MrSEC.com Stat Analysis: Butterfingers And Bandits

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Here at MrSEC.com, we like to provide you with different stats, numbers and figures throughout the football season.  Typically, we try to present them in ways that you might not find elsewhere.  Over the course of five years of doing this, we’ve stumbled across a few that tend to serve as pretty good indicators of on-field success.

For those of you who’ve read this site, you’re familiar with our five-season, 245-game study into the impact of turnovers on SEC football games.  Obviously, the more a team turns the ball over, the less chance it will have of winning.  The same applies for teams who force turnovers from their foes, obviously.  But what was surprising to us was just how important turnovers are when a pair of SEC rivals get together:

2007-2011 SEC Turnovers

Commit 0 Turnovers — 70-23 record, 75.2 winning percentage

Commit 1 Turnover — 95-62 record, 60.8 winning percentage

Commit 2 Turnovers — 49-65 record, 42.9 winning percentage

Commit 3 Turnovers — 22-56 record, 28.2 winning percentage

Commit 4 Turnovers — 9-40 record, 18.3 winning percentage

With those numbers in mind, last week we broke out our Butterfingers measure.  It’s simple really.  We look at the total number of offensive plays run by a team and compare that number to the total tally of giveaways for that squad.  What you’ll see below is the number of plays typically run by each team between turnovers.  The more plays run between giving the ball away… the better.

SEC Butterfingers Measure

Keep in mind that our study looked at the results of turnovers in SEC contests only.  With the season still so young, we’re using statistics from nonconference games, too (including those against FCS opponents).  For that reason, a team’s current overall record might not jive with the rate that it gives away the football.  But these trends will start to mean more the deeper everyone gets into league play.

To date, SEC offenses have run 3,712 offensive plays.  That’s an average of about 67 plays per game.  If the above rates hold inside SEC play, then those teams that turn the ball over more often than once every 67 plays will see their odds of winning an SEC contest go from about 75% to 60% and worse (from an offensive perspective only… clearly defensive takeaways would impact those numbers).  Arkansas, for example, is coughing up the ball about 3.4 times per game.  In SEC play, history suggests that the Razorbacks would win about 28% of their games when they turn the ball over at least three times.

Now let’s look at the league’s defenses.  We call this our Bandits measure.  It’s simply the inverse of our Butterfingers measure.  The more times a defense can force a team to give up the football, the better that team’s odds of winning the game.  So we compare the total number of defensive takeaways to the total number of defensive snaps run by each SEC squad.  The lower the number the number of plays between turnovers… the better.

SEC Bandits Measure

To date, SEC defenses have run 3,807 snaps.  That works out to about 69 plays per game.  So looking at things from a defensive perspective only, those defensive units turning over their foes less than once every 69 plays aren’t doing enough to help their teams win.  Looking at Arkansas again, is it any wonder the Razorbacks have gotten off to such a terrible start?  They give the ball way more often and take it away less often than any other team in the conference.  On the flipside, look at the high rankings in both categories — Butterfingers and Bandits — for Alabama and Mississippi State.

For all the breakdowns and matchups and film work and gameplans, football really is a pretty simple game.  When the turnover battle and more times than not you’ll win the game.  In the SEC, make that “many more times you’ll win the game.”