Using FEI to predict FSU's Win Total
by mhauer on Jul 22, 2010 11:33 AM EDT
26 comments
As most readers on this site know, the Fremeau Efficiency Index is one of the best metrics for college football. Luckily, we have expanded FEI rankings for the last three seasons available.
Success for a football team requires many different factors, most of which have been documented on this website. Lately, the focus has been on an improvement of the defense. As Bud and others have pointed out, even if we have a giant leap forward in our defensive efficiency, the brutality of our schedule will likely hold us back.
What I wanted to do was look at the relationship between strength of schedule, offensive and defensive efficiencies, and field position. To do this, I looked at the historic FEI rankings available. Unfortunately, these FEI rankings are end of season rankings and are not the week 14 rankings that would only include the 12 regular season games. Since expanded week 14 rankings are not available, end of the season ones will have to suffice.
I ran a multiple regression to predict the season win totals using four dependent variables: SOS rank, offensive efficiency rank, defensive efficiency rank, and field position rank.
Here are the results of the regression analysis.
We end up with a pretty good R square value with an average error of around 1.5 games.
A couple of things to take away here.
1) The impact your offense and defense efficiencies are very similar, but in the end, the offense is the single largest contributor to your season wins total.
2) Strength of Schedule is very important, but not the end all be all for improving seasons win total. This is because strength of schedule is offset by a disproportional amount due to offense and defense efficiencies.
Florida State should win 7.66 games next season assuming a couple of things. If we assume our offense remains a top 10 offense, our field position regresses back to the three year average (rank 25), and our defense improves to the 50th percentile rank. Everyone who is predicting 9 and 10 win seasons are simply overestimating FSU’s defensive turnaround and underestimating the difficulty of this schedule.
But wait, there is one little caveat. This is against FBS competition. Florida State only plays 11 regular season FBS schools this upcoming season. The 7.66 win total does not include the game against Samford. If we assume that FSU wins this game 99.9% of the time, FSU’s actual predicted wins becomes 8.65.The average number of FBS teams any team plays in a year in this data set is 11.94.
What do you think?
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Fun...we have way too long in the off-season. no?
I’ve been playing in a similar way using s&p but also prjecting all the teams on the schedule. (we won’t get better while they stay the same) With that method I’m getting 8.79 which was projecting Clem without K Parker and UNC with Austin.
I think it will go down a bit as Parker’s addition is bigger than Austin’s loss but only slightly.
Giddy-up!
Yeah
But yeah but parkers addition is less than slippers loss which means that the skill differential is negative resulting in a expected win increase for the noles
A statistical request
How about an ANOVA on the covariates to see which one’s residual deviance is greatest i.e., which variable was most important?
FSU Defense 2010: Taking back 1st down.
I always round up
+ Bowl game victory = 10 win post season.
Ill buy that for a dollar.
Wonder if coach Saban uses this theory? lol
“Look, if we had all the same ingredients coming back, all the same ingredients, I watched a cooking show the other day with a guy on TV showing you how to cook,” Saban said. "Let me just say, I put all the same ingredients in my pot as he put in his and what came out of the oven is not the same as what came out of his oven.
“Even if we had all the same ingredients back, it would be difficult to manufacture the same kind of team chemistry. That’s one of the great things about college football is there’s always a lot of new opportunity for a lot of new people because you have turnover on your team. And a realistic approach is, are we going to be able to do the things that we need to do with the young players that don’t have as much experience, that are going to get some on-the-job training in terms of what they want to accomplish, what they need to do to do a good job?
“Are they going to be able to do those things with the right attitude, the right commitment, the right intensity, the right sort of ability to overcome adversity? Deal with success when they have success, and have the maturity to overcome some of the negatives that they’ll surely go through in this season? It always comes down to how many shining lights do you have on your team and how many blinking lights do you have? Blinking lights are people who don’t do what they’re supposed to do, they don’t do the right things.
“They don’t have the right habits. They don’t have the correct discipline to get the job done on a consistent basis. Those kinds of players usually affect your ability to be successful.”
GO NOLES
sitting at the bar>>>>>>
listening to a casual Nolefan tell me how if the NOLES don’t win 10 games this year with the “great schedule they have this year”.. Jimbo should be on the hot seat………I kept my mouth shut, too much ground to cover in one sitting, and gave him this website to take a look at if he wanted more info on the Noles……my part in helping TN convert one casual fan at a time…..
No, you HAVE to step up and educate people
spread the gospel. Because these are fans. They will clamor if we “fail” and we’ll have to listen to the “see it wasn’t Bawbby all along” stuff ad nauseum.
Shot a Gator in Jean Shorts just to watch him die.
When you realize you cannot discuss FSU with people who don't read TN...
You’re hooked.
This team will improve in '10... on its 16-16 conference record over the last 4 years.... after losing 20 games in the last 4 years... after having the 7th worst major-conference defense... after not even winning its own division in the ACC in the last 4.
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by Bud Elliott on Jul 22, 2010 10:58 PM EDT up reply actions 2 recs
put that on a damn tshirt
FSU Defense 2010: Taking back 1st down.
by ricobert1 on Jul 22, 2010 11:42 PM EDT up reply actions 2 recs
HAHA,
Agreed.
Not an alcoholic, just an FSU grad.
by onebarrelrum on Jul 23, 2010 1:27 AM EDT up reply actions
rec'd
I’d also include things like discussing expected win totals with people who still use just W or L for each game (i.e. 100% or 0%).
"The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary." Vince Lombardi
"We'll win games with talent, we'll win championships with character." Jimbo Fisher
discussing win totals not limited to FSU fans
"The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary." Vince Lombardi
"We'll win games with talent, we'll win championships with character." Jimbo Fisher
but if there is limited resources, go with educating the FSU fans first.
Grace I call Your name, Oh won’t Your smile fall over me, I’m cracked and dry on hands and knees, Oh sweet grace rain down on me I need You grace
-Phil Wickham
I am working on something that might help your cause and should publish in the next few days. Stay tuned.
>-----:----:------>Spearing 'em and Scalping 'em like it's 1999
I'm not so sure this Jimbo fella is the right man for the job.
This has happened when I was at training in Orlando and roomed with a person who really wanted to talk about it.
But I didn’t get into it with him because he was pretty darn sure Miami being “back”, unfortunately I hadn’t memorized all the talking points so I came across like I knew nothing… sigh.
Grace I call Your name, Oh won’t Your smile fall over me, I’m cracked and dry on hands and knees, Oh sweet grace rain down on me I need You grace
-Phil Wickham
Just didnt feel like killing his enthusiasm tonight
if he truly wants to be educated…he will be a TN member soon..if not…so be it…..
Interesting.
Throw in an ACC Champ game appearance plus bowl win, with 50/50, and you get to 10 wins (well, 9.66) for the season.
Curious why you think we would regress on field position? We have a returning kicker, returning punter, and likely have more/better athletes on special teams… and a defense that will probably, occassionally, hold the other team and shift that variable further into our favor (not sure if this is double counting). How about running the model with us improving upon our field position?
Second, I take issue with this:
Everyone who is predicting 9 and 10 win seasons are simply overestimating FSU’s defensive turnaround and underestimating the difficulty of this schedule.
This conclusion assumes your #60 rank is factual. You might be under-estimating our win total because you are underestimating our defensive efficiency. (That is, a conjecture of a #60 defensive ranking is as unfounded, or as much speculation, as a conjecture of 9 or 10 wins.)
Field position was regressed back to our three year average. There is little room for improvement when your FPA is ranked 14th. Shifting it back to the three-year average is a safe assumption and doesn’t really change the projections very much.
Predicting a 60th ranked defense is not under-estimating the defensive turnaround. That is a gigantic improvement upon the 2009 defense, and other writers on tomahawk nation have already documented how rare a turnaround of that magnitude would be.
The statement you quoted was to illustrate that although we could have a great defensive turnaround, there still exists the difficulty of this schedule, which would wipe out many of the positive gains seen on defense in terms of final win totals.
The coefficients are provided so anyone could run a projection based on what they view the major variables will be. The only one that could be considered a hard variable would be SOS. If you think FSU could have a stronger defense and better field position, do the math and post it! I am very curious!
My only problem is the categoric language you used.
“Everyone who is predicting… are simply overestimating FSU’s defensive turnaround.” No one knows with any degree of certainty what our defensive turnaround will be.
I think it would be more fair to say, “A prediction of 9 or 10 wins is contingent on a drastic defensive turnaround (far exceeding a top 60 performance) and/or expectations of an extreme underperformance of scheduled opponents relative to their preseason expectations.”
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