Behind The Numbers: Montana Secures Comeback Win Over North Dakota

Montana linebacker Elijawah Tolbert (11) | Tommy Martino (Montana Athletics)

The Week 3 schedule was headlined by a huge non-conference matchup between No. 5 Montana and No. 16 North Dakota.

As we do each week, we go behind the numbers of the biggest FCS matchups, using success rate to get a deeper look than what the final score may tell you about what happened in the game. We will still analyze games from across the FCS in another article, but we had to take a deeper look at the biggest FCS game of the weekend.

Success Rate is a statistic that tracks how often a team is ‘successful’ on a down-to-down basis. It looks at how a team consistently performs. 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.

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.

We take a look behind the numbers from Montana's comeback win over North Dakota.

Montana 24, North Dakota 23

Success Rate: Montana (31.5%), North Dakota (33.3%)

Despite trailing 23-14 late in the fourth quarter, Montana found a way to escape with a one-point win over North Dakota. The success rate battle was close here and favored both defenses. Most of the final stats favor the Hawks, but much of that work was done offensively in the first half.

If you remove the 82-yard touchdown pass to BJ Fleming, North Dakota's yards per play drops from 5.6 all the way to 4.7. The biggest reason for this loss was North Dakota's red zone failures in the second quarter. The Hawks scored only 3.4 points per red zone trip.

Field goals and empty possessions in the red zone will cost a team every time, especially on the road against a good team. Specifically, the Hawks drove down inside the Montana 20-yard line twice in the second quarter and came away with no points.

At face value, it appears North Dakota dominated the rushing battle against North Dakota. The Hawks averaged 4.9 yards per carry compared to Montana's 1.9. Most of this came from quarterback Jerry Kaminski's ability to make plays outside the pocket (85 yards), while Montana's Keali'i Ah Yat was sacked six times and was credited with -36 yards on those plays.

If you only compare the running backs, North Dakota averaged 4.1 yards per carry, while Montana's running backs averaged 4.43 yards per carry. Especially late in the game, Montana's rushing attack was actually the more effective one.

Another statistic shows how effective Montana was as the game went on. North Dakota averaged 6.5 yards per play and 31.1 yards per drive for 16 points (And two empty red zone trips) in the first half. In the second half, the Hawks averaged 4.1 yards per play, 23.4 yards per drive, and only scored seven points.

The Montana defense really stepped up and took control of this game. It was a key factor in giving Montana's offense time to find its rhythm, particularly in the passing attack. Ah Yat was 8-of-16 for 80 yards and two interceptions in the first half. He completely turned it around in the second half, completing 17 of 23 passes for 220 yards and two touchdowns.

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