Upsets Happen
The upset of the day was in South Bend as Notre Dame was a four touchdown favorite over Northern Illinois. I think everyone in the country knew that except for NIU. This was a classic game where everything went wrong for Notre Dame. The Irish went -2 in the turnover margin, lost the success rate battle, lost the EPA differential, couldn’t stop the run, and didn’t generate enough scoring chances. You add all that up, and they still had a higher post game win expectancy, but it was through a small margin. How small? The Irish had two field goals that were blocked. One was in the first half and the other was a 62 yard prayer that didn’t have a chance at the end of the game.
Another game that was marred with turnovers by the home team, but the post game win expectancy was in favor of Cal. Cal had a +5 turnover margin, generated enough scoring chances, and closed on those scoring chances. That would do it for almost everyone. What is interesting to me is Auburn had better success running the football than they did throwing it and it wasn’t like they were down by three touchdowns.
CBS got a taste of “El Assico” with Iowa and Iowa State. In pure El Assico fashion, the defenses were the stars of the show while the offenses were just offensive. It looked like Iowa was going to run away with the game as they jumped out to an early 13-0 lead going to halftime and they carried a 19-7 lead midway to the third quarter. Then a quick TD pass from Rocco Becht to Jaylin Noel for 75 yards took the wind out of Iowa’s sails and they weren’t able to recover. Hitting explosive plays and finishing drives was more than enough for the Cyclones to come away with the W.
Almost Doesn’t Count
Putting Bama in this category doesn’t seem right considering the game ended up in garbage time and Bama won by 26. However, Bama had a 21-16 lead in the fourth quarter and they lost the turnover battle by -3 and had over 110 yards in penalties. It was a recipe for an upset, but Bama’s depth ended up wearing down South Florida in the second half (and Bama stopped turning the ball over and committing penalties).
For the second week in a row, Oregon had a game decided by single digits. The difference between the game against Boise and the game last week versus Idaho was the post game win expectancy. Against Idaho, it was 97% and as you can see it was 43% against Boise. Part of the reason was Boise generated a lot of scoring chances and scored more points per scoring opportunity than Oregon did. There were 12 scoring chances for the game and Boise had seven to Oregon’s five. The fact that Oregon had less scoring chances and less points per scoring chance than Boise was a big factor in their post game win expectancy to be less than the Broncos.
Convincing W’s
Not going to sugarcoat this. This was a beating. Putting Michigan is garbage time hasn’t happened Georgia put them in the torture chamber in the CFP. From the Horns opening drive, they looked to be the team in control and Michigan was playing catch up. What Texas had in common with their previous game against Alabama was the fact they kept Quinn Ewers clean. The Texas OL had a 0% Sack Rate against Michigan. It goes without saying that Sark had Wink Martindale’s number.
Shedeur Sanders asked how often did Dylan Raiola get touched….well…..he didn’t. The Husker OL had a 0% Sack Rate against Colorado. This wasn’t a game that the Nebraska won for them, but it was the defense that suffocated Colorado’s offense, holding them to 260 total yards.