Big Ten Football: 2024 Postseason Statistical Review Oregon Ducks Ohio State Buckeyes Pennn State

Big Ten teams played 140 FBS games in the 2024-25 season. I’ve charted about 75% of them during the year, and have the preliminary work (logical tests, faulty record correction from the official play-by-play, garbage time exclusion, etc.) done for the remainder which I’ll chart during the offseason. I also have charted every Big Ten game, including the four new members from when they were Pac-12 teams, from the previous three seasons.

This article will present the statistical performance in the metrics I track from charting for all 18 teams in the Big Ten, along with some brief commentary about how that team’s stats differed compared to the 2023-24 season. I’ll also examine situational performance where relevant, to expand on whether a stat shift happened overall or was confined to a particular down & distance, and the strategic implications.

Ohio State

The Buckeyes are somewhat remarkable in the last fifteen seasons of charting data in that they’re an undisputed national champion which did not spend the majority of their games playing above the championship thresholds in any of the metrics I track. In terms of consistent, season-long performance, there’s one offensive situation in which they got significantly better and accounts for almost all of their efficiency improvement, which is 2^nd & medium – for reasons I don’t really understand, OSU wasn’t as effective passing in that situation in 2023 as they should have been but they called pass almost two-thirds of the time, a deadly combination of inefficiency and predictability, but in 2024 they turned it around and were about 50/50 on the call and got up to about 75% success. In every other situation they either stayed exactly the same — 1^st down, 2^nd & short, 3^rd & medium, and most problematically 3^rd & long which stayed stuck at about 31% — or as with 2^nd & long and 3^rd & short, got about 10 points worse.

The run game is much more straightforward: their numbers in the first part of the season are identical to the 2023 numbers, then they started encountering offensive line injuries and the efficiency really fell off in a specific situation which was 1^st down. The rest of the efficiency numbers remained the same but the 2^nd & medium/long rushing efficiency had always been poor and the playcalling didn’t adjust for this until the playoffs, meaning the offense spent a large chunk of the year in a self-imposed trap. The two escapes from it were a greater emphasis on misdirection plays to the outside which simply avoided the offensive line blocking problems altogether and explain the increase in explosive rush performance, and during the playoff run, altering the run/pass splits on 1^st down and 2^nd & medium/long to lean into stronger suits.

The defensive performance against the run got more extreme in both directions as Ohio State doubled down on their starting personnel and reduced their rotational play in the front. The higher performing starters, as graded on my tally sheet, did an exceptional job getting run stuffs and the DC’s decision midseason to shift away from simulated pressures to playing with an additional safety down low really killed explosive rushing and helped with efficiency passing on 2^nd & 3^rd downs. However, it meant a real collapse in short yardage conversion prevention in the run game, especially when opponents just needed a couple of yards and/or when they’d gone on long drives and the starters were experiencing fatigue.

There appear to be two drivers of the small pass defense dip: in the first part of the season opponents attacked the second level of the defense and the perimeter, taking advantage of the new LB corps and poorly designed simulated pressures. Those factors seemed to clean up in the second part of the year after the week 8 bye, but a different issue started becoming more common, which was 3^rd & long conversions on penalties, specifically against members of the secondary.

Oregon

The nine-percentage point falloff in the Ducks’ passing efficiency compared to 2023 shows up in small amounts across most situational categories (with one exception, a large jump in performance on 3^rd & medium), but the major driver is an eight-point fall on 1^st down, albeit to a still very good 57.5%, and a six-point fall on 3^rd & long to 37.5%, which has a measurable effect on drive efficiency.

Drilling down further, the primary issue is schematic, since those situational areas feature the most screen passes, which were the massive liability in Oregon’s 2024 offense. In 2023, screens represented 8.3% of meaningful playcalls and had a 67% success rate; in 2024 they grew to 10.2% of playcalls but collapsed in success rate by almost 17 points to just over 50/50, while having the identical YPA of 6.16 and two points lower of an explosiveness rate at just 11%. If screens are separated from the passing dataset and only downfield passes are considered, the YPA (9.51) and explosiveness rates (21%) are the same both years, with just a two-point falloff in efficiency which is attributable to the games in which various starting pass-catchers were absent for one reason or another.

The rushing offense has nearly identical success rates in all situations except 1^st down, in which there was a nine-point falloff from the 70% rate the Ducks had been at for most of the last five seasons (truly an astonishing number and probably unsustainable once they no longer had Pac-12 defensive lines to run against) to a still championship caliber 61%. The underlying YPC numbers indicate a fall of about 2.2 YPC for the lead back but a resumption of his 2023 form for the second back once he fully recovered from his ACL tear. Rush explosiveness rates remained championship caliber and far outpaced nearly every other Big Ten team (the only other team close was another West coast addition, USC), the only change was not breaking the big runs as big as in 2023.

Pass defense shows basically all the same numbers as in 2023, with significant improvements on 3^rd & short and each 2^nd down situation. The Ducks were still a few points shy of an elite 3^rd & long pass defense at a 72% success rate, and the 1^st down pass defense rate remained stuck at a mediocre 53%. In rush defense, 1^st down, 2^nd & long, and 3^rd & short remained at championship caliber, but 2^nd & short completely collapsed to just 6% (!) while pass defense rose to an elite level in that situation, indicating Oregon had a total priority shift in that situation. They also fell off from a probably unsustainable 68.5% success rate to just 59% on 1^st down – again, still championship level, but a big fall, probably due to no longer facing Pac-12 lines.

Penn State

The improvements in Penn State’s offense – rush explosiveness and passing overall – can be isolated to personnel usage differences rather than schematic changes. In the run game the situational efficiencies remained basically identical compared to 2023, but there was a flip in individual per-play rates between the two primary RBs: the “thunder” guy had a 61% rate in 2023 while the “lightning” guy was at 45%, but in 2024 the former went down 11 points to 50% while the latter went up the same amount to 56%. In the passing game, the QB’s, WRs’ and primary TE’s grades all remained static (the WR personnel changed but the guys who occupied the WR1, WR2, etc. slots had effectively identical YPT and per-target success figures year over year). The major difference was that the TE – who had a 67% success rate and 10.0 YPT, so was by far the most effective outlet — went from 13% of meaningful targets to 35%.

The curious thing is that the passing improvement was limited to specific situations: a 12-point jump to almost 66% on 1^st down and a 21-point jump to over 59% on 2^nd and medium which are absolutely incredible figures. They also got a 9-point jump on 3^rd & long which looks good in a vacuum but it just got them to 32.5%, still a pretty lousy number, so this is more like a dead-cat bounce. But in every other down & distance situation the passing effectiveness rates were exactly identical between 2023 and 2024, down to the third digit, which is almost unnerving.

On defense, the dependency on the pass rush was even more borne out than in previous years’ observations of PSU, as the 3^rd & long pass defense performance climbed to an astonishing 80.5%, but every other situation from 1^st down to every 2^nd down distance to 3^rd & short/medium fell by between five and 22 points, with an average of -7 points for those situations. The differential between 3^rd & short vs 3^rd & long pass defense success rates grew to a delta of 45 points, the biggest gap I’ve ever seen and indicating the largest performance distance between pass rushers and secondary I can document.

The rush defense changes look like two different phenomena – there’s a falloff in 10 points in run stopping on 1^st down but it hardly touches YPC allowed and no other situation was affected, meaning offenses were consistently pushing for those last few inches to flip a run just barely to a win on 1^st down but no more than that, which likely implicates the linebackers’ run fits being a beat late. The jump in four points in run explosiveness allowed while still being a pretty good number has little to do with the front and looks entirely to do with poor tackling by the safeties – that is, on the rare occasion a run did get through, it had a high chance of getting even more yards because the DBs would miss.

Indiana

The Hoosiers’ transformation into a top-performing team from a bottom-performing one is a testament to excellent roster management in their makeover under the new staff. There’s only two areas on offense in which they didn’t hit championship-caliber metrics: 1^st down rushing was only about 50/50 (short-yardage rushing was very good but that was more about the backs fighting for it, the split is why the overall grade was about 56% rushing efficiency), and long-yardage passing was in the 40s even as 1^st down and short/medium-yardage passing was excellent, as this was a quick passing offense that struggled to stand in the pocket and identify longer developing routes. The throughline is that schematic and skill talent transformation can be done right away, but the offensive line takes longer and that’s what’s necessary to win those missing categories (Indiana chose to go with three returners and two transfers as their OL starting lineup; I thought they should have switched that second transfer, the RT from Wisconsin, to a returning backup who had some playing experience).

The defense has some interesting numbers in that there was a very clear strategy to combine stopping the run on 1^st down with stopping explosive plays in all situations, and sacrificing the opposites (pass defense on 1^st down, short-yardage efficiency defense) in order to do it. Indiana had some of the worst 2^nd & short conversion prevention rates I’ve ever seen, in the single digits, because they were pretty much only concerned with taking away the deep shot in that situation. The payoff is that their long-yardage defense was excellent, and they almost never gave up explosive rushing or passing. That meant opponents had to go on methodical drives, and if they failed when running the ball on 1^st down they’d play right into the Hoosiers’ strategy and would usually punt shortly afterwards, but it left them open to a pass-run-run approach which, while the inverse of most Big Ten offenses, was how the teams that beat them or played them close moved the ball on them.

USC

This was the fifth straight year for USC, including every one under Coach Riley, in which the rushing offense was more than six percentage points more efficient than the passing offense with a comparably high explosive play rate, and yet they threw the ball on over 61% of plays. Persistent playcalling issues and bafflingly irrational situational splits (e.g., nearly 35 (!) points more effective running than passing on 2^nd & short, yet passing 51% of the time in that situation) in an otherwise highly effective offense really caught up with the Trojans in 2024 as they blew multiple 4^th quarter leads and had a much worse win-loss record than their fundamental strengths would indicate.

There’s an interesting phenomenon with the grades for the skill talent. The running backs in 2023 had middling success rates but almost double the yards per target as pass-catchers as the RPO game was much more effective in the previous season, whereas in 2024 the backs had higher grades as straight-ahead runners but were more limited to checkdowns in the downfield game. Since they had a similar number of meaningful targets, that was a significant component to bringing down the overall YPA for the team. The other component is that in 2023 the two most effective wideouts were targeted most often, but in 2024 the ball was spread around more with the most targeted wideout having the lowest success rate and YPT, and the most effective two close to the bottom of the list – more irrationality.

My model would have USC’s defense about ten ranks lower than F+, but it’s undeniable that the Trojans got off the mat from 2023 as they have two critical improvements in fundamental strength that are borne out in charting. The first is overall rush defense, including a seven-point jump in 1^st down rush defense success rate, which is crucial to winning drives (although the other component is a 14-point jump in 2^nd & long rush defense, which is much less so). The second improvement is a substantial jump in 3^rd down pass defense in each of short, medium, and long situations, to the point where they were pushing the elite threshold on 3^rd & long by the end of the season.

However, overall the pass defense has nearly identical numbers as in 2023, and what’s balancing the 3^rd down gains is a major falloff in 1^st down pass defense success rate to just 38%. And while the rush defense improved in a vacuum across all categories, in context these numbers are something of an underperformance considering USC managed to draw their schedule almost entirely from the completely unexplosive rushing side of the conference: seven of their Big Ten opponents had explosive rushing rates in the single digits in 2024, while they avoided five of the six teams except UW that run above 14% explosive (Indiana, MSU, Ohio St, Oregon, and themselves).

Iowa

The Hawkeyes got better passing the ball on a per-play basis in 2024, but there are so many caveats to this it’s basically meaningless. First and most importantly, they were still terrible at it, just slightly less terrible than before; second, it only really showed up in one situational category, which is 1^st down, as the rest of their passing situational stats were virtually identical or even got worse (which is to say mostly terrible, including 2^nd & long and every 3^rd down situation); third, the passing YPA and explosiveness numbers indicate that this 1^st down passing efficiency improvement wasn’t about getting new 1^st downs or even setting up 2^nd & short, it’s just going from incompletions to ~5 yard completions; and fourth, 1^st down rushing increased from 60% frequency in 2023 to 76% (!) in 2024, meaning that 1^st down passing improvement was barely perceptible since they were hardly doing it.

Rushing did improve, quite dramatically and in all situational categories. What’s interesting is that the running back room and the offensive line are basically identical to 2023, though they used the backs in different proportions and with different success rates, and they had a new playcaller. I’d like to catch up on some more of Iowa’s film before coming to a conclusion on whether this is about certain backs getting better, a new run scheme working out, an easier schedule, or something else.

The defensive profile looks the same as it has for the previous three years I charted Iowa, with the same bend but don’t break philosophy that takes away 3^rd & long passing but gives up short-yardage conversions readily. There’s about a five-point stepback in rush defense success rate on 1^st down, and they’ve been giving up more explosive passing, both of which I attribute to trading in playing a couple of Big Ten West teams for two former Pac-12 teams.

Minnesota

The Gophers changed their offensive profile to be more pass-heavy and brought in a new transfer QB in 2024. It improved their efficiency in the passing game since 2023’s QB had the second lowest NCAA passer rating of any starter in the Power conferences that year, though he had a big arm and could hit explosive plays. The new QB connected way more often but they were barely pushing the ball down the field – so their switch to a 60% pass frequency on 1^st down left them in a good place on methodical drives, with their short-yardage rushing and passing plays enjoying good efficiency. But they continued to have the same problems as last year the instant they fell behind the chains – the same terrible 3^rd & long conversion rate, and a weird insistence on running on 2^nd & long (44% of the time) despite being a typically inexplosive Big Ten rushing offense. The run game overall took a small step back but drilling down the numbers are more concerning: they were significantly less effective in most situations and their stud RB from last year had a 12-point drop in success rate from 2023, but that’s obscured by reserving running for mostly short-yardage situations with high success rates.

The defense took steps forward on every metric overall, with the most notable gains being explosive pass defense and allowing fewer yards per carry in rush defense. There are some peculiarities in the situational data, however: Minnesota got substantially worse defending the pass in short yardage (only about 25% defensive success rates which are appalling), and their improvement in success rate against the run comes almost entirely from getting better at stopping 2^nd & long rushing, which their opponents chose to do far more often than they should have and so is of limited predictive value. The Gophers played enough competent passing offenses (even as they dodged three of the league’s top four teams) that I think their defense is for real, but my model would put them around 25^th instead of 12^th as F+ does.

Illinois

The Illini’s statistical profile is pretty average, doesn’t show any major improvements compared to last year, and continued to show some real situational clunkers like a very poor 3^rd & long conversion rate and a total inability to stop efficiency running in any down & distance except 2^nd & long (and even that’s just 53% defensive success). I might be inclined to say their 10-win season was entirely a product of beating up on a very soft schedule with a weak non-con and virtually every team on the bottom half of the Big Ten (plus Michigan with a backup QB who later turned out to be playing with a torn ligament and turned the ball over three times).

But their schedule was pretty similar in 2023, and their 5-7 record that year really only had one loss (maybe two) on it where they just got beat by a better team, and the rest were just stupid losses to bad teams that an average team shouldn’t have on their record. In my opinion that’s the change this past year – they went from screwing up a lot and underperforming in the previous season, to playing it straight and winning all the games they should (and maybe one or two coin flips), while not fundamentally changing as a team. That might solely be a swing from bad luck to good luck, but I suspect there’s some coaching effects in it as well – they pounced on opponents’ mistakes and the secondary baited QBs into throwing interceptable balls, and I think the OC altered the route tree to accommodate the QB’s strengths and avoid his weaknesses.

Michigan

The obvious change in Michigan’s performance is in their passing offense, which was by far the biggest single-quadrant falloff of any team in the conference in 2024. The rushing offense was pretty much identical, with the only real concession to the inept passing game an increase in the 2^nd & medium rush rate.

The rush defense took a tiny step back, which I attribute to having be on the field a lot longer since the offense wasn’t able to hold the ball as long, since the numbers shift forward to better early down success and worse late down run stopping. Pass defense fell off a bit; although still quite good from an efficiency basis they were only mediocre in stopping explosive passes which I put down to personnel changes and injury issues in the secondary. It shows up on curious down & distance situations – while there’s a 10-point fall in both 3^rd & medium and 3^rd & long, those were insane numbers in 2023 and they’re still excellent in 2024, and I tend to think that kind of regression from what was perhaps a statistical anomaly in the previous year was inevitable. The more interesting and potentially concerning thing for the Wolverines is that pass defense rates stay identical and very good on 2^nd & short and 2^nd & long, but really tank on 1^st down and 2^nd & medium by almost 15 points in each situation.

Nebraska

The Cornhuskers’ run game in 2023 was limited by an unfortunate series of injuries that resulted in what proved to be a fairly ineffective senior taking over as their top ballcarrier. In 2024, the main driver of their improved rush production was replacing that graduated senior with an Oregon transfer, who on a similar number of carries got the RB1 individual per-play success rate from under 40% to over 60% (the RBs in the second and third spots had comparable carry counts and per-play numbers in both years). The passing game was an across-the-board statistical improvement with a 5-star QB taking over for a mess of a situation in 2023, although frequent freshman mistakes and other bottlenecks in the passing game limited the size of the improvement (including in the key 3^rd & long situation which remained in the dumps despite a 4-point bump).

I knew that some Big Ten West defenses were artificially inflated by playing anemic offenses and would collapse when the divisional bubble burst, while others were legitimate and would stand up on their own, and in reviewing film on those seven teams I did a pretty good job telling them apart on six of those seven teams, but Nebraska was the one I think I missed on. I thought their 8^th place ranking in F+ defense in 2023 was warranted and it matched my charting model and film observations, but they really fell to mediocrity in 2024, with downgrades in every metric and situational category (although remaining strong on 3^rd & long pass defense). None of their defensive stats stand out as outright bad, but the Huskers’ schedule is remarkably binary – they shut down the six bad teams they played, and lost to the five good passing offenses (also they played a crazy game against Iowa).

Rutgers

The Scarlet Knights’ defensive falloff in 2024 is somewhat perplexing. Their overall and situational success rates are very similar to 2023, and actually in a couple of categories like 2^nd & medium and 3^rd & medium they got a bit better. But on plays in which opposing offenses won, they won bigger than before, with larger YPP given up and more explosive plays surrendered in run and pass defense. That usually implicates the safeties, but it’s the same trio of guys who played every snap as it was last year; indeed the defense had very few personnel changes from 2023. There was no scheme change either, and the DC and defensive-oriented head coach are well established and respected, so it’s hard to say there was much different that Rutgers was doing.

My theory is that the culprit was facing the new West coast teams and their more athletic skill players: most of Rutgers’s 2023 vs 2024 schedule are either the same opponents or replacement Big Ten teams with similar chunk yardage counts against them, but the significant schedule change is in losing Northwestern, Iowa, and the 2023 version of Indiana for USC, UCLA, and Washington. Those former Pac-12 schools had similar success rates as the opponents they were replacing but when they hit, they hit for bigger yardage after contact or after the catch. Beyond that mystery, the bigger issue is simply that Rutgers was set up for a defensive ratchet effect with stability and continuity from upperclassmen, and that just didn’t happen in what has to be a disappointment.

The offense is much easier to understand. The rushing numbers are identical, overall and situationally. In the passing game, they replaced literally the least effective QB in Power conference football and were bound to improve, although it was with the second least effective QB so it wasn’t that much of an improvement. He has a pretty big arm if not much control so the explosive passing rate jumped, but the situational success rates stayed stuck, with every 2^nd and 3^rd down situation under 45%, and 3^rd & long at just 39%.

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Washington

As expected the passing offense fell off without all the weapons and unique passing scheme from 2022 and 2023, and with an imperfect fit at QB in the first year of the new offense and poor protection for a pocket passer most of the time. The alternate freshman QB’s numbers are intriguing, especially for how he invigorated the run game, though there’s a wild split between the end of the year when he was given the full playbook (high explosives, low efficiency) and the rest of the season when he’d come in periodically and almost entirely throw screens and RPOs (other way around). The rushing numbers flipped around from their typical numbers the last three seasons, with a falloff in efficiency as the size on the o-line moved on but a much more explosive back took over who made off-schedule plays. Situational run-pass splits show some real inefficiencies, with stellar rush success rates on 2^nd & medium, 3^rd & short, and 3^rd & medium as well as the low redzone, but playcalling favoring ineffective passing in those situations.

The Huskies’ defense used some different structures but wound up with nearly identical results as they have for most of the last decade, with the minor variations mostly caused by facing less explosive rushing offenses and fewer capable quarterbacks in the Big Ten. The core philosophy of keeping the play in front of them and avoiding excessive aggression didn’t change, which limited the damage and forced longer drives, but as usual they didn’t position enough big men up front to stop efficiency runs nor did they have the talent throughout the back end to really stop the pass when seriously challenged.

Michigan State

The Spartans’ offense in 2024 has been very divisive in the advanced statistical community, because it was highly inefficient on a per-play basis, prone to turnovers (which means it’s even worse on a drive-efficiency basis), and yet vastly outperformed its cohort in explosive plays both rushing and passing … but even then these explosives were clustered in early downs (1^st or 2^nd & short/medium as surprise shots) while their 3^rd down effectiveness was terrible. In effect this meant they could suddenly play themselves back into any game, but they could also play themselves out of any game and couldn’t sit on a lead they’d pounced on early, which is a recipe for a chaotic season: both surprise wins and surprise losses.

The defense performed in an average manner across the board, which in efficiency rush defense was actually a step up that reversed a slide over the last couple years into below average play and was somewhat unexpected given their best DTs transferring out. They gave up a few more points in explosive pass defense than expected which I think has to do with a secondary injury situation, though I need to check the tape on that as my film review since Oregon and MSU played early in the year has been pretty light. Curiously they’re really just giving up explosive passes on 1^st down, as their 2^nd and 3^rd down pass defense is pretty good.

UCLA

Given the loss of their NFL edge rushers around which the Bruins’ entire one-off defensive uptick was built in 2023, combined with some unfortunate injuries to their remaining defensive linemen which forced some real shuffling in their defensive front in 2024, none of UCLA’s stepbacks in pass defense or efficiency run stopping are surprising. All things considered they leveraged the athleticism in the secondary and an overstuffed linebacker corps into an improvised simulated pressure defense by midseason which worked better than it had any right to, and the Bruins should be given some credit for handling a tough situation relatively well.

The passing offense stabilized once they got their quarterback situation under control – last year’s carousel done with, and an injury to this year’s starter recovered from – into one that was perfectly average statistically. What killed UCLA was their complete lack of a run game, by far the worst per-play rush metrics in the league. The inherited o-line catastrophe was the major issue since these were the same backs as last year and there wasn’t any particular problem with the scheme, though it’s curious that this was the one West coast team that didn’t retain its high explosive rushing numbers and put the lie to the myth of quality Midwestern rush defenses.

Wisconsin

The Badgers got worse in all 12 of the per-play metrics I track from charting compared to 2023, with major stepbacks in pass offense and rush defense. (I continue to be baffled as to why F+ is overestimating Wisconsin: 16^th was much too high for their defense the previous year, 26^th is still too high for their defense this past year, and they certainly did not improve on offense by five ranks in 2024.)

What really snowballed for Wisconsin was how predictable their offense became, as they really only had one asset in efficiency short-yardage rushing. They had to go on long methodical drives in which they converted multiple 1^st downs, and if they ever got behind the chains they were in deep trouble, with the worst 3^rd & long passing conversion rate in the league at 11.3%.

Maryland

The Terps took significant personnel hits in the passing game on both sides of the ball at the end of 2023, which had been strengths in the previous few years – departures of a longtime playmaking quarterback and multiple rounds of NFL defensive backs. Their replacements turned out to be a downgrade and significant falloffs in passing production and passing yards surrendered ensued. I think Maryland had been punching above its talent rating with back-to-back 8-win seasons in 2022 and 2023 on the strength of those factors, and the 2024 season was more in line with what a standard Maryland season would look like given their recruiting pull, so there’s really no surprises or mysteries to explore here.

Northwestern

The Wildcats had a major question at quarterback and underwent some drama midseason at the position, yet their passing offense is the one area in which they really saw no change at all from 2023, overall or situationally. Their rushing offense changed up schematically with a different OC who emphasized going for bigger plays to the outside, but had virtually all the same personnel on the field and some weakness in returning linemen and blocking TEs. There are some shifts in the RBs’ and QBs’ (on designed carries) individual efficiency vs explosiveness grades, with a couple of guys getting some more yards per carry but losing out on per-play success rates. Unfortunately the net effect was a downgrade in the first year for the new playcaller, with two of the main trio of backs falling to efficiency grades under 30% which no amount of explosiveness can make up for.

The defense is the main curiosity to me, as the fundamental statistical performance was effectively stagnant if not a small step back from 2023. Since they’d returned just about everyone from a defense that had been steadily building into a very solid group over each of the previous three seasons, standard incremental improvement for this many upperclassmen starters projected a jump from a top-30 defense to perhaps a top-15 one in 2024, and that simply didn’t happen. I’m looking forward to catching up on the Wildcats’ defensive tape for my upcoming film study project on Oregon transfer cornerback Theran Johnson – an odd quirk of the schedule meant I only reviewed three of their games during the season and one of those went into garbage time quickly due to a weird string of turnovers – to try and figure out why that might have been.

Purdue

The Boilermakers suffered major setbacks in all statistical areas and made multiple coaching changes over the year, ultimately clearing out the entire staff at the end of the season. While fundamental statistical strength usually reflects almost entirely a team’s personnel and scheme – and there are a few ways in which the 2024 team differed from the 2023 team that I think showed up in the numbers – this is one of the rare instances in which I believe the radical increase in schedule difficulty was the major culprit. Comparing schedules, there wasn’t a single matchup that got easier from 2023 to 2024, with eight being identical games or trading like for like (e.g., Michigan 2023 for Oregon 2024), and the remaining four being swaps of winnable games for losses to high-level teams: Minnesota 2023 for Penn State 2024, Virginia Tech 2023 for Notre Dame 2024, Indiana’s massive transformation, and Illinois firing back in their annual shootout.

Lost in the doom and gloom were a couple of bright spots: a surprisingly effective read-option run game particularly on 2^nd downs (overall 61% success rate and no lower than 54% even in longer distances), and one of the better 3^rd down passing defenses in the conference, especially on 3^rd & long with a 67.5% stop rate.