs performance of the season, with a PD success rate of 38%. Shane Buechele’s 44% success rate led the way for Texas on passing downs*.
*Texas did most of their damage on 2nd and long. They had a PD pass SR of 59% on 2nd and long, but only a PD pass SR of 14% on 3rd and medium or longer.
West Virginia Offense vs. Texas Defense
The Longhorn defense put together their best defensive performance of the season last week against Texas Tech, and they followed it up with another solid performance against West Virginia.
Texas’ defense played extremely well on standard downs. The Longhorns’ run defense was particularly stout on Saturday, as they stifled efficiency and limited damage when West Virginia actually managed decent gains. The Mountaineers had more success throwing the ball on standard downs, but they squandered this advantage by choosing to run the ball 61% of the time on standard downs.
West Virginia’s offense played much better on passing downs than they did on standard downs. Texas (as they have all season) struggled to limit efficiency on the air and on the ground once they forced the Mountaineers into passing downs.
Field Position
| Team | Average Starting Field Position | Net Punting Avg. | Net Kickoffs Avg. |
| Texas | 75.71 | 44.50 | 39.8 |
| West Virginia | 67.85 | 44.60 | 42.2 |
Texas outgained West Virginia by over 150 yards, but the Mountaineers made up a good chunk of that deficit by winning the "hidden yards" battle. West Virginia’s field position advantage was almost entirely the result of the field position that they gained from Texas’ three turnovers (two of these drives started deep in Texas territory).
Turnovers
This table is based off of the back-of-the-envelope turnover luck calculation that I wrote about in a previous review.
| Team | Passes Defensed | Fumbles Forced | Expected Turnovers Forced | Actual | Difference | Turnover Luck |
| West Virginia | 7 | 3 | 2.9 | 3 | 0.1 | -12 |
| Texas | 5 | 1 | 1.5 | 4 | 2.5 | 12 |
The Longhorns benefited from more turnover luck in this game than they have in any other contest this season. Texas won the turnover battle by 1, despite their offense putting the ball on the ground more often than West Virginia and their defense failing to get their hands on as many passes as the Mountaineer secondary.
Drive Finishing
| Team | Drives | Scoring Opportunities | Points per Scoring Opportunity |
| Texas | 14 | 7 | 2.86 |
| West Virginia | 13 | 7 | 3.43 |
West Virginia's ability to limit big plays forced Texas to string together long, efficient drives in order to score. The Longhorns were efficient enough to generate 7 scoring chances, but they had a difficult time avoiding drive-killing glitches once they got into the redzone. They compounded their drive finishing issues by missing a 37 yard field goal and losing a fumble on third down.
The Mountaineers also had their fair share of issues with finishing drives (3 R-Z TOs), but their ability to generate a few more big plays than Texas ultimately gave them a drive-finishing advantage over the Longhorns.
Individual Statistics
West Virginia
| Cmp | Att. | Yds. | TD | Int. | Yards per attempt | Success Rate | |
| S. Howard | 21 | 35 | 269 | 1 | 3 | 7.08 | 45.95% |
| Rushes | Yards | Yards per Attempt | Success Rate | Opp. Rate | Highlight Yards/Opp. | |
| K. McKoy | 25 | 73 | 2.96 | 32.00% | 20.00% | 1.20 |
| S. Howard | 7 | 38 | 5.43 | 57.14% | 42.86% | 1.17 |
| J. Crawford | 3 | 12 | 4.00 | 0.00% | 33.33% | 1.00 |
| R. Shell | 1 | 2 | 2.00 | 0.00% | 0.00% | N/A |
| Targets | Catches | Catch Rate | Yards | Yards per Target | Yards per Catch | Success Rate | |
| K. White | 8 | 6 | 75.00% | 82 | 10.25 | 13.67 | 62.50% |
| D. Shorts | 8 | 5 | 62.50% | 75 | 9.38 | 15.00 | 62.50% |
| S. Gibson | 6 | 4 | 66.67% | 65 | 10.83 | 16.25 | 66.67% |
| J. Durante | 4 | 3 | 75.00% | 30 | 7.50 | 10.00 | 25.00% |
| K. McKoy | 3 | 3 | 100.00% | 17 | 5.67 | 5.67 | 66.67% |
| E. Wellman | 1 | 0 | 0.00% | 0 | 0.00 | N/A | 0.00% |
| T. Wesco | 1 | 0 | 0.00% | 0 | 0.00 | N/A | 0.00% |
| M. Simms | 1 | 0 | 0.00% | 0 | 0.00 | N/A | 0.00% |
Texas
| Cmp | Att. | Yds. | TD | Int. | Yards per attempt | Success Rate | |
| S. Buechele | 31 | 48 | 318 | 1 | 1 | 6.00 | 43.40% |
| Rushes | Yards | Yards per Attempt | Success Rate | Opp. Rate | Highlight Yards/Opp. | |
| D. Foreman | 35 | 168 | 4.75 | 48.57% | 38.89% | 3.14 |
| S. Buechele | 8 | 62 | 7.75 | 62.50% | 62.50% | 4.80 |
| K. Porter | 2 | 7 | 3.50 | 50.00% | 50.00% | 1.00 |
| Targets | Catches | Catch Rate | Yards | Yards per Target | Yards per Catch | Success Rate | |
| D. Leonard | 11 | 7 | 63.64% | 125 | 11.36 | 17.86 | 63.64% |
| C. Johnson | 11 | 7 | 63.64% | 68 | 6.18 | 9.71 | 45.45% |
| J. Oliver | 7 | 5 | 71.43% | 24 | 3.43 | 4.80 | 28.57% |
| J. Burt | 4 | 2 | 50.00% | 4 | 1.00 | 2.00 | 0.00% |
| D. Foreman | 3 | 3 | 100.00% | 32 | 10.67 | 10.67 | 100.00% |
| D. Duvernay | 3 | 3 | 100.00% | 29 | 9.67 | 9.67 | 100.00% |
| J. Warrick | 3 | 2 | 66.67% | 21 | 7.00 | 10.50 | 66.67% |
| J. Heard | 3 | 2 | 66.67% | 15 | 5.00 | 7.50 | 33.33% |
| A. Foreman | 2 | 0 | 0.00% | 0 | 0.00 | N/A | 0.00% |
*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
The Longhorns had a significant efficiency advantage and benefited from a large amount of turnover luck, but the Mountaineers made up the difference by generating better field position and more big plays, and by finishing their scoring opportunities better than Texas.
