Behind The Numbers: Week 3 FCS Football Review

Each week, we will highlight a couple of marquee national matchups, and then use success rate to get a deeper look than what the final score may tell you about what 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 get a win on the field, and which teams got outplayed despite escaping 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 action in Week 3. Our special edition of 'Behind The Numbers' for the Montana-North Dakota matchup is linked below.

Behind The Numbers: No. 5 Montana vs No. 16 North Dakota

Who Were The Most Dominant Teams In Week 3?

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

Southeastern Louisiana (Net SR: 51.1%)
Austin Peay (Net SR: 40.8%)
Montana State (Net SR: 38.1%)
Chattanooga (Net SR: 34%)
Tennessee Tech (Net SR: 23.5%)
Mercer (Net SR: 20.3%)

It appears all you need to do to find yourself in this section is play Mississippi Valley State. Southeastern Louisiana made the most of this weekend, averaging nine yards per play and scoring 56 points. The Lions averaged 19.5 yards per completion and an incredible 15.6 yards per attempt. Backup quarterback Kyle Lowe is a player to watch here. He's earned playing time in the past two games and went 8-of-8 for 165 yards and three touchdowns against the Delta Devils. He's also added 145 rushing yards and three scores this year.

Austin Peay finally played its first FCS game of the season and made quick work of Morehead State in a 56-7 blowout win. The Govs held Morehead State to a putrid six rushing yards on 19 attempts. To put that into context, Morehead State had 100 rushing yards against Illinois State. On the other hand, the Govs put up over 420 rushing yards on 49 carries and seven rushing scores. 14 different players recorded a carry, including offensive lineman Chandler Kirton, who posted a rushing touchdown.

Montana State got its first win of the season after a back-to-back tough matchups with a 41-7 victory over San Diego. The Bobcats had the best defensive success rate of the weekend, holding San Diego to only a 13% success rate. The Toreros punted on their first eight drives, with six of the eight only lasting four or fewer plays. Quarterback Justin Lamson averaged an outstanding 11.3 yards per pass attempt.

Chattanooga bounced back with a 63-0 drubbing of Stetson. The Mocs absolutely dominated on the ground with over 440 rushing yards on 8.1 yards per carry. Another week and another impressive performance by Tennessee Tech. After Davidson cut the lead down to 31-14 in the second quarter, Tennessee Tech outscored the Wildcats 41-0 the rest of the game.

The most interesting team in this section was Mercer. The Bears dominated Wofford on a down-to-down basis, yet they only escaped with a one-point win on Saturday night. That is because almost all of Wofford's offense came on just three plays. The Terriers scored on an 80-yard touchdown pass, another 51-yard score, and a 68-yard explosive run. Outside of those three plays, Wofford had a total of 94 yards on 45 plays. That's a horrendous 2.1 yards per play.

Mercer defensive end Andrew Zock had a monster game with 4.5 tackles for loss, which means he was recording a TFL on every 10 plays this game. Freshman quarterback Braden Atkinson played well outside of two turnovers. He made five big-time throws, tied for the most among any FCS quarterback in Week 3.

Which 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.

Furman 28, Campbell 24 (Campbell 53.8%, Furman 40.7%)
Weber State 42, McNeese 41 (McNeese 47.2%, Weber 42%)
Elon 37, Western Carolina 31 (WCU 40.4%, Elon 36%)
North Carolina A&T 33, Hampton 30 (HU 36.2%, NCAT 29%)

Furman found a way to win once again despite losing the success rate battle. The Paladins are just finding ways to secure a victory, and that's all that matters at the end of the day. Every Campbell drive but one went for over 20 yards, but the Camels struggled to finish drives. There were two big fourth-down stops that sealed the win for Furman this weekend.

McNeese and Weber State played in one of the most entertaining games of the weekend. Weber State found a way to escape with a one-point win after stopping the Cowboys on a two-point attempt late in the game. Both offenses played very well. McNeese had the more consistent offensive attack, while Weber relied on several explosive plays in the passing game. The Wildcats averaged 19.8 yards per completion, including explosive pass plays of 78, 42, and 33 yards. Moving forward, McNeese has to be thrilled with its 7.8 yards per carry, which could carry over into conference play.

Western Carolina is 0-3 despite winning the success rate battle in both of its FCS games. The team and fans won't find solace in that, but at least this could indicate that the Catamounts are better than their record suggests. Elon won this game with the boom-or-bust arm of freshman quarterback Landen Clark. He's got a huge arm and averaged an insane 27.7 yards per completion despite only completing 38% of his passes. He tallied five passes of 20 or more yards. Western Carolina also struggled on third down, going 6-of-17 on those opportunities.

North Carolina A&T finally got its first CAA win, pulling it out in dramatic fashion with a double overtime victory. The Aggies won this game in the margins, outplaying Hampton on third down and in the red zone. North Carolina A&T was 7-of-19 on third down, while Hampton was only 5-of-16. The Aggies also held the Pirates to two field goals inside the 20-yard line.

Fun Fact: The closest success rate battles of the week were South Dakota (44.44%) vs Northern Colorado (44.62%) and Gardner-Webb (36.8%) vs The Citadel (37.3%).

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