A Few Honest Insights Into Our Next Opponent

While you all know I'm a homer for The Dawgs, I also hate to think we're going to beat a team that we don't wind up beating. So I decided to take a look (BLINDLY, mind you) at some comparative stats. First in my post will be a comparison of wins and losses by the teams we each played. Who had the "tougher" schedule and who had the "weaker" schedule? As you know, that's tough to judge and can get VERY complicated when you take a deep dive. So instead of diving deep, I just decided to look at total wins and total losses by our respective opponents. Here they are:

Oklahoma: Opponent wins = 80. Opponent losses = 79. Margin = +1
Georgia: Opponent wins = 93. Opponent losses = 63. Margin = +30

Hmmmm . . . that doesn't seem "fair" does it? But I just added them up, straight up. Notice that our opponents play 3 fewer games - Hurricane Irma effect. Still, that's a pretty wide margin.

More to follow . . .

Next up . . .

I looked at margin of victory over their opponents. PRIOR to doing this, I decided to just add up Points For and subtract Points Against. Losses simply counted as "negative victory margin". Again, this isn't rocket science, but I thought it would yield something at least interesting.

Oklahoma beat their opponents by a total of 259 points.
Georgia beat their opponents by a total of 282 points.

Average margin of victory:
Oklahoma = 19.92 points/victory
Georgia = 21.69 points/victory

Next . . . Total offense . . . and this is where things start to get interesting. (Instead of hand calculating these, I'm just using Yahoo sports)

Oklahoma = number 4 in the nation with 44.9 points per game
Georgia = number 23 in the nation with "only" 34.9 points per game.

Oklahoma = number 52 in the nation giving up 25.0 points per game
Georgia = number 4 in the nation giving up 13.2 points per game (and yes, that INCLUDES the first Abuurn game)

Yards:
Oklahoma = number 1 in the nation, putting up 583.3 yards per game
Georgia = number 36 in the nation, putting up a "paltry" 433.6 yards per game

How about Passing Defense? That's going to be pretty important, right?

We've all been told about the Big 12 being a "sling-it-around-the-park" conference. So it would stand to reason that we might EXPECT Oklahoma to give up more passing yards than Georgia. And sure enough, Oklahoma gave up 3,128 yards passing this year in a pass-happy league. Georgia, meanwhile, playing in a "run-happy" league gave up only 2,058 yards passing, to rank number 8 in the nation against the pass. Oklahoma ranked 23rd from the BOTTOM in pass defense (it was easier than counting down from the top).

So now, having assumed that in a "pass-happy" conference, you should be expected to give up more yards passing than you would in a "run-happy" conference, I reasoned that it would be also expected that Georgia should have given up more yards in the running game.

Georgia gave up 1,464 yards rushing, which ranks 18th in the nation, while
Oklahoma gave up 1,873 yards rushing, which ranks 52nd in the nation . . . wait a minute . . . how can that be?

Oklahoma gave up more yards passing? AND more yards rushing?

They beat their opponents by a margin of 259 points?

Georgia on the other hand, gave up FEWER yards passing AND FEWER yards rushing?

And Georgia beat their opponents by a margin of 282 points?

Something isn't adding up here . . .

So next, I wondered how many TDs our opponents scored on our defenses by running the ball . . . SURELY Georgia would have given up a LOT more rushing TDs in a run-happy conference than Oklahoma, playing in a pass-happy conference, right?

Oklahoma Rushing TDs given up: 19
Georgia Rushing TDs given up: 6

WHAT THE?!

How about passing TDs?

Oklahoma Passing TDs given up: 21
Georgia Passing TDs given up: 13

Are you kidding me?!