Saturday's contest against Texas Tech was a good illustration of the value of play-by-play metrics relative to metrics that only consider the final score of a game. Texas' 8-point margin of victory belied the fact that they completely dominated the Red Raiders. The Longhorns had a massive yards-per-play (ypp) advantage of 2.5 yards (7.4 to 4.9). To put that in perspective, teams that had a ypp advantage of at least 2 yards had a win percentage of 97.8% in 2015.
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
| Team | Success Rate | Pass SR | Run SR | Standard Downs SR | Passing Downs SR |
| Texas | 48.31% | 43.90% | 52.08% | 54.69% | 32.00% |
| Texas Tech | 44.44% | 45.16% | 43.24% | 52.24% | 28.13% |
| National Avg. | 40.20% | 40.20% | 41.00% | 45.80% | 30.30% |
| Team | 1Q SR | 2Q SR | 3Q SR | 4Q SR |
| Texas | 75.00% | 36.11% | 57.14% | 37.50% |
| Texas Tech | 73.08% | 10.00% | 37.93% | 38.24% |
Texas Offense vs. Texas Tech Defense
The Texas Tech defense is truly, truly awful. They entered the game ranked 118th in Def. S&P+, 116th in Rushing Def. S&P+, and 99th in Passing Def. S&P+. Texas should have been able to move the ball on them at will on the ground and through the air, and for the most part they did.
Texas (unsurprisingly) ran the ball efficiently, but they did not run the ball quite as often as I expected they would (standard downs run rate of only 64%, down from 71% against Baylor). Keeping the Red Raiders honest by mixing in a few more passes on early downs worked in Texas' favor. In fact, the Longhorns were a little bit more efficient throwing the ball on standard downs than they were running (57% passing SR vs. 54% rushing SR).
The Longhorns complimented their standard downs efficiency with a slightly-better-than-usual effort on passing downs. Texas produced their second highest passing downs success rate of the season*, although this had little to do with the passing game. Texas' passing downs passing success rate was only 27.8%, but they were able to run the ball reasonably well when they were behind the chains, with a passing downs rushing success rate of 42.9%.
*Texas had a PD SR of 33% against Cal.
Texas Tech Offense vs. Texas Defense
Last week, I wrote this at the end of my review:
I think that you can see some defensive improvement over the last three weeks, if you can squint.
No squinting was necessary on Saturday.
Texas has struggled to limit passing efficiency for most of the season, and Tech looked primed to take advantage. The Red Raiders entered the game ranked 10th in passing success rate and 2nd in passing downs success rate. A team this efficient throwing the ball would have murdered Texas' pass defense a month ago, but it is clear now that this is a different pass defense than the one we saw in Berkley and Stillwater.
The Red Raiders still made their share of plays on offense, but the Longhorns defense was able to hold them to passing success rate that was 4 percentage points lower than their previous season average, and they did so without the benefit of constant pressure on Pat Mahomes (sack rate of only 4.8%). The Texas defense was particularly impressive when they forced Tech into obvious passing situations, limiting the Red Raiders to a passing downs success rate that was 18 percentage points lower than their season average.
Explosiveness
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 am also including the percentage of success plays that qualify as explosive plays under Tom Herman's big play definition (runs of at least 12 yards and passes of at least 16 yards).
I wanted to add more context to these explosiveness stats, so I've included the explosiveness percentile (the number in parenthesis). The explosiveness percentile is based on play-by-play data from the 2015 season.
| Team | Yards per Successful Play | Yards per Successful Run | Yards per Successful Pass | XP to SP |
| Texas | 13.72 (68%) | 14.08 (90%) | 13.22 (31%) | 32.56% |
| Texas Tech | 9.45 (12%) | 7.06 (18%) | 10.82 (10%) | 11.36% |
Texas Offense vs. Texas Tech Defense
The Longhorns' passing game was not nearly as explosive as they were against Baylor, with only one passing play that gained more than 20 yards.
Under normal circumstances, a lack of passing explosiveness could be an issue. However, unleashing D'Onta Foreman on a hapless Tech run defense does not qualify as a "normal circumstance." The Longhorns had 9 explosive runs on the day, including three runs from Foreman of at least 38 yards.
Texas Tech Offense vs. Texas Defense
Texas' ability to limit big plays was the biggest difference in this football game. The Longhorns were able to hold Tech far below the national average in both passing explosiveness and rushing explosiveness.
The Longhorns' performance against the pass was probably the biggest surprise of the weekend. Texas managed to hold Tech to a meager 10.8 yards per successful pass, despite entering Lubbock ranked only 119th in Def. Passing IsoPPP.
Field Position
| Team | Average Starting Field Position |
| Texas | 72.54 |
| Texas Tech | 79.00 |
Neither team had great field position, but Texas did have a noticeable field position advantage over Texas Tech. A combination of Longhorn offensive efficiency and Michael Dickson (42.6 net punt average) kept the Red Raiders pinned back in their own end of the field for most the day.
Turnovers
This table is based off of the back-of-the-envelope turnover luck calculation that I wrote about in a previous review.
| Passes Defensed | Fumbles Forced | Expected Turnovers Forced | Actual | Difference | Turnover Luck | |
| Texas Tech | 10 | 2 | 3 | 2 | -1 | -4.5 |
| Texas | 8 | 1 | 2.1 | 2 | -0.1 | 4.5 |
Given the number of fumbles and defensed passes, Texas actually benefited from positive turnover luck.
Unfortunately, not all turnovers are created equal.
Both of Texas Tech's fumble recoveries ended scoring opportunities for Texas, and both flipped field position with long returns. The Red Raiders' 99 scoop-and-score is almost certainly the most valuable turnover that has been forced in the 2016 season, seeing as how it prevented a surefire Texas touchdown and resulted in a Texas Tech touchdown.
Drive Finishing
| Teams | Drives | Scoring Opportunites | Points per Scoring Opportunity |
| Texas | 15 | 10 | 4.50 |
| Texas Tech | 14 | 7 | 4.29 |
Texas had another sub-par day finishing drives, although it is worth noting that two scoring opportunities were stopped by dubious officiating decisions a pair of unlucky fumbles.
Individual Statistics
Texas Tech
| Cmp | Att. | Yds. | TD | Int. | Yards per attempt | Success Rate | |
| P. Mahomes | 36 | 59 | 367 | 3 | 1 | 5.92 | 45.16% |
| Rushes | Yards | Yards per Attempt | Success Rate | Opp. Rate | Highlight Yards/Opp. | |
| D. Ward | 22 | 93 | 4.23 | 41% | 32% | 1.64 |
| P. Mahomes | 12 | 22 | 1.83 | 33% | 25% | 0.67 |
| J. Stockton | 2 | 14 | 7.00 | 100% | 100% | 1.00 |
| M. Barden | 1 | 25 | 25.00 | 100% | 100% | 17.50 |
| Targets | Catches | Catch Rate | Yards | Yards per Target | Yards per Catch | Success Rate | |
| D. Cantrell | 12 | 8 | 66.67% | 89 | 7.42 | 11.13 | 41.67% |
| K. Coutee | 11 | 5 | 45.45% | 42 | 3.82 | 8.40 | 45.45% |
| J. Giles | 7 | 5 | 71.43% | 55 | 7.86 | 11.00 | 57.14% |
| D. Willies | 6 | 3 | 50.00% | 63 | 10.50 | 21.00 | 33.33% |
| C. Batson | 6 | 5 | 83.33% | 38 | 6.33 | 7.60 | 66.67% |
| T. Brown | 6 | 5 | 83.33% | 35 | 5.83 | 7.00 | 66.67% |
| D. Ward | 5 | 4 | 80.00% | 32 | 6.40 | 8.00 | 60.00% |
| Q. White | 1 | 1 | 100.00% | 13 | 13.00 | 13.00 | 100.00% |
| R. Davis | 1 | 0 | 0.00% | 0 | 0.00 | N/A | 0.00% |
Texas
| Cmp | Att. | Yds. | TD | Int. | Yards per attempt | Success Rate | |
| S. Buechele | 20 | 40 | 244 | 2 | 0 | 5.95 | 43.90% |
| Rushes | Yards | Yards per Attempt | Success Rate | Opp. Rate | Highlight Yards/Opp. | |
| D. Foreman | 33 | 341 | 10.30 | 58% | 58% | 9.76 |
| K. Porter | 6 | 56 | 9.33 | 33% | 33% | 17.00 |
| T. Swoopes | 6 | 18 | 3.00 | 50% | 17% | 1.50 |
| S. Buechele | 3 | 8 | 2.67 | 33% | 33% | 1.00 |
| Targets | Catches | Catch Rate | Yards | Yards per Target | Yards per Catch | Success Rate | |
| C. Johnson | 9 | 4 | 44.44% | 47 | 5.22 | 11.75 | 44.44% |
| A. Foreman | 8 | 6 | 75.00% | 65 | 8.13 | 10.83 | 75.00% |
| D. Leonard | 6 | 3 | 50.00% | 12 | 2.00 | 4.00 | 16.67% |
| J. Oliver | 4 | 3 | 75.00% | 76 | 19.00 | 25.33 | 75.00% |
| D. Duvernay | 4 | 2 | 50.00% | 25 | 6.25 | 12.50 | 50.00% |
| J. Warrick | 4 | 2 | 50.00% | 19 | 4.75 | 9.50 | 50.00% |
| J. Heard | 2 | 0 | 0.00% | 0 | 0.00 | N/A | 0.00% |
Final Thoughts
Texas had a slight efficiency, field position, and drive finishing advantage, but the biggest difference in this game was Texas' dominance in the explosiveness battle. Their performance in these four factors should have been enough to deliver a comfortable win, but Texas Tech benefited from a pair of fumble recoveries that were far more valuable than the average turnover.
