Behind The Numbers: Week 0 FCS Football Review

Our Behind The Numbers series is now back in full swing 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 action in Week 0.

Quick Hits:

Western Carolina, Alabama State, Stephen F. Austin, and Austin Peay all won games despite subpar offensive success rates (All below 40%). However, each of these teams put up plenty of points by creating a handful of explosive plays but struggled with consistency down-to-down. This will be something to monitor moving forward.

Lehigh looked dominant in its 35-10 win over Holy Cross; however, both teams had success rates over 50%. Holy Cross really just struggled to finish drives. We had questions about Lehigh's defensive line, and it's still a storyline to monitor over the next few weeks.

Lamar and Abilene Christian headlined this weekend's slate of games as one of two ranked matchups. Both offenses struggled, but Lamar was more consistent with a success rate of 38%, while Abilene Christian was unable to find much success, especially with Tucker Parks at QB in the first half, at 31%. Lamar's biggest issue was a lack of explosive plays, which is something that impacted the offense last season too.

Normally we exclude games against non-Division I opponents, but we couldn't do this article without mentioning this game. If you exclude garbage time, South Carolina State held Savannah State to a 0% success rate on its first six drives, while posting a 70% success rate itself.

Who Were The Most Dominant Teams In Week 0?

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.

Youngstown State (Net SR: 39.1%)
Montana State (Net SR: 33.5%)
North Dakota (Net SR: 30.8%)
South Dakota State (Net SR: 28.5%)
South Dakota (Net SR: 21.9%)
Idaho State (Net SR: 20.9%)
North Alabama (Net SR: 17.2%)
Robert Morris (Net SR: 16.1%)

Montana State was the only team in the country to rank Top 5 in both offensive success rate (54.2%) and defensive success rate (20.7%). The Bobcats had an incredible stuff rate (Tackled at or Behind the LOS) of 30.7% before garbage time against Utah Tech.

Youngstown State and South Dakota State were absolutely dominant on the ground. Both teams finished with a success rate of over 60% when running the ball, while no other team playing a Division I opponent eclipsed this mark.

South Dakota displayed the highest explosive play rate of any team on this list. Quarterback Austyn Modrzewski seems to be able to follow the same formula that's worked for this program, which is a deadly deep ball, while adding the dangerous element of the run game if they find space outside.

North Dakota ranked near the top of every offensive category this weekend. Quarterback Jerry Kaminski looked extremely sharp in Week 0, throwing for 232 yards and 3 TDs, while completing over 80% of his passes.

Robert Morris, North Alabama, and Idaho State had particularly dominant defensive performances. They were the Top 3 defensive success rates of the weekend, holding their opponents to below a 20% success rate. They each also had stuff rates of over 30%, including North Alabama's impressive 45% stuff rate against Samford.

Which Week 0 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.

William & Mary 35, Villanova 32 (Nova 50%, W&M 35.9%)
Montana 28, Southern Utah 21 (SUU 47.6%, UM 34.8%)
Houston Christian 34, Southeastern Louisiana 28 (SLU 40.5%, HCU 33.9%)
Maine 21, Towson 18 (Towson 40.6%, Maine 34.4%)

Villanova outplayed William & Mary in every statistical category on Friday night. They ran the ball much more effectively (5.2 YPC to 3.2 YPC), they were much more consistent down-to-down, they were more explosive (7.1 YPP to 5.1 YPP), and yet found a way to lose the game in crazy fashion. Most of this came down to Villanova's four turnovers compared to only one turnover for the Tribe. The Wildcats had seven drives in the second half and only punted once. Unfortunately, they also turned it over three times, along with 15 penalties to William & Mary's three penalties.

Everyone has seen the statistics from the Big Sky battle between Montana and Southern Utah. The Thunderbirds held the ball for 43 minutes of the game compared to Montana's 16 minutes of possession time. They also ran 83 plays while the Grizzlies only had 43 plays, but the difference was explosive plays, especially in key moments.

Montana wasn't converting often, but when they did, they made those moments count. In fact, the two explosive plays were the 85-yard touchdown by Eli Gillman and the 53-yard touchdown by Lekeldrick Bridges. Outside of those two plays, Montana's offense only had about 200 yards on 44 plays, averaging 4.5 yards per play. This team will need to be much sharper moving forward.

The other reason Southern Utah lost this game was the nine penalties, a missed field goal, and not capitalizing on scoring opportunities. The Thunderbirds turned it over on downs twice in Montana territory, plus missed an extra point. One big positive for Montana's defense is that they held Southern Utah's running backs to 4.3 yards per carry, posting a solid stuff rate of 25%.

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