Behind The Numbers: Week 7 FCS Football Review

It's time for another edition of our Behind The Numbers series here at FCS Football Central.

Each week, we will highlight a couple of marquee national matchups, using success rate to get a deeper look than what the final score may tell you about what really happened in the game. We will take a look at the most dominant teams of the week, which teams outplayed their opponent but made too many mistakes to win the game, and which teams got outplayed but still escaped with a win.

Success rate takes out a lot of the underlying factors of a game and strictly tells you how well a team played down-to-down. While outliers can swing an individual game, success rate can be a better indicator of what future performance will be. A play is "successful" if 50% of the yards needed are gained on first down, 70% are gained on second down, and 100% are gained on third or fourth down.

The average Success Rate for a college football program is about 40%, while closer to 50% is considered excellent, and anything under 30% is deemed poor.

We take a look behind the numbers from this weekend's FCS football action in Week 7. I decided to do an individual breakdown of North Dakota's win over South Dakota State, so that game is not included below.

Quick Hits:

Another excellent performance by the Montana offense was eclipsed by a terrible Montana defensive performance. The Grizzlies finished with an excellent 58% success rate and averaged over 8 yards per play, but none of it mattered because this defense completely fell apart again.

A week after missing 19 tackles against NAU, they followed it up with 18 missed tackles on Saturday. The leading culprits were Ashton Paine (5), Peyton Wing (3), Sage Salopek (2), Clay Oven (2), and Kade Boyd (2). The Idaho receivers had 138 yards after the catch.

The most ridiculous numbers came on 3rd and 4th down. Idaho converted on 12-of-15 3rd and 4th down plays. This includes conversions of 3rd and 16, 9, 7, 5, and 5 yards. We need to give credit to Idaho quarterback Joshua Wood, who has now gone over 300 yards and completed over 60% of his passes in every FCS game except for Lamar. Idaho is 2-5, but has the ability to win every game left on its schedule.

A few Top 20 teams really rolled with excellent offensive performances in Week 7. Stephen F. Austin (62.2% SR), Tennessee Tech (58% SR), Tarleton State (57.6% SR), Youngstown State (55.9% SR), Harvard (53.7% SR), and South Dakota (48.6% SR) all had it rolling offensively this past weekend.

Defensively, Illinois State led the way with a defensive success rate of 26.7% in a win over Southern Illinois. It should also be noted that Wofford followed closely behind with a 27.1% defensive success rate.

Who Were The Most Dominant Teams In Week 7?

In this section, we will highlight the teams that were the most dominant in success-rate margin (OFF SR-DEF SR). This will highlight which teams truly dominated, even if the final score hides what really happened. Games against non-Division I opponents were excluded.

Alabama A&M (Net SR: 29.2%)
Stephen F. Austin (Net SR: 27.9%)
Tennessee Tech (Net SR: 27.7%)
Wofford (Net SR: 27.1%)
South Dakota (Net SR: 22%)
Incarnate Word (Net SR: 21.9%)

Alabama A&M put together a dominant performance over Grambling State, which just beat Jackson State last week. The Bulldogs won 61-31, but the game wasn't really that close. The Bulldogs had nearly 700 yards of total offense, while holding Grambling State to only 4.6 yards per play.

Stephen F. Austin got back to its dominant ways with over 600 yards of total offense, while holding Nicholls to 3.7 yards per play. Nicholls finished 4-of-18 on third and fourth downs. The Lumberjacks averaged 8.9 yards per play, which was headlined by a rushing attack that rolled up 354 rushing yards on 8.8 yards per carry. It was an all-around dominant performance for Stephen F. Austin.

Tennessee Tech finally put together a dominant performance against Eastern Kentucky, going up 49-7 before some late touchdowns by the Colonels made the score look closer than it really was. The rushing attack finally got going with MJ Flowers and Qua Ashley, combining for 185 yards on 22 carries (8.4 YPC). EKU has not been great against the run, but the Golden Eagles will need to replicate this performance if they want to win the SoCon this year.

Another week and another appearance for VMI's opponent in this section. This week, Wofford got to take full advantage, holding the Keydets to 3.3 yards per play. The Terriers rolled up over 500 yards of total offense, averaging 9.0 yards per play. VMI's passing attack only finished with 36 yards and 1 INT on 5 completions.

South Dakota played a weird game against Murray State, where a first-half turnover and two explosive runs from the Racers led to the game being tied at halftime. The Coyotes were clearly the better team down-to-down, which played out in the second half. They cruised out to a 41-14 lead before a junk-time score from Murray State. The Racers punted or fumbled on five consecutive drives to start the second half.

Incarnate Word had to feel good finally getting a much-needed win. The Cardinals may be the best 3-4 team in the country right now. All three of UIW's FCS losses came against ranked teams, two of which are Top 10 teams, and the Cardinals could have easily won all three of those games. This is a team that has the talent to sneak into the playoffs, but they need some results to start going their way.

Which Week 7 Games Conflicted With Success Rate?

Each week, this section will highlight teams that won the success rate battle but still lost the game. They outperformed their opponent down-to-down, but lost because of turnovers, penalties, special teams, or explosive plays.

Rhode Island 41, Yale 23 (URI 31.3%, Yale 37.4%)
Southeastern Louisiana 34, Lamar 31 (SLU 37%, Lamar 44%)

This was a huge road win for Rhode Island after a rough start to the year. The only reason that the Rams had such a low offensive success rate is that nearly all of their offensive production came from a handful of explosive plays that did a ton of damage. If you can consistently create explosive plays, then moving the chains doesn't really matter.

Alex McClelland generated eight explosive plays (20+ Yards), three with his legs and five throws, including touchdown passes of 79, 58, 37, and 35 yards. Marquis Buchanan was an absolute problem with 193 receiving yards and 2 receiving TDs on 7 receptions. Rhode Island generated an explosive play on nearly 20% of its plays this weekend.

Southeastern Louisiana shows up in this section for the second consecutive week, but this time the "luck" swung in their favor. The two biggest plays in this game were the 60-yard TD run by Kyree Paul, then the fumbled punt in the 4th quarter that allowed SLU to get a field goal and stretch the lead to 11 points.

Lamar can blame its lack of red zone execution for this loss. They settled for field goals three times inside the SLU 25-yard line. The Lions only had 81 passing yards and found a way to score 34 points and win this game.

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