Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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UNDER THE DOME Freshman wide receiver Equanimeous St. Brown suffered a shoulder injury in a one‑one drill during the Nov. 11 practice that makes his status for the postseason unclear. An MRI revealed that he had a grade three shoul‑ der sprain that would sideline him for six weeks, meaning he could possibly return in late December. With St. Brown contributing mainly on special teams and with the expectation that his playing time will climb significantly in 2016, Notre Dame wanted to be cautious with him and ensure he is ready to participate in spring ball. "It's a definite shoulder sprain that's going to be significant in terms of time lost," Kelly said. Kelly has said on several occasions that St. Brown is ready to play the college game, but he hasn't seen much playing time because junior Will Fuller is ahead of him on the depth chart at the X position, which usually lines up on the wider side of the field. — Andrew Owens CHARTING THE IRISH F/+ COMBINED RATINGS A fascinating read for college football fans is FootballOutsiders.com, which uses some unique statistical models to create college football rankings and stats. Its official college rankings combines two statistical systems — Bill Connely's S&P+ and Brian Fremeau's FEI — into F/+. S&P+ takes play‑by‑play data from every single Football Bowl Subdivision game and examines five factors it has determined are keys for success — explosiveness, efficiency, field position, finishing drives and turnovers. The FEI looks at every college football possession played in a season — elimi‑ nating end‑of‑half clock‑kills and stats accumulated during garbage time — and judges how well a team played in those possessions. Both systems also incorporate a strength of schedule measure. For example, if a team plays a poor schedule it must dominate those teams weekly to compensate for not playing challenging programs. Following the results of the Nov. 14 weekend, Notre Dame was ranked No. 4 in the F/+ rankings, trailing only Alabama, Clemson and Oklahoma. This was a deviation from the official College Football Playoff rankings, which instead listed Clemson, Alabama, Ohio State and Notre Dame as its top four. The F/+ rankings suggest that Ohio State has not produced like a top‑four team when breaking down the statistics and production per possession. But because of numerous factors like being the defending national champions and not having a loss on the season, the Buckeyes rank third in the human polls. Below are the top 10 teams vying for the playoffs in order of rankings provided by the committee Nov. 17, and where they ranked in the statistical systems. STACKING UP THE PLAYOFF CONTENDERS * College Football Playoff rankings released Nov. 17 Team CFP* F/+ S&P+ FEI Clemson 1 2 1 2 Alabama 2 1 2 1 Ohio State 3 5 3 6 Notre Dame 4 4 6 3 Iowa 5 23 28 19 Team CFP* F/+ S&P+ FEI Oklahoma State 6 16 20 14 Oklahoma 7 3 4 4 Florida 8 11 10 13 Michigan State 9 15 27 8 Baylor 10 7t 7 16 FRESHMAN RECEIVER EQUANIMEOUS ST. BROWN SIDELINED