Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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www.BLUEANDGOLD.com JANUARY 2017 31 T he 2016 Notre Dame football sea- son was one of the most disap- pointing in recent memory. The team that entered the season as a po- tential national championship con- tender never found its footing. The offense that demonstrated its explosiveness and efficiency in spurts was too frequently error-prone and bottled up by opposing defenses. The defense was a mess out of the gate, shored itself up a bit after the coach- ing change, but was unreliable in key game situations down the stretch. Special teams units had several egre- gious breakdowns that aggravated the offensive and defensive problems. Those issues ultimately added up to a 4-8 record, featuring an excru- ciating collection of games in which the Irish were within a single play or two of winning before coming up short. No Football Bowl Subdivision team played in more games decided by a single score than Notre Dame this season (eight), and no team man- aged to lose as many of those games (seven) as the Irish did. Winning close games had been one of the hallmarks of Brian Kelly's ca- reer in South Bend. From 2012-15, the Irish were 17-7 in games decided by eight points or fewer, a .708 winning percentage in close games that was 12th-best nationally and sixth-best among teams with 35 or more wins in that span. A dismal 1-7 record in close games in 2016 was not only unexpected for the Irish, it was a statistical anomaly for any college football team. In the last 10 years, there were 45 occasions in which a team played eight games or more that were decided by a single score. Notre Dame in 2016 is the only program on that list to win only one of those games, and one of only five on the list to win two or fewer. Were the Irish simply unlucky in 2016? That's a complicated question because luck can play itself out in any number of ways over the course of a football game and a season. That said, we do have tools other than a team's win-loss record to evaluate the strength of that team. And those tools indicate that the Irish were cer- tainly better than their record. Notre Dame scored 2.47 points per offensive non-garbage possession and allowed 2.09 points per oppo- nent possession for a net total of 0.38 points per drive, the 44th-best rate in the nation. Every single other team ranked in the top 50 in net points per drive in 2016 finished the year with a winning record against FBS opponents. The other teams ranked between 41 and 50 in net points per drive had an average winning percentage of .622, the equivalent of 7.5 wins against 12 opponents. By this measure, the Irish were good enough to go 7-5 or 8-4 in 2016 based on offense and defensive efficiency, but happened to go 4-8 instead. Our opponent-adjusted drive ef- ficiency numbers back up this as- sertion as well. The Irish are ranked 41st nationally according to the end- of-regular-season FEI ratings, and played the 59th-toughest regular- season schedule. A team with that rating against that schedule would have been expected to win 7.4 games. There is only a 2 percent chance a team with Notre Dame's drive ef- ficiency ratings against its schedule would have gone 4-8 or worse. Not impossible, but very unlikely. Football isn't played on a spread- sheet, of course, so it should not be surprising to see teams deviate from their expected win totals in a given season. Over the course of several years those deviations should even themselves out. Since Kelly arrived in 2010, Notre Dame's expected wins total based on its drive efficiency data and that of its opponents is 58.3 wins in the regular season. The Irish have actually had 56 regular season wins in that span, falling short by a total of 2.3 wins. The good news for Notre Dame is that teams that fall dramatically short of their expected win total in any given season are outliers, and those teams tend to win more games the following year as a result. Notre Dame wouldn't have to play better on offense or defense in 2017, and could still finish the year with a win- ning record. The key is that a winning record alone isn't the standard by which the program is measured, and much more dramatic improvement is what the fan base expects and demands for Notre Dame next year and into the future. Offense, defense and special teams units all need to perform better, and they'll need to do so as scrutiny intensifies and patience wanes. ✦ IRISH ANALYTICS BRIAN FREMEAU Brian Fremeau of ESPN/Football Outsiders has been a statistical analyst at Blue & Gold Illustrated since January 2015. He can be reached at bcfremeau@gmail.com. ND Was Better Than Its Record Indicated In 2016 Junior quarterback DeShone Kizer and the Irish played a nation-high eight games decided by one score — starting with a 50-47 double-overtime loss at Texas in the opener — and were a dismal 1-7 in those contests. PHOTO BY BILL PANZICA