Advanced Box Score: Tennessee 51, NC State 10

The mayonnaise kings return

Tennessee was an early 4.5-point favorite against NC State in the Duke’s Mayo Classic. That number ballooned up to -10 by Friday; it turns out the number could’ve ballooned up over the Charlotte skyline and provided areal coverage of the game for ESPN. The Wolfpack had few answers for Tennessee offensively or defensively, and the advanced stats bear that fact out.

All data pulled from collegefootballdata.com, which filters out garbage time stats.

Five Factor Box Score

• It’s exceedingly rare that you hold a team to negative points per scoring opportunity, but considering NCST only mustered three trips inside the 40, and those trips ended in a punt, a pick-6, and a field goal, here we are.

• Tennessee’s PPO should probably read 4.1 instead of 3.4—collegefootballdata.com didn’t count a garbage time TD, but did count the scoring opportunity. The Vols’ offense was a touch too field-goaly for my taste, but that’s a real nit-pick when you score 51 so I’ll keep it to myself.

• Yes, that starting field position average is correct. Tennessee’s average drive started at their own 46. That’s how you create those scoring opportunities.

• The havoc rate probably isn’t right. The way CFBD.com parses data is often wrong on Sunday and fixed later in the week. But some quick maths on my part has the real havoc rate at around 33%—which is still insane, one out of every three plays being a TFL, sack, PBU, or turnover? It helps when sixteen different Vols get in on at least part of a TFL—with 13 tackles for loss (3 sacks) in total.

Rushing Report

With the Wolfpack defense playing drop-8 coverage most of the day, there was plenty of room to run for Dylan Sampson, Nico Iamaleava, and the Vols’ rushing attack.

• The one shortcoming in UT’s run game was the two 3rd/4th-and-2 attempts that got stuffed. But the 112 line yards show that Tennessee was generally getting a good push all night.

• On the other hand, the 40% stuff rate for NC State shows just how much Tennessee had the Wolfpack stove up all night.

PPA/Usage

Remember that PPA is a measure of how well-positioned a team is to score. So if an individual player is posting negative PPA, he’s actually hindering his teams ability to get points.

• To put the opponent’s QB into negative PPA nearly guarantees a win, considering the QB will almost always lead the team in usage.

• This is the third straight game, going back to the Citrus Bowl, that Tennessee has held the opposing QB to negative gross PPA.

• KC Concepcion and Justin Joly were NCST’s only true contributors. No surprise, those are two real dudes there.

• Again, NC State opted to drop eight men into coverage most of the night. That kept UT’s passing attack from posting huge numbers. But it opened room on the ground, leading to most of Nico’s PPA coming from rushes.

• Squirrel White made the most of his limited opportunities, adding 7.1 PPA on just two catches—accounting for just just 4% of UT’s offense.

• Dylan Sampson was the workhorse, and welcomed that role, accounting for 43% of Tennessee’s offense and 6.8 PPA (a surprising 4.3 of that from the passing game).