UI figures formula works

THE FINAL SCORE pretty much tells the story for the casual fan. Statistics often represent what happened in a college football game, but sometimes they’re misleading.

But coaches, in their never-ending attempts to chart player and team performance, rely on elaborate evaluation systems.

Like everything else in football, most are stolen or modified from other coaches. Coaches are admitted copycats. When they see a zone-blitz scheme or a fly sweep they like, they’re sure to incorporate it into their team’s playbook.

Same goes for how coaches review their teams.

At Idaho, one of the numerous tools offensive coaches use is known as the Friedgen Formula, created by University of Maryland coach Ralph Friedgen. The formula is straightforward: Add the number of offensive penalties, sacks allowed, dropped passes and turnovers and divide it by the number of offensive plays. If that percentage is 12 or lower, your team has a 90 percent chance of winning.

“You’ve got to have checks and balances, some sort of standard in which you evaluate yourself,” Vandals coach Nick Holt said. “It’s all about eliminating bad plays.”

Idaho’s record is 0-4, but 1-3 using the formula. The Vandals finished at 12 percent against Washington State, but lost the game 38-26. Idaho’s percentages were in the 20s against UNLV, Washington and Hawaii. The Vandals lost by three to UNLV, and they were beaten soundly by the Huskies and Warriors.

“Everyone looks for something that fits with what they’re trying to promote as a program,” co-offensive coordinator Nate Kaczor said. “This is a really good team formula, which is what Nick likes to promote. It’s not about yards or individual things as much as it’s about basically playing good team football.

“For example, take sacks. Those are probably half or less on the line. It could be the running back, tight end, the quarterback holding on to the ball. When you see a lot of sacks, the layman thinks it’s the offensive line, but that’s not always true.”

Against Hawaii, Idaho had just 46 offensive plays. The Vandals allowed three sacks, had one interception, dropped three passes and committed four offensive penalties. The percentage: 23.9. The result: zero points.

“When you’re playing well, you protect the quarterback, you catch the ball when it’s thrown to you, you don’t have penalties and you don’t turn it over,” Kaczor said. “As the game unfolded against Washington State, if you looked at our team you thought those guys played decent and you look at the formula and it’s obvious. If you get in a game where you’re outmatched a little bit, those categories are going to flare up.”

Each position coach has his own monitoring system for his players. Running backs coach and co-offensive coordinator Joel Thomas borrowed many of the categories from his former bosses, John L. Smith and Bob Petrino.

“As a unit we want to grade out at 85 percent or better,” he said. “We want to generate three big plays – a big play is a 15-yard run or a 20-yard reception. At UNLV we did that. No turnovers, that’s a big one.”

For Thomas, the biggest category is “bull yards,” or yards after contact. Thomas wants the running backs to average 3 yards after first contact.

Thomas also monitors assignment busts, third-down conversion rates, fakes on play-action and something he calls “Tony Romas” or “KOs.”

“That’s knocking someone on their butt blocking or running,” Thomas said. “We try for three of them. We got that in our first game. Last week there weren’t that many opportunities. We could have done better against UW and UNLV.”

On defense, Idaho has a lengthy checklist, but assistant head coach Jeff Mills focuses on three items – missed assignments, missed tackles and loafs.

“If we’re in single digits for the whole defense for a game it usually correlates to us playing well,” Mills said.

Those numbers have come down in Idaho’s last two games.

“Usually, early on you see more mental mistakes,” Mills said. “Guys might be new to a position or the defense. Hopefully, over time you don’t see as many mistakes. They’ve come down but not where they need to be.”

Defensive coaches also track individual players’ production points based on tackles, sacks, forced fumbles and interceptions, for example.

Holt declined to make those numbers public.

Mills was defensive coordinator under Chris Tormey at Idaho and Nevada. Tormey was a disciple of former Washington coach Don James.

“It was kind of the James system,” Mills said. “We gave a percentage grade on every single play and you’d try to grade out at 90 percent. If you did your job on a play you’d get an “S.” If you went beyond and caused a fumble, that was a plus play and it was worth two (points). If you lost your gap on a play you get a minus, and if you make a critical error it was minus two.”

Special teams also have a board detailing team goals.

Coaches study all of the accumulated data, but they’re not necessarily married to every figure.

“When you’re doing well in those categories, everything else takes care of itself,” Kaczor said. “If you’re not dropping passes and you’re not throwing picks, you’re going to convert more third downs, you’re going to move the ball, and you’re going to have 100-yard rushers.”

That tends to influence every coach’s No. 1 goal.

“The ultimate goal at the top of the board,” Thomas said, “is to go win the game. That’s what I harp on the most with my guys.”