008: 🏈 Quality drives
A look at the quality of Carolina's possessions this season.
Carolina is a 14.5 point underdog against Oregon in San Diego on Wednesday. The total is set at 73.5 points. This is the eighth game in the Mack Brown 2.0 era with a projected total of 70 or more points.
The second stanza with Mack Brown as the head coach has featured high-powered offense and sub-par defense. This season? A top-20 offense paired with a bottom-20 defense.
Carolina’s offense moves the ball, but has struggled to finish drives. The defense aims to allow the opponent to move the ball, but not surrender many points. The “bend but not break” cliché is more of a mirage this season.
Quality possessions
This week we’re using eckel to evaluate Carolina. Eckel was created by Parker Fleming and named after the former Navy fullback. It’s similar to the Corsi stat in hockey. The goal is to inform you of productive drives.
A productive drive or quality possession . . .
ends in a touchdown OR
ends inside the 40-yard line
This is a measure of game control. There are nuances to any measurement. For example, what about drives that start inside the 40-yard line? What about garbage time or drives at the end of halves? What about overtime drives?
There are a lot of filtering options, but for the purpose of this week, we’re showing the raw data. No filters. For this reason, we’re not showing eckel rate. We’re only trying to tease out the number of quality drives and the result of those drives.
For example, this means the data includes both overtime drives against NC State. The drives when Carolina trailed Notre Dame by more than three touchdowns too.
Defense
Carolina opponents put together 82 quality drives over 13 games. Opponents scored a touchdown on 52 of those drives or about ~64 percent.
10 of those 82 drives ends in a field goal, and 20 of the drives ended in no points.
Offense
Carolina’s offense has recorded 96 quality drives so far this season. And 59 of those 96 drives have ended in a touchdown, or about ~62 percent.
13 of those 96 drives ended in a field goal while a quarter of those drives ended without any points.
Last three games
Consider the differences over the last three games. All losses.
The defense allowed 18 quality drives. Opponents scored 10 touchdowns and kicked four field goals on those drives.
The offense put together 19 quality drives in those three games, but scored only six touchdowns and kicked four field goals.
The offense and defense have seldom worked together over the past four seasons. An air raid offensive coordinator paired with defensive coordinator from a service academy felt odd. And replacing that defensive coordinator by bringing a coach out of retirement doesn’t feel much better. Maybe a new offensive coordinator will be a better pairing?
As a big underdog in a bowl game primed for a lot of points, it will be fascinating to see if Carolina can capitalize on quality drives to avoid losing its fourth straight game.