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It's time for another edition of our Behind The Numbers series here at FCS Football Central.
Each week, we will highlight a couple of marquee national matchups, using success rate to get a deeper look than what the final score may tell you about what really happened in the game. We will take a look at the most dominant teams of the week, which teams outplayed their opponent but made too many mistakes to win the game, and which teams got outplayed but still escaped with a win.
Success rate takes out a lot of the underlying factors of a game and strictly tells you how well a team played down-to-down. While outliers can swing an individual game, success rate can be a better indicator of what future performance will be. A play is "successful" if 50% of the yards needed are gained on first down, 70% are gained on second down, and 100% are gained on third or fourth down.
The average Success Rate for a college football program is about 40%, while closer to 50% is considered excellent, and anything under 30% is deemed poor.
We take a look behind the numbers from this weekend's FCS football action in Week 10.
Lamar 45, Stephen F. Austin 28
Tarleton State 40, Abilene Christian 27
In this section, we will highlight the teams that were the most dominant in success-rate margin (OFF SR-DEF SR). This will highlight which teams truly dominated, even if the final score hides what really happened. Games against non-Division I opponents were excluded.
Villanova is one of the hottest teams in the country and crushed Richmond in a 30-0 blowout win. The Wildcats held the Spiders to a 20% success rate, which included an 11% success rate in the first half. Richmond only had 140 total yards in the whole game. Meanwhile, Isaiah Ragland and Ja'briel Mace wore down Richmond's defense with 202 rushing yards on 34 combined carries.
Harvard bounced back with a dominant win over Columbia. The Lions only averaged 2.7 yards per play before garbage time. UTRGV and Tennessee Tech took advantage of two of the worst teams in the country. The Vaqueros had an incredible 37% havoc rate, while Tennessee Tech found a way to do even better with a 39% havoc rate.
Southern picked up a huge win over Bethune-Cookman, doing it in dominant fashion. The Jaguars averaged 13.5 yards per play in the second quarter, scored three touchdowns, and turned the Wildcats over on downs twice. This included two 40+ rushing TDs from Trey Holly.
Lehigh put the last few weeks of poor play behind them and crushed Colgate in a 33-7 rout. Luke Yoder was the best player in the game once again. In 10 games, Yoder has topped the 100-yard mark in nine of them, plus has five games with 150+ rushing yards. Even with the opposing defenses knowing what's coming, they can't stop him. He rushed for 181 yards on 8.6 yards per carry with two touchdowns.
Youngstown State put up some crazy offensive numbers behind Beau Brungard, which is something we see every weekend. The Penguins collected 96% of the available yards to them before garbage time. That's ridiculous efficiency. Brungard and Wyche-El have some of the best numbers in the country. Wyche-El had another 10 receptions on 10 targets for 145 receiving yards. He's averaging 0.96 EPA per target. The next closest WR in the MVFC is 0.56 EPA/target.
North Dakota dominated its big matchup against Illinois State. The Redbirds scored touchdowns on their 2nd and 3rd drives, but then had a turnover on downs or a punt on their next seven drives. Illinois State had a 22% success rate and averaged 2.5 yards per play in the second quarter. They were completely dominated by North Dakota's defense.
South Dakota State also had a dominant defensive performance against Northern Iowa. In 16 third-quarter plays, UNI averaged 3.0 yards per play and had a 13% success rate. SDSU had a stuff rate of 20% in this game and the defensive line completely suffocated the Panthers. UNI's longest run was 10 yards, which came late in the game.
Incarnate Word and Idaho continue to make playoff pushes late in the season. Both had tricky Week 10 games that they absolutely dominated. Joshua Wood continued his remarkable season, throwing for 315 yards, with 233 of those being "air yards." He added another 107 yards on the ground and had five total TDs. We need to be talking about him in the Walter Payton Award race.
The Cardinals crushed the Southeastern Louisiana offense when it mattered most. They did not allow a TD on three SLU red-zone trips and held the Lions to 2-of-11 on third downs before garbage time. The Lions crossed the 40-yard line six times, but only got nine points out of those six opportunities.
Each week, this section will highlight teams that won the success rate battle but still lost the game. They outperformed their opponent down-to-down, but lost because of turnovers, penalties, special teams, or explosive plays.
Idaho State blew a huge opportunity to get a signature win and cement itself in the playoff picture. The Bengals had several drops early in the game that killed drives, a costly fumble in the red zone, plus had nine drives inside the MSU 40-yard line and only scored 26 points. The Bengals only scored TDs on two of their five red zone trips.
The Montana State defense put the clamps down in the fourth quarter and overtime. The Bengals were only able to generate 95 yards on 27 plays over that span. It should be mentioned that the biggest swing play in the game was the fourth-down touchdown from Justin Lamson to Rocky Lencioni. Montana State was held to a 37% rushing success rate, which is much lower than its season average of 52%, which ranks 3rd nationally.
Utah Tech shows up in this section for the second consecutive week. This team feels like they should have won against two playoff hopefuls, but couldn't find a way to close either game. Neither offense was very good on Saturday, and Utah Tech killed themselves with three turnovers and when it mattered most, they only had a 24% success rate in the fourth quarter.