We've got another article from our friend Patrick. We had gotten several emails after the VT game about the inability for Georgia Tech to come back from games late. Now, obviously you don't ever want to put yourself in a position to have to come back, but obviously, it's going to happen to everybody at some point. So, we sent Patrick out to crunch some numbers and here you go.
Hello again, 4th & short readers!
I sincerely hope you all enjoyed my first 4&S article! If not, maybe this'll be my chance to redeem myself in your eyes.
I want to continue on my brief series that I've titled "GT Mythbusters". In Part I, we looked at the effect that CPJ's under-center-option-based-spread offense has on Georgia Tech's recruiting abilities. For Part II, we'll take a look at how CPJ's offense affect Georgia Tech's ability to come back from a deficit.
GT MYTHBUSTERS PART II - GEORGIA TECH WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO MOUNT A COMEBACK LIKE A PRO-STYLE TEAM WOULD WITH THEIR THREE-YARDS-AND-A-CLOUD-OF-DUST OFFENSE
Similarly to how we looked at recruiting, for Part II we will use a relative comparison to GT's previous coach, Chan Gailey. The GT offense under CCG was an exercise in underachievement, and I'm sure my fellow Tech fans will agree with me here. Most of us remember all too well the predictable play calling, the "sit on the lead" mentality, and who could forget the awful 9-6 loss to Wake Forest on a dreary December day in Jacksonville in the 2006 ACC championship game WE HAD CALVIN JOHNSON TASHARD CHOICE AND PHILIP WHEELER TO NAME A FEW HOLY CRAP HOW DID WE LOSE THAT GAME okay rant's over. I was hoping to be able to find some national averages on this topic but sadly have not been able to find a database of such information. I do believe that this exercise will be educational, at worst.
A couple of caveats before we dive in. First off, it is impossible to comment on a team's ability to make a comeback in a game given that this also requires the defense to make a certain number of defensive stop(s). In an exhaustive study of a team's comeback ability, we'd need to look at each team's defensive qualifications. However, for our purposes, it actually works out that the relative differences between the offense and the defense have been about the same (GT had fairly strong defenses under CCG but fairly weak offenses; vice versa under CPJ). Secondly, we have to discuss overall team talent. If we can assume that the Rivals' class recruiting rankings are a reasonable standard to measure this, we found out last week that CCG was only marginally better, having a 1.4 places edge on CPJ's recruiting class average rank during his tenure. In conclusion - more or less, we can say that our analysis will be controlled for defensive ability and talent level.
I've listed below the records by year when trailing at any point in a game by 10 points or more. We'll look at the first five years of each coach's tenure since CPJ is currently in his sixth year.
CCG (total: 2-17)
2002: 0-3
2003: 0-5
2004: 1-5 (who could forget Wes Durham's "SON OF A GUN!" call on Calvin's game-winning TD in Clemson?)
2005: 0-3
2006: 1-1 (4-point win over Maryland where Michael Johnson took over on UM's last possession)
CPJ (total: 2-19)
2008: 1-2 (that win over UGA was a big one, no doubt!)
2009: 0-3
2010: 1-5 (down 17-6 in 4Q in Wake, probably lingering effects from loss to Russell Wilson & his Wolpack the week before, but Nesbitt made sure we didn't pick up an L)
2011: 0-3
2012: 0-6
So what can we gather from this comparison? Obviously CPJ has had a worse winning percentage, only marginally though.
The number of close games played is actually very close (<10% difference), which lends a bit of credence to our original
theory about the relative differences between CCG's offenses/defenses and CPJ's offenses/defenses. The winning percentage number
itself is very close too, with CCG having a slight edge, 10.5% to 9.5%.
A few other notes on the above data before we get to our final verdict:
-It's fairly easy to see how strong a team was based on how many of these games are played in a particular season. We know that 2003 & 2004 CCG teams weren't very good, and we know the same for CPJ's 2010 and 2012 teams. Those four teams account for only 40% of the seasons we're reviewing but account for 58% of the games trailing by 10+ in that span (that Pareto fellow strikes again!) No other season out of the ten had more than three such games. Furthermore, in this 10-season set, those four seasons had a combined winning percentage of 52% while the other six seasons represented a combined WP of 65%.
A few other notes on the above data before we get to our final verdict:
-It's fairly easy to see how strong a team was based on how many of these games are played in a particular season. We know that 2003 & 2004 CCG teams weren't very good, and we know the same for CPJ's 2010 and 2012 teams. Those four teams account for only 40% of the seasons we're reviewing but account for 58% of the games trailing by 10+ in that span (that Pareto fellow strikes again!) No other season out of the ten had more than three such games. Furthermore, in this 10-season set, those four seasons had a combined winning percentage of 52% while the other six seasons represented a combined WP of 65%.
-The splits on CPJ's ACC championship season in 2009 are interesting. Tech went 11-3 that year, which means GT was 11-0 in games where they never trailed by 10 or more, but 0-3 in games in which they did. Goes to show you that even great teams have trouble making big comebacks.
Well, boys and girls, I'm pretty sure we can put this one to bed. CPJ has only had two more games over the course of his first five seasons in which his team was trailing by 10+ at any point than did CCG. A 1% difference in winning percentage is the definition of trivial, especially over 5 years and ~20 games each.
Verdict: BUSTED
-Patrick
Thanks Patrick! It is definitely an interesting topic for sure, what say you?
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