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Where OSU’s Offense and Defense Ranked This Season (And How it Compares to Season’s Past)

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Devin Wilber/PFB

With only a handful of mostly meaningless bowl games left (and, oh yeah, the national championship game), the sample size for the 2022 football season is 99.9% complete. So how did OSU fare on both sides of the ball coming out of a disappointing season?

I crunched the numbers (OK, I googled it) and came to the conclusions below of where the offense and the defense finished nationally using non-advanced metrics. For the Dave Hudsons of the world, I also included some slightly more advanced metrics to satisfy the hunger for a more complete look at things from an efficiency perspective.

Let’s start with the offense using yards per game (total offense) as the baseline and work to the defense before getting into more numbers. As a reminder, there are 131 teams at the FBS level in college football.

Offensive ranks nationally/Big 12 this season
Total offense rankYards/gBig 12 rank
No. 53 (out of 131)405.18 (out of 10)
Defensive ranks nationally/Big 12 this season
Total defense rankYards/gBig 12 rank
No. 115 (out of 131)435.78 (out of 10)

Now some (slightly) more advanced numbers: points per play. This blocks out the noise for teams that either ran a ton of plays or were limited to fewer plays and provides a bigger picture for how efficient a unit was. Again let’s start with the offensive side of the ball.

Points/play rankPoints/playBig 12 rank
No. 81 (out of 131)0.3499 (out of 10)

Now we go again to the defensive side of the ball for points per play data. You can see statistically OSU’s rank nationally is slightly better but only marginally. It helps that a lot of Big 12 teams were really, really bad.

Points/play rankPoints/playBig 12 rank
73 (out of 131)0.3926 (out of 10)

Where things compare to past OSU seasons

We know this season was a disappointment, but how do we compare it and contextualize it? Was it bad luck? Was it just a bad finish to the season? Where does the offense and defense rank historically?

I tried to answer that as best I could below with a look at where things finished this season and how they compared to other seasons. For this exercise I used points per play data because it does seem to block out some noise and even out total plays run by presenting a more complete picture of efficiency.

Let’s again start on offense where, somehow, the 2022 season’s efficiency was worse than the dreadful 2014 season on a points-per-play basis and a national rank basis. Using this metric the only less-efficient offense under Mike Gundy was his first one in 2005.

YearPoints/playNatl rank
20220.34981
20210.40652
20200.37970
20190.41947
20180.46422
20170.5704
20160.48421
20150.51610
20140.36575
20130.48618
20120.5396
20110.6341
20100.5864
20090.37563
20080.5539
20070.45223
20060.5128
20050.29193

Now to the defense. The offensive numbers tell a story of historically very quality production. The defensive numbers, as expected, do not. Howevah, it’s still not too flattering to look at and a pretty stark drop off from the last few years where the unit was either top 25 or flirting with it.

YearPoints/playNatl rank
20220.39273
20210.27110
20200.31727
20190.38157
20180.43083
20170.38463
20160.35849
20150.39774
20140.41183
20130.2813
20120.37151
20110.31126
20100.31328
20090.31531
20080.39874
20070.41882
20060.39482
20050.461106

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