For my post yesterday, I calculated the average yards per point for NCAA football teams. In 2008, teams averaged a point for every 13.7 yards gained, or a touchdown for every 96 yards. Obviously, the average touchdown drive is shorter than 96 yards but every time a team drives 75 yards and only kicks a field goal or turns the ball over in the red zone, their yards per point is significantly hit. On the other hand, teams can score touchdowns without even touching the ball on offense. What it sums up to is that the average college football team can expect a touchdown for every 96 yards of offense.
Obviously, since this is an average, some teams will be more successful at converting yards into points than others. Last year, the three most efficient teams in converting yards into points on offense were Florida, Oklahoma and Utah. Perhaps not surprisingly, Florida and Oklahoma played for the national championship and Utah completed an undefeated season with a Sugar Bowl upset against Alabama.
The question, of course, is whether converting yards into points is a skill or a matter of luck. Something like yards per point will depend a lot on turnover margins and special teams, which tend to swing from year to year. On the other hand, I would expect some level of skill to be involved, especially for the better teams in football. That said, the top 5 teams in converting yards into points in 2008 have seen their yards per point ratio increase (get worse) by an average of 3.3 points in 2009. Meanwhile, the bottom 5 teams in converting yards into points in 2008 have seen their ratios drop by an average of 3.4 points in 2009.
So what does this mean for Illinois football? After ranking 92nd nationally in yards per point last year (thus making a potentially great offense rather inconsistent), the Illinois offense is 119th out of 120 teams this year (21.7 yards per point). Illinois is averaging just one touchdown for every 152 yards of offense! The good news is that with a total that low, simple bad luck comes into play. So the Illini offense is not quite as bad as it has looked thus far this year. With an average number of yards per point, they would be averaging 27 points per game instead of 16.5 - but an average number of yards per point is still a bit much to expect from a Ron Zook team.
Now in most of Illinois' games this wouldn't have made a difference. Based purely on raw yardage, they would still have been projected to lose all the games they did. And in truth, their yardage totals are misleading considering they have racked up a lot of 'garbage time' yardage on offense in their last three games. But the game against Indiana could very much have gone a different way if the Illini had gone up 14-13 instead of seeing Juice fumble at the 5 yard line. Illinois actually had a superior success rate against the Hoosiers but was somewhat less explosive on a per-play basis. Thus, I don't think that Illinois is a worse team than Indiana - considering that Indiana was at home, they are probably about even. That may be damning with faint praise, but it offers some hope to a team that has yet to record a win against an FBS opponent.
So the good news is that the Illini offense will likely regress to the mean a bit and score a few more points than they've been scoring. The bad news is that Ron Zook's teams have consistently undershot the average on yards per point for offense, with the offense averaging just 17.1 yards per point during his five-year tenure, and never finishing above the national mean. Thus, although this year's team is getting unlucky, it is also a reflection on Zook's coaching that the offense has been consistently inefficient at converting yardage into points .
