Those of you expressing this sentiment, please elaborate.
I shouldn’t have made a blanket statement without some degree of explanation. I was really looking at this from a macro level – I believe that one key to the game will be our ability to get the defense off the field. Not necessary to get 3 and out’s every time, but limit each possession to a few first downs while minimizing the big plays. To see what to expect, I looked at the following stats:
GT, 3rd down conversion pct, offense: 0.574, rank 1st
NCSU, 3rd down conversion pct, defense: 0.504, rank 121st
(Note: this is the same stat mentioned by Va, above…)
and less importantly,
GT, 4th down conversion pct, offense: 0.750, rank 11th
NSCU, 4th down conversion pct, defense: 0.500, rank 57th
I did see that GT has only attempted 12 4th down conversions this year, but this is likely correlated to their high 3rd down conversion rate.
Foose: I absolutely agree that individual matchups, game psychology, and game prep can throw all macro stats out the window. But I don’t have sufficient football acumen to evaluate individual matchups, so I use what I “understand”. I greatly appreciate, however, the counter viewpoint from a lower, more granular and decidedly more knowledgeable level.
