Week 4 Matchup ASU Offense vs California Defense

ASU Offense vs California Defense

Rankings reflect ranking percentile for Offense or Defense vs NCAA

Chart reflect ranking percentile for Offense or Defense vs NCAA 
0 is worst unit in NCAA 100 is best

Until Weeks 5-6 the model outputs are directional, but useful

The ASU offense (#15), gets, like the Stanford defense, gets an extra dose of "small sample size warning." ASU ranked #38 last year in offense, which was good, but on the mushier side of average. It could be that they are that much better than last year, and Ballage and Harry are very good.

ASU has been very good at Drive Efficiency and avoiding Negative Drives. They get more points out of average yards per play drives than most teams and they don't rely on Explosive Drives to generate their points.

ASU isn't really doing anything badly, but they are not very good at Play Efficiency, Explosiveness, or 3rd down. Being pretty average in the facets makes me suspicious that ASU can keep up its ranking over a season.

Cal's defense (#110) has not been good. SDSU is a pretty good football team, but giving up 45 to a Mountain West team is inexcusable. The result against Texas isn't actually all that bad. Notre Dame, who will likely finish with a good defense also gave up a bunch of points to Texas. The result that might be hurting their early season ranking most is against Hawaii, who got completely shut down at Michigan. It also might be hurting Arizona's ranking, though both teams also had bad defenses last year.

Cal isn't good at anything, but they are average at Drive Efficiency. They don't give up many more points than you would expect given how bad they are at everything else.

Cal is really, really, bad at nearly everything. They need to do everything better.