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Oklahoma State Leads Big 12 in Net Points Per Drive by Wide Margin

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Hey, it’s that time again. Time for old, curmudgeonly me to worship at the altar of points per drive. Won’t you join me?

The Big 12 season is now 1/3 over, and there have been 416 drives in Big 12 games this season. As we start to gather more data, the best teams will emerge.

For the sake of this exercise I’ve taken out all 0-play drives from the data. Example: Jalen McCleskey’s punt fumble on Saturday is counted as a drive. That is not a drive and it doesn’t count against OSU’s offense (or for Baylor’s defense). I have left in end-of-half drives and garbage time drives.

Let’s take a look. Offense first since, you know, this is the Big 12 after all.

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Oklahoma State, Oklahoma, West Virginia and Texas Tech are the class of the league, and OSU is the cream of the crop thus far. But they’ve played Baylor! So has Oklahoma. Kansas, my friends, not good! This is where TCU could get into some trouble. They have a strong defense, yes, but they don’t have one of the four best offenses thus far. At some point they’re going to get into a shootout and … then what?

Let’s take a look at the defenses.

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Iowa State, my gosh! Oklahoma State actually looks pretty good here thus far, although it still has two of the top three non-OSU offenses still to play (OU has all three, yikes!) Texas and TCU being in the top three is no surprise, but that November 11 game in Ames …

And finally, net PPD.

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Ohhhhhh Kansas.

Lastly, let’s look at stop rates. So this is percentage of defensive drives that do not end in a field goal or touchdown. From most porous to least porous. These numbers mean Baylor allows a score on 61 percent of the drives it faces, and Iowa State allows a score on just 19 percents of the drives it faces.

Team Stop Rate
Baylor 39%
Oklahoma 50%
Kansas 54%
Oklahoma State 56%
Texas Tech 58%
Kansas State 59%
West Virginia 63%
Texas 68%
TCU 70%
Iowa State 81%

I’d like to see a better number from Oklahoma State here — something in the 65 percent range — however, if you flip it to TDs only, OSU improves to fourth-best in the league instead of fourth-worst. The ol’ “bend but don’t break, and if you break give your offense enough time to get a game winner” defense!

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