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UCLA Football: Play call/outcome analysis from the Stanford game

By Chris Osgood

PASADENA, CA - NOVEMBER 24: Wilton Speight #3 of the UCLA Bruins passes the ball under pressure from Gabe Reid #90 of the Stanford Cardinal during the second half of a game at the Rose Bowl on November 24, 2018 in Pasadena, California. (Photo by Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images)
PASADENA, CA - NOVEMBER 24: Wilton Speight #3 of the UCLA Bruins passes the ball under pressure from Gabe Reid #90 of the Stanford Cardinal during the second half of a game at the Rose Bowl on November 24, 2018 in Pasadena, California. (Photo by Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images) /
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(Photo by Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images)
(Photo by Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images) /

Summary Indicators

The inclusion of the Stanford game completes this chart for 2018.  The full season success rate wound up slightly above the national average while the full season YPP settled out slightly below the national average.

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An elite offense should be well above the national average on both fronts. These will be key indicators for early progress next season.  Another marker of improvement would be less spiky jumps in this chart; would like to see a clear run or pass identity and more consistent success rates.  Lastly, they need to come out of the gates much better in nonconference games.  There will definitely be clear-cut, battle-tested starters at QB and RB in summer of 2019, that should help

Surprisingly, run success rate and run/pass balance only loosely correlated with wins. The pass success rate is oddly better correlated with wins. Something clicked on the YPP front over the last 3 games (Full-time Speight?). They win if they run the ball more than 55% of the time (small sample of Cal/USC wins). They can win with a low run success rate (against Arizona) but never won with a bad pass success rate.  Maybe they should aim to be a pass first team next year.

On Stanford Specifically: High YPP with mediocre success rates. I would happily take the other way around every time.

Offseason Grind

Now that we have a complete season logged, there’s a lot of data we can play with that isn’t very interesting for a single game (Wins vs Losses, field position, playing ahead or behind, etc).  Throughout the winter I’ll occasionally look back at 2018 as a whole with an eye on 2019 scheme.  If they televise a spring game I will definitely log it and write about what takes place there.  This has been a fascinating exercise and I am stoked that I was able to stick to the end, even with the frustrating outcomes.  2019 will bring a fresh slate, and I will be looking for ways to add to or improve what gets captured in the log (please do @ me). I’ll also be thinking about more interesting ways to visualize a single game result using this log data (again, please do @ me).  Thanks to GJB for having me and thanks to all our readers for coming along on the ride!

Footnote

The google doc linked here has every UCLA offense play logged with the situation, pre-snap details, and post snap results. I like to look for how the situation and pre-snap looks inform play calling and results. In the past, I’ve done this (on staff) for the SBN NFL Chargers blog, and got a lot of great reader participation.

Next. The 30 Greatest UCLA Football Players of All-Time. dark

My hope is that readers look at it and find stuff along with me (something pre-snap is a tell, something else very successful). This post introduces the column which has context for everything in the log.