Arizona Offense vs USC 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
0 is worst unit in NCAA 100 is best
Until Weeks 6-7 the model outputs are directional, but useful
The Arizona offense (#17) is living on borrowed time. In spite of their dismal performance against Utah last week their ranking improved. What gives? Well nothing happens in a vacuum. Washington's defense, who Arizona had a pretty good offensive game against, had a very good game against an Oregon offense that the model really likes. So Washington's defense looked pretty good and Arizona looked better. Arizona has also played a pretty rough set of defenses to open Pac12 play and the model takes that into account, but if you have actually watched this Arizona team in the last two games in particular, the wheels are coming off. The returns on that Washington game won't last forever. The model has an exponential decay built in to weight more recent games.
Arizona's offense looks a lot like USC's offense in that they are really good at the per play drive metrics. Arizona is best in the NCAA in Play Efficiency. They are also excellent at avoiding Negative Drives. They are very good at Play Efficiency and preventing D-plus Plays and ok on 3rd Down.
Arizona isn't very good at Drive Efficiency. They are not USC bad, but they still struggle to get long drives put together. Arizona's offense at this point has devolved into waiting for the QB to run, luckily they have two very explosive running QB's in Dawkins and Tate. Much like at Utah, Arizona needs a healthy Dawkins to be competitive in this game. They also need their defense and special teams to not bury them deep on their own end of the field.
Arizona's offense looks a lot like USC's offense in that they are really good at the per play drive metrics. Arizona is best in the NCAA in Play Efficiency. They are also excellent at avoiding Negative Drives. They are very good at Play Efficiency and preventing D-plus Plays and ok on 3rd Down.
Arizona isn't very good at Drive Efficiency. They are not USC bad, but they still struggle to get long drives put together. Arizona's offense at this point has devolved into waiting for the QB to run, luckily they have two very explosive running QB's in Dawkins and Tate. Much like at Utah, Arizona needs a healthy Dawkins to be competitive in this game. They also need their defense and special teams to not bury them deep on their own end of the field.
USC's defense (#69) is having a tough year. They are struggling to get pressure on the QB and that puts, even their extremely talented corners in a tough position. There problems mostly come from an inability to get off the field is they don't get off in the first set of downs. They absolutely contained a mediocre ASU offense and they were able to hold Colorado just enough, helped by a bananas Adoree Jackson INT, to get the win. Arizona could be challenging because with Anu Solomon out, Arizona's only real explosive players are guaranteed to touch the ball every down.
USC is very good at containing Explosive Drives and creating Negative Drives. They are really too fast and athletic to get burned very often and they are at their best when they are forcing 3 and outs.
USC is very good at containing Explosive Drives and creating Negative Drives. They are really too fast and athletic to get burned very often and they are at their best when they are forcing 3 and outs.
USC is pretty terrible at Drive Efficiency though and they are pretty middling at Play Efficiency. So you get to see the picture of why they are not ranked much higher. They do allow you to drive on them and they struggle on 3rd down and at creating D-plus Plays. Arizona could be a good matchup for USC in that Arizona struggles to string together drives, but Dawkins and Tate are total wildcards that could put up explosive plays on this team.
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