I did it. I watched a Pac-12 game last weekend. Well, it was a Pac-12 vs. SEC game, so that half-counts. And, ok… well I watched the first half or so and then fell asleep with my laptop still on my bed. But thankfully I didn’t kick it off in the middle of the night, and UCLA was winning when I fell asleep and had won when I woke up so I didn’t feel like I missed anything.
That’s usually how things go, right? You get all excited, the hype, the buildup, and then you get to the moment and you really just want to take a nap.
And of course, where I was, it was a beautiful day on Saturday, and I sat inside and watched college football all day and refreshed Twitter. And then on Sunday when I actually wanted to get out and do something, it rained. I did manage to get a gameday run in Saturday morning, so I get points for that, but otherwise this weekend was a couchfest. I’m not complaining though.
Happy Thursday by the way. I won’t recap all the results. If you didn’t see who beat who, you can find that here. There were some good games, and some defensive battles, first at noon and then in the primetime slot. D.J. Uiagalelei looked out of place in the Clemson offense compared to what we’ve been used to seeing out of their QB position. He had slightly negative average Predicted Points Added (PPA), which is just a slightly different version of Expected Points Added (EPA) that many of you know by now. That’s worse than Sean Clifford, for reference, Penn State fans, and a lot worse than Will Levis. He struggled in the pass game but struggled even more in the rush game, and overall was in the bottom 10 of eligible QBs that we could rank in Week 1. You can see the full list of QB rankings here. It’s still really early, so I don’t expect him to stay down there, but that was a huge game for Clemson and, like I hinted at last week, will stay with them and for sure be a factor come Selection Sunday.
Other Big Wins
Even though Mack Brown said his team was “overrated” after the game had already been played, that shouldn’t matter to Virginia Tech. A win over a Top 25 opponent stays a win, and while UNC may slide down the rankings as the season progresses, it’s still a great accomplishment for a Hokies team that looked solid on D, and whose QB seems to have the athleticism to take them places. Braxton Burmeister averaged .494 PPA, placing him in the Top 25 for Week 1.
And while I won’t admit that “Jump Around” isn’t overhyped, Enter Sandman is undeniably electric. And now for my brief intermission in stadium tradition head-to-heads:
Zombie Nation > Jump Around
Enter Sandman > Whatever Clemson does with that rock and hill
Waving at the hospital kids > most other traditions (although it received mixed reviews this past weekend)
White Out > Any other color including Scarlet, Maize, Black, etc.
Florida State horse on field / guy throwing spear on fire into turf > All other horses, dogs, other animals on the field (I’m assuming the FSU guy isn’t offensive or he would’ve been cancelled by now, right?)
Alright, back to business. Can’t wait to hear your thoughts on that one.
UCLA also had a big, huge win against LSU which I alluded to earlier. I don’t care if LSU isn’t the LSU of 2019 anymore. That much is obvious. It’s still tough to beat them. And my god the Rose Bowl is beautiful. Brings back them mems from the 2017 Rose Bowl between Penn State and USC. We sadly lost that game, but it’s still one of the best, most exciting games I’ve seen or been to in my life, and the only game I’ve ever not been mad to lose, because what I witnessed—including four consecutive touchdowns on four consecutive plays for Penn State, and this gem of a 79-yard TD run by Saquon Barkley)—was so incredible. And shout out to my roommate Chris who paid for the $150 Uber back to our hotel afterwards. Surge pricing man.
Catch Up
Drew updated his season simulations for all Power 5 conferences, so you can see your team’s ceiling and floor for the rest of the season.
Some Cool Stuff
We have an app in the works right now that will be bringing you up-to-date Elo ratings whenever you want them, will let you simulate overtime games between any two teams to see what the probabilities of each result are, will let you plot teams’ Elo ratings week by week, and hopefully much more. Be on the lookout for that and let us know what else you would like to be able to do.
In the meantime, there are already some really cool and impressive resources out there for getting all sorts of stats in your hands live during games and afterwards.
The first is gameonpaper.com, which updates live during games and shows you win probabilities, EPA, top plays, and so much more granular detail than you’ll find on ESPN itself. Check it out during the games this weekend—it’s pretty cool.
The other is cfb-graphs.com, which shows you more advanced summary stats and rankings for your teams, as well as for matchups after they are played.
So you get some pretty cool high-level summaries of how the two teams played. Here you can see that UCLA dominated the pass game. He includes a glossary of all the terms used at the bottom of the page as well so don’t worry if you don’t know what Eckel is… I didn’t either.
Week 2
This week is tamer overall, with some of the more familiar early-season matchups taking place, including LSU playing a school named “McNeese” which sounds more like your nickname for your sister’s daughter that loves McDonald’s rather than an institution of higher education.
There are a few matchups that look exciting on paper, like Oregon taking the trip to Ohio State, but in reality it shouldn’t be much of a problem for the Buckeyes.
Michigan also plays Washington this week in a game that will surely do neither of them any favors. For us Pac-12 fans, USC faces Stanford if you’re up for some late-night football. Honestly, it’s a very weak slate other than that. They spoiled us in Week 1 with more good games than we could physically watch.
In terms of games that Elo likes, Tennessee over Pittsburgh is one, but it’s very close. Another is Syracuse over Rutgers. Again, it’s a tough call because Syracuse let me down many times last season, and Rutgers after several years of abysmal performance in the Big Ten seems to be picking up some steam (they’ve increased their win total one game per season for the last three seasons for a total of 3 in 2020). Mississippi State is also favored over NC State by Elo.
So I don’t see a ton of value this week. You can always just put money on Virginia Tech to beat Middle Tennessee and collect your 8% interest.
I broke the win probabilities up by conference and arranged them in order of kickoff to make it more digestible. I’ve put the Power-5 teams below. If you’re looking for Group of 5, you can find them on Staturdays.
ACC
Big Ten
Big-12
Pac-12
SEC
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