Stats

I was only able to watch about 1 quarter of the BYU game today. (The second quarter.) Tulane isn't exactly a terrific team or anything, but there were a couple of stats that jumped out at me from the game:

• 0: Zero punts. On 10 offensive possessions BYU had 2 field goals, 6 touchdowns, an interception and a turn over on downs. That's pretty efficient football. (Of course, that took our best kicker out of the game, it seems. For the second game in a row, we had a kickoff out of bounds (how hard it is to keep it in bounds? the field is like 30 yards wide) and Payne missed a PAT.)
• 6/9: Third down conversions. 67% is pretty darn good, but that isn't really the number that piqued my interest. The interesting number: 9. BYU only had 9 3rd downs all game long. 79 plays in the game and all but 67 of them were either 1st or 2nd down. It's a good thing when your offense doesn't need 3 tries to get a first down.
• 16: Players that gained yardage for BYU. Sure, it helps that it was a blowout and everyone got in on the action, but on 26 completions no one caught more than 4 balls, and 45 runs were split up between 10 players with no one getting more than 12 carries. 9 players averaged 3.5 yards per carry or more.

Yeah, its true, playing a team like Tulane will always help you put up big stats, but it's still not every day you see numbers like these. (Note: I am not arguing that a team that has 9 players averaging 3.5+ yards per carry is somehow better than a team that has one back carry it 30 times. I'm mostly just interested in these stats as statistical anomolies.) But while we're here, lets compare some other teams on the winning ends of blowouts:

Florida (56-6 over Troy): 3 punts, 10/14 3rd downs, 6 players 3.5+ ypc

Oklahoma (64-0 over Idaho State): 4 punts, 4/13 3rd downs, 4 players 3.5+ ypc.

Cincinnati (70-3 over Southeast Missouri State): 4 punts, 7/12 3rd downs, 6 players 3.5+ ypc.

Ok, I'm done.