As always, these are only numbers from FBS vs FBS competition.
Offense:
Yards per play: 49th (5.85 YPP)
Yards per game: 62nd (386.2YPG)
Points per game: 40th (30.2 PPG)
Passing yards per game: 45th (249.6 YPG)
Passing completion percentage: 7th (70.4%)
Passing yards per attempt: 29th (8.2 YPA)
Passer rating: 30th (149.7)
Passing TDs: 61st (9 TDs)
Interceptions: 114th (7 INTs)
Rushing yards per game: 80th (136.6 YPG)
Rushing yards per attempt: 86th (3.84 YPA)
Rushing TDs: 48th (10)
Sacks given up per game: 8th (0.8 per game)
First Downs per game: 80th (19.4 per game)
3rd down conversion %: 37th (43.94%)
4th down conversion %: 15th (70%, 7 for 10 on the season)
TFLs allowed per game: 2nd (3.0 per game)
Red Zone TD %: 21st (72.2% TD rate, 13 TDs in 18 chances)
Red Zone Scoring %: 18th (17 scores in 18 chances)
Field goal %: 1st (7 for 7)
PAT %: 1st (23 for 23)
10+ Yard Scrimmage Plays: 120th (61)
20+ Yard Scrimmage Plays: 94th (21)
30+ Yard Scrimmage Plays: 75th (10)
40+ Yard Scrimmage Plays: 68th (5)
50+ Yard Scrimmage Plays: 70th (2)
60+ Yard Scrimmage Plays: 71st (1)
70+ Yard Scrimmage Plays: 71st (0)
Defense:
Yards per play allowed: 16th (4.74 YPP)
Yards per game allowed: 19th (311.6 YPG)
Points per game allowed: 12th (16.3 PPG)
Passing yards per game allowed: 58th (218.8 YPG)
Passing completion percentage allowed: 25th (58.5%)
Passing yards per attempt: 21st (6.2 YPA)
Passer rating allowed: 27th (119.3)
Rushing yards per game allowed: 12th (92.8 YPG)
Rushing yards per attempt allowed: 14th (3.03 YPA)
Sacks per game: 37th (2.4 sacks per game)
3rd down % allowed: 20th (32.39% allowed)
4th down % allowed: 67th (53.85%, opponents 7/13 on 4th down)
Red Zone td % allowed: 87th (66.7% allowed -- 8 TDs in 12 chances)
Red Zone Scoring % allowed: 113th (92% allowed -- 11 scores in 12 chances)
Punting: 57th (43.8 Yard average)
10+ Yard Scrimmage Plays allowed: 11th (58)
20+ Yard Scrimmage Plays allowed: 12th (16)
30+ Yard Scrimmage Plays allowed: 20th (8)
40+ Yard Scrimmage Plays allowed: 13th (3)
50+ Yard Scrimmage Plays allowed: 32nd (2)
60+ Yard Scrimmage Plays allowed: 26th (1)
Team Stats:
Penalties: 130th (8.6 penalties per game)
Penalty yards: 110th (66 Yards per game)
Turnover margin: 53rd (+0.2 per game -- 8 takeaways, 7 giveaways)
Time of possession: 11th (33:07 per game)
Number of offensive plays: (Avg 66 plays per game)
Advanced Metrics:
Total ADJ/EPA per play: 17th
Success Rate %: 6th
Offensive Adj/EPA per play: 37th
Passing EPA/dropback: 43rd
Rushing EPA/rush: 40th
Offensive Success Rate: 13th
Defensive Adj/EPA per play: 17th
Passing Defensive EPA/dropback: 33rd
Rushing Defensive EPA/rush: 11th
Defensive Success Rate: 11th
View attachment 340077
Takeaways:
I'll keep this as simple as I can: The offense simply isn't good enough right now to make major noise nationally. It's not completely awful like the 2024 defense, but we're becoming very unbalanced again as an overall operation. The defense is clearly outplaying the offense to this point, and we're not a complementary football team right now. For those of you who tried to tell us all summer that we'd be better or "more efficient" on offense this year, you need to be in a room with padded walls. That was never in the cards. The offense last year was face-melting. The real expectation and hope here was that we could settle maybe somewhere in the 30's on offense, and improve the defense. That would be good enough to win the ACC and make the playoff. The defensive portion has the box checked to this point. The offense, not so much. 40th in points per game. 49th in yards per play. Again, I won't go into X's and O's much here, this is just a look at the numbers, but we're now 80th in rushing and 86th in yards per carry. Completely unacceptable from a team with the supposed best OL in the country. And if your response is just that teams are loading the box and taking away our run game, and to a point I agree with that, then the passing game should be lighting up the sky like a ballistic missile defense system. Beck was sensational against FSU.....not so much against Louisville (although I will say we had more explosives than usual). But Dawson needs to get his **** together, and quickly. I will admit that we *probably* have faced the toughest overall defenses through this point to the season than any other program. Louisville specifically is now up to 6th in EPA/play on defense. We have a much easier road the rest of the way. But I don't care. Again, nobody expects you to be #1 in the country again. And it's ok to have some struggles when you play several good defenses. However, being 80th in rushing is not acceptable. Being in the 40th percentile in explosives is not acceptable. 13 legitimate offensive points, at home, against an ACC school, no matter how good their defense is, is not acceptable. Dawson needs to fix this offense, and fast. Something is amiss, and unless it gets rectified soon, we're going to be in dogfights with teams we should be beating soundly. We're going to roll Stanford on Saturday, but SMU is waiting in 2 weeks. And while I don't think they're very good on defense, they've at least limited the teams they *should* be limiting (Cuse, Stanford, and Clemson with a backup QB all were under 5 yards per play the last 3 weeks). We're not going to win that game scoring 13 points. It's time for everyone to start earning their paychecks on that side of the ball.
On defense, it was a relatively even performance compared to what we've seen all year. This is a very good defense. It's proven it all year, and Friday was no exception. Brohm is one of the best offensive minds in the game (there's a reason he's won 4 games against Top 5 teams), and he had a week to prepare. He came in with a great gameplan, as we expected (I was disappointed with not anticipating the quick throw game...obviously that was going to be what he was going to focus on, but overall, it was solid over the course of 60 minutes). I didn't love going down 14-0, but at the end of the day, 24 points with your offense turning it over 4 times, 5.40 yards per play, and forcing a turnover that sets your team up at the 10 yard line should be good enough to win. We're ranked very high in pretty much every single defensive category. I'm confident, if you paired this with a true Top 30 offense, the defense is good enough to help us make a real run at a national championship. It might not be good enough to fully carry a team there, but we've proven through 6 weeks that we're MUCH improved from last year, and this is a unit good enough to help us achieve our goals. I believe, health provided, at the end of the season, this will be a Top 15 overall defense, which is incredible considering what we watched last year.
Last point is the backbreaking penalties. I usually don't put a massive emphasis on penalties simply because it's not quite the indicator that other metrics are. There have been so many examples of really good, championship-level teams who have poor penalty metrics. Obviously you'd rather be #1 than #120, but if you told me you can be #120 in the country in penalties, or turnover margin, for example...yeah, that's an easy one. You can overcome penalties. The problem is, this team can't, because we're not explosive enough on offense. And they're coming at the worst possible times. Right out of the gate, instead of 3rd and 5 on the first drive, Cici gets a really soft personal foul, but it's still 15 yards, and it's now 3rd and 20. Drive over. That just completely kills a drive in one motion. And just as bad, you're now punting from your 18 yard line, and you set the opposition up with great field position. Just a killer. 3rd and 2 when you're down 17-10 in the 4th quarter, at the Louisville 18. That's four down territory, and as bad as the run-game has been, we're getting 2 yards in 2 plays. But we jump before the snap, now it's 3rd and 7, it's a completely different situation, and we kick a FG. That very well could have been a 4 point penalty. How many points did we lose by? We have got to stop the dumbass penalties. I praised Dawson and the staff all last year for NOT doing these exact things. Last year, we had a much cleaner operation. Very few pre-snap penalties, very few holds, very few mental mistakes. Totally different story through 6 games this year.
Overall, if we can just somehow get a little more out of our offense, we can run the table, make the playoffs, and make some noise. Every team has adversity in a season. Every team has a bad game. We get our first true stat-padding game of the year on Saturday. Focus, improve, execute, and start to set yourself up for a stretch run. We play some bad defenses the rest of the way, we better drop 30+ on every single team the rest of the season or we're all going to be sitting here in December at 10-2 or god forbid 9-3 having the same conversations as last year, just in reverse (defense came to play, wtf happened to the offense?).
Go Canes.
