Florida State 38, Wake Forest 17: Advanced Box Score

The Florida State Seminoles beat the Wake Forest Demon Deacons 38-17 Saturday.

Using Bill Connelly’s advanced stats from Football Study Hall, we can measure where the game was really won, filtering out the noise.

FSU had a postgame win expectancy of 100%.

Nothing flukish about this win.

Efficiency: FSU 46% success rate, Wake Forest 33.

That is a very nice edge for the Seminoles, and much better than the team had been doing. Granted, Wake’s defense is bad, but so is FSU’s offense so far this season. And holding Wake to just 33% is also nice by the defense.

Explosiveness: FSU 6.9 yards/play, Wake Forest 3.5

HELLO. FSU’s yards/play was 97% better than Wake’s. Almost double. That is absolutely ridiculous.

What those first two stats tell me (and I have not watched the game yet), is that not only was FSU more consistent successful, but its successful plays were much more explosive.

Finishing Drives: FSU 6.33 points/opportunity, Wake Forest 3.40

Florida State was much better in the scoring area than the Demon Deacons, with a similar number of chances.

FSU had a 90-yard edge in field position.

That’s actually not big at all. For reference, there are numerous games with advantages of 200 and sometimes even 300 yards.

Wake Forest was +1.5 in expected turnovers luck

With each turnover being worth about five points on average, turnover luck helped Wake to lose by 21 instead of a number like 28.