Well, at least that's what some "fun with numbers" says.
I've been enamored with looking at yards per play differential as an indication of a team's strength. Basically, if two teams play and they both average abour 5 yds/play, they are equal. If one averages 6 yds/play and the other averages 5, the one with 6 is better, and the yds per play differential is 1 yppd.
So, I decided to look at our schedule's yppd. And not only the teams we play, but they teams they play. So, for example, ND's average yppd is currently 1.0. Michigan's is 2.4. If I average our opponents (only the one's we've played), our opponents are at 1.4 yppd. Or, on average, they are 1.4 yppd better than the teams they've played.
Then, I thought looking just at our opponents wasn't enough - what if someone's played a very easy schedule. So, I looked at our opponent's opponents yppd (confused yet). Not too surprisingly, our opponents have played relatively easy schedules and have a -0.5 yppd. In another words, the average of USF, UM, MSU, and Pitt's opponents typically gain 0.5 yds less per play than their opponents.
Taking these three numbers - our yppd + our opponent's yppd + our opponent's opponent's yppd... and added them to create a number - of how good ND (and other teams) are. You could think of this as - how good doe ND win the line of scrimage relative to our opponent's - and then adjusting for strength of schedule.
Based on this, here's what the numbers say - ND is better than any team on our schedule:
Notre Dame 1.9
Stanford 1.7
Michigan 1.5
Michigan St. 1.2
Southern California 1.1
Navy 0.9
South Fla. 0.6
Pittsburgh 0.5
Air Force 0.2
Maryland (0.0)
Wake Forest (0.1)
Boston College (0.4)
Purdue (1.3)
And Purdue is the worst team we'll play. Granted, this is on a limited set of data... and should become more relevant as the season goes on. But if this is any indication, we have played as well as any team we're going to play (save the turnovers and boneheaded mistakes).
For fun, here are the top teams according to this logic for this year:
Alabama 2.8
Georgia Tech 2.7
Nebraska 2.1
Virginia Tech 2.0
Florida 1.9
Wisconsin 1.9
Notre Dame 1.9
Texas A&M 1.8
Stanford 1.7
South Carolina 1.7
UCF 1.7
Baylor 1.5
LSU 1.5
Michigan 1.5
Penn St. 1.4
North Carolina 1.4
Illinois 1.2
Michigan St. 1.2
Tennessee 1.2
San Diego St. 1.2
Washington 1.1
Texas 1.1
Southern California 1.1
Georgia 0.9
Navy 0.9
Looking at the list and then some of the underlying data, I think this analysis would be better served with more game data (for example - Air Force only has one data point, the game against TCU; Tenn has only 2 games of data, Baylor only 2, etc... b/c I excluded all non- DIA games from the analysis).
But, this would suggest we should feel very good about Purdue (although Purdue only has two data points...). And all be said about a night game, them having a week off, etc - we should have the ability to beat them pretty badly. It will be interesting to see what happens.
