The primary goal in collecting and presenting our own football stats is to give the Tomahawk Nation community unique analysis.  Plenty of effort goes into the number crunching, but without good presentation the data is somewhat useless.  Previously, game and season data has been presented in spreadsheet and html formats filled with hundreds of categories.  After careful consideration much of the extraneous fat has been trimmed off and the good meat placed in a more viewer friendly setting.  What you will see here is a preview of what I intend to provide for each game throughout the season.  So, with just under two weeks remaining in the dead season, it's time to break out your favorite 'Noles gear and get those spreadsheets ready!

A set of numbers can be very adequately described using a few standard statistical measures.  The sum gives a good idea of the size and composition of the data set.  The mean tells you the average, expected or "typical" result.  Variance and skew describe the consistency about the mean and give some idea about the extremes.  None of these terms are particularly football friendly, however.  As such, I've chosen five basic metrics--plays, yards per play, success rate, explosive play rate, negative play rate--that, collectively, give the same descriptive qualities, but without the math jargon.

As usual, plays that occurred after the game was mathematically over are not included.  Metric explanations are provided where necessary.  Below, we have the 2010 FSU-VT game stats graphically categorized by down, quarter and redzone.

Success rate is a per-play measure of consistency with which the offense achieves enough to stay on track and keep the chains moving.  It is defined by Football Outsiders as gaining at least 50% of necessary yardage on 1st down, 70% on 2nd down and 100% on 3rd or 4th downs.  Our definition varies slightly, in that, converting a long yardage down (passing down) into a medium/short yardage down (running down) is successful even if the percentage criteria is not met.

The definition of an explosive play was derived from analyzing over 6000 plays from 2010, with a statistically significant gain--average plus two standard deviations--counting as "explosive".  For running plays this came out to be just under 15 yards and just under 25 for passing plays.

Thoughts and analysis, in addition to the graphs, will be provided for the 2011 games.  We'll skip the analysis on this one.....that horse has been pronounced dead several times.  I will say the data shown very accurately describes the game, who won and how.

I intend to also provide formation specific data, time permitting, in similar format and each game's google spreadsheet will be available to all TN members throughout the season.