Tennessee Football Five Factor Tracker: Week 1

Five Factors, Two Charts, Week 1

One last review of week 1 before we get into NC State and week 2. What you’re looking at below is how Tennessee and each of the Vols’ opponents faired in the Five Factors in their opening game (if you don’t know what that means, scroll to the bottom of the page for an explanation). It’s too early to draw any real conclusions about this data, but it’s fun to look at nonetheless.

Vols Offense vs. Opponent’s Defense

The important thing to understand with these charts is the more green a category is, the better the team performed there, and the more red a category is, the worse they performed. In this first one, you’re seeing Tennessee’s offense on the left-hand side, and this season’s opponents on the right. Obviously, lots of teams, including UT, played cupcake openers, so these stats are pretty skewed this early.

Vols Defense vs Opponents’ Offense

And here you’re seeing Tennessee’s defense on the left, opponent offenses on the right. While the data is unreliable this early, you can see Vandy has a lot of red in both their offensive and defensive charts. So while the ‘Dores beat Virginia Tech, they likely didn’t play that well overall. Florida, with all the red on both charts, was exactly as bad as you thought they looked.

What are the Five Factors?

There are five factors that are most predictive of success in college football. They are:

• finishing drives (shown in the chart as scoring opportunities—drives that get inside the opponent 40—and points per opportunity),

• efficiency (measured by success rate—getting 50% of yards to go on 1st down, 70% on 2nd down, and converting on 3rd/4th down),

• explosiveness (average predicted points added on successful plays),

• starting field position, and

• turnovers (I use havoc rate—percentage of plays that are a sack, tackle for loss, pass breakup, or turnover—because it’s a super cool stat).