[MartinBlank]

I have always used OL experience when creating my own numbers.


I was reviewing last weekend's results and found some interesting items.

How important is OL experience?

The following teams return an offensive line with more than 100 career starts:

What do they all have in common? THEY ALL COVERED LAST WEEK.

East Carolina (114)
UAB (104)
Washington (102)
Notre Dame (100)
UL-Lafayette (113)
USC (100)
North Texas (103)
Colorado State (129)

Is that simply a coincidence?

I don't know, but I thought I would look at the converse.

Teams with little OL experience (Less than 40 career starts)

Oklahoma (32)
Illinois (39)
Rice (31)
Memphis (28)
Ohio (40)
Duke (25)
Miami, OH (27)

What do they have in common? They all lost/failed to cover last weekend. Actually---they all lost straight up.

There is one exception to this rule. Just one. BYU. They had only 33 career starts returning. Although....when you realize that BYU's inexperience matched that of Oklahoma's inexperience...it would explain the low scoring 14-13 game. Perhaps an obvious UNDER play that I just missed.

What to make of all of this?

I have no clue. I am trying to figure it out myself.

I do know this. Teams with more than 100 career starts along their OL were 8-0 last weekend. Teams with less than 40 career starts along their OL were 1-7.

Thoughts?

[mmike032]

interesting
curious to see how it does as the season progresses though.

[wal66]

I think it is amazing at the areas we go too to find an angle. I don't say that with disrespect either I actually think it's really imaginative and it certainly makes sense. I'm sure others take something like this into consideration but personally had I not come across your thread would have never really put anything more into it other than Team-A has few returning starters on the line but I would never have thought to look at it from a trend perspective.

Good work and good contribution. We can never get enough of an edge.

[MartinBlank]

Thanks Wal.

And right you are. The things we go through to find an edge.

I have no clue how this will hold up. But I am going to keep track of it. It makes sense....an experienced OL should have an advantage early in the season. But what happens by October? Would it even itself out? We shall see.

[Rio DiNero]

Solid angle, Martin. O-line is so overlooked, for the simple reason their is no sexy stats to track it. O-line is the most important part of an offense. I think you have found a very solid angle to take into account at the start of the season.

[PacmanJr_00]

Where did you get the numbers for starting experience? I recall reading an article on the matter but am unable to locate it again.

I thought VTech's oline had over 100 starts as well.

[MartinBlank]

I got mine from Phil Steele.

Which is the greatest collection of data I can find anywhere.

[PacmanJr_00]

Thanks. I think you can add Oregon to your list of those with inexperienced lines who did not cover.

[PacmanJr_00]

Here is the data I was looking for, http://online.wsj.com/public/resourc...ELINE0905.html.

[polson22]

i had posted that WSJ article in another thread. the basic article picked winning teams for sure. the detailed stats on o-line were good on ATS too, although not nearly as emphatic as OP's Oline numbers. CSU was a team i think with little Oline experience that did well, and there's a huge bunch of high OLINE returnee teams that got killed as per WSJ #'s...... but i'm very intrigued now and the whole idea made a ton of sense to me (other people told me it was obvious public info though)

for the guy who used phil steele, is that the magazine, philsteele.com or a subscription service??? i would love to get his subscription again if cheap, and gives you access to tons of stats (preferably online)......... i think next year i'll start early in converting phil steele magazine tables to electronic form.

FYI, same WSJ author had interesting article on ncaa rivalry games yesterday. underdog usually covers in ND/Mich, for example. i find it interesting but just one piece of info

[MartinBlank]

Phil has everything up on his site for free.

No joke.

PhilSteele.com. His pre-season mags are the absolute best.

There is a discrepancy in the WSJ numbers and Phil's but they are close.

[polson22]

thx..... where's returning oline starters on his philsteele.com site for free? i know the site quite well and have searched for it a few times with no success. can you post the link?

sorry, i was wrong. colorado state as per wsj had a huge amount of starting OLINE coming back. it was probably me that wanted to override that (although i passed on the game completely)... a bit of a miss in the ACC with VT, wake, FSU being top 3 teams, as per WSJ again

any high or low rated teams that haven't played yet or no serious game yet........ FIU jumps out at me as one.

[MartinBlank]

Here ya go...

http://www.philsteele.com/Blogs/July09/DBJuly27.html

[polson22]

martin, thanks. forgot about the blog (although don't remember seeing it there before either)...... anyway, much appreciated!!