Statistical Review: Auburn #91

Auburn was a screwed up team, and they only got more screwed up as the season went on - first game Auburn was almost 20 points better than last game Auburn. Instead of trying to make sense of 2012 Auburn, I'm just going to make a "brief" list of all the ways in which they were not up to snuff:

Sacks (offense) - The Auburn quarterbacks were sacked on almost 15% of pass attempts; 44 FBS teams were sacked a third as often or less. Who gets the blame? Since both Frazier and Moseley were sacked more than 15% of the time, the problem is deeper than a quarterback that holds the ball too long.

Tackles for Loss (offense) - Ball carriers got back to the line of scrimmage less than 80% of the time, and we're building a strong case that the Auburn O-line was ineffective.

Plays per Possession (offense) - Plays per possession is not unambiguously bad; Oregon's offensive strategy does not revolve around maintaining long drives. But 4.6 plays per possession is not going to get you far unless you have an incredibly explosive offense (definitely not the case here) or great starting field position . . .

Field Position (offense) - There is a relatively exclusive group of teams that started inside their own 30 on average. Auburn is one of those teams.

Points per possession (offense) - This is the culmination of the first few points. Auburn averaged 1.4 points per possession. Twenty teams averaged twice that, including three teams in their conference and two in their division. That makes it hard to win games.

Completion % (defense) - Opponents completed two-thirds of their pass attempts. That's not very good.

Interceptions (defense) - 2. Total.

Auburn was quite stellar in one area - defending kicks. Maybe they can build on that for 2013.

The Statistical Review breaks down teams along a number of performance categories, everything from red zone scoring to field goal percentage, and compares that performance against the rest of the FBS. All 124 teams will be reviewed from 124 to 1 by the hybrid rankings. You can find short descriptions of the stats used in the table below.