Mountain West Football: 12 Statistics That Have Shaped The Season So Far
Mountain West Football: 12 Statistics That Have Shaped the Season So Far
Ball doesn’t lie. Neither do these numbers and how they tell the story of Mountain West football in 2023 to this point.
Contact/Follow @MattK_FS & @MWCwire
Which numbers have shaped the narrative to this point?
-53
It isn’t easy for any team to dig their way out of an early hole, but Utah State has taken that to a rare extreme so far in 2023. In four first quarters, the Aggies have been outscored 60-7, which equates to a -53 point differential. Such a lopsided result means that it isn’t likely you can pin the blame on any one party, though it isn’t a new problem for Blake Anderson’s Aggies, either: USU was outscored 101-62 in the first quarter last year, and 106-62 during their 2021 conference championship run.
The cruelest irony is that Utah State has outscored its opponents in each of the other three quarters to date. That also happens to be an achievement they managed when they won the Mountain West two years ago, so it bears watching whether they can finally overcome their propensity for sluggish starts and begin playing up to the standard of a title contender.
0
Zero can mean a lot of different things but, in this instance, it is to note that, despite a surprising change at quarterback, Colorado State’s pass catchers have been adept at not beating themselves in the young season. According to Pro Football Focus, three Rams — Tory Horton, Dallin Holker, and Louis Brown — have combined for 89 targets and zero drops in four games.
What does it mean? To start, it could suggest that Horton’s 10.1% drop rate a year ago was more an aberration than a trend since he now currently sports a respectable 5.8% career drop rate on 247 targets. Brown, meanwhile, is a small-sample hero who has yet to record a drop on 39 career targets and counting while Holker has so far maintained his solid production from last year at BYU; he didn’t have any drops in 2022, either.
As for the one name not mentioned here, Justus Ross-Simmons, bear in mind that though he has two drops on 23 targets, that rate was only 3.7% in 2022 so there probably isn’t much reason to panic. Collectively, this sure-handed group could make the Rams passing game more difficult for defensive coordinators to deal with in Mountain West play than anticipated.
4.31
Air Force’s defense has excelled to this point in the season, allowing a Mountain West-best 4.31 yards per play through their first four contests. For the sake of context, San Diego State led the conference in allowing 4.36 YPP during the shortened 2020 season, but if the season ended today, this would be the lowest average by anyone in the conference since TCU gave up just 4.16 YPP en route to their Rose Bowl victory in 2010.
When you narrow the focus to whittle away garbage time and the like, it remains a respectable average. According to Brian Fremeau, in three games against FBS competition, the Falcons have only allowed 4.67 defensive yards per play and rank 23rd in the country on that front, just ahead of Fresno State for the best mark in the Mountain West. Granted, some of that has to do with the level of competition they’ve faced so far — Sam Houston State is dead last among FBS teams in yards per play, for instance — but they’re doing what good teams should do against inferior opponents: Leave no doubt. For that, defensive coordinator Brian Knorr deserves a lot of kudos.
8.5
The New Mexico Lobos might have had the country’s most lifeless offense in 2022, but it’s amazing what a new accomplished quarterback can do. After averaging an FBS-worst 4.9 yards per attempt as a team last year, UNM quarterback Dylan Hopkins has averaged 8.5 yards on 97 pass attempts through four games, surpassed by only Air Force’s Zac Larrier in the early going this fall.
To really drive home the level of improvement, consider that the Lobos had just 15 passing plays on 255 total attempts (5.9%) that went for 20 or more yards in 2022. By contrast, Hopkins already has 13 such plays in only 97 attempts (13.4%). While there’s plenty to be done in Albuquerque, the big-ticket transfer has been as advertised thus far.
10
It hasn’t received a lot of attention, but San Diego State’s offense has often had a lot of trouble hanging onto the football in recent years. The Aztecs have ranked last or next-to-last in total giveaways in two of the last three seasons (it probably isn’t a coincidence that SDSU earned a bid in the conference championship game when they didn’t do this in 2021) and that concerning trend hasn’t abated so far in 2023 since San Diego State has given the ball away ten times in five games.
On the other hand, the Aztecs have also forced a Mountain West-high ten takeaways so far, and both statistics help explain why the Aztecs have been more frustrating than bad to date, evidenced by a 1-2 record in games decided by eight or fewer points. San Diego State has had terrible fumble luck, for instance, losing five of six balls they’ve put on the turf, so while that and close-game luck haven’t been on their side, both could change on any given week. Don’t count the Aztecs out just yet.
40.8
Historically, Fresno State has never been shy about letting its star quarterbacks let it fly and, so far, offensive coordinator Pat McCann has done with Mikey Keene exactly what he did with Eric Barriere at Eastern Washington. Keene has averaged 40.8 pass attempts in the first four games and has done well with that heavy workload, averaging 7.4 yards per attempt with a 6:1 touchdown-to-interception ratio while limiting interceptions to a 1.2% rate.
While the Bulldogs could just as easily adjust their offensive game plans to give Elijah Gilliam and Malik Sherrod more carries, it isn’t inconceivable that Keene will finish the year as the first Fresno State QB since Derek Carr to average that many pass attempts per game (50.7 in 2013).
65
A lot of things have gone wrong for Nevada in 2023, but few things paint a truly dire picture like their defensive success rate. Using the definition provided by College Football Data, the Wolf Pack has allowed a 65% success rate on standard downs, which is generally defined as all first downs, second downs with six or fewer yards to go, and third and fourth downs with four or fewer yards to go.
That is far and away the worst such figure in the country — the next closest bunch of teams cluster around 56% — and it may not regress all the way to the mean as Nevada turns its attention to conference play. And if it doesn’t, the entire coaching staff could be on hot seats.
70
Wyoming hasn’t had many red zone chances yet in 2023, pushing inside the opponents’ 20-yard line only ten times in four games. The Cowboys have scored a touchdown on seven of those ten red zone trips (or 70%), however, good enough to rank third in the Mountain West and suggest they’ve tended to make those rare opportunities count.
One big reason for this? Quarterback Andrew Peasley has completed 7-of-12 throws for 46 yards and three touchdowns in the red zone through his first three appearances, scoring on his two lone rushing attempts inside the 20 to boot. That’s a particular area where the Pokes have struggled more often than not in recent years, and there’s little doubt it’s played a key role in the team’s 3-1 start.
93
Engineering a run-and-shoot offense isn’t for the faint of heart. While Hawaii has already won two games in 2023 and held mostly steady on per-play offensive production from Timmy Chang’s first season in charge, there’s no doubt that Brayden Schager has been challenged early and often with 93 total defensive pressures on 244 dropbacks, which is 19 more than the next-closest quarterback in FBS or FCS, Colorado’s Shadeur Sanders.
That looks bad on its face, as do the 19 sacks that Hawaii has allowed in five games, but the better news is that Schager’s 22.6% pressure-to-sack ratio is only the sixth-highest rate among Mountain West QBs with at least 20 dropbacks and his 2.7% turnover-worthy rate is actually the third-lowest among the 18 qualifying signal-callers. He’s also improved his year-over-year completion percentage by over eight percent and his yards per attempt average by 0.5 yards, though his interception rate is up a tick from 2022, from 2.5% to 2.9%. In other words, it’s a work in progress but it’s mostly hard to complain about the results thus far.
173
Can you imagine where the Boise State Broncos would be without running back Ashton Jeanty? The sophomore from Texas is already building a convincing case as the Mountain West’s offensive player of the year, but no bullet point is more persuasive than the fact that Jeanty has averaged 173 all-purpose yards through four games.
Dating back to 2009, only Rashaad Penny, Tyler Ervin, and Jeremy McNichols have done better in that regard over the course of a whole season. That probably means maintaining this torrid pace is a very high bar to ask anyone to clear, but those conference legends are good company to keep.
176
Does Chevan Cordeiro miss Elijah Cooks and Justin Lockhart that much? That duo combined for 456 yards after the catch in 2022, and San Jose State’s passing game hasn’t looked as explosive now that the former is in the NFL and the latter is out for 2023. To wit, the Spartans’ five most targeted pass catchers this fall — Nick Nash, Charles Ross, Malikhi Miller, Dominick Mazotti, and Sam Olson — have combined for only 176 YAC on 117 total targets. Collectively, that group is going to need to do a lot more to help SJSU from sinking too far in the standings.
354
UNLV has battled its way to a 3-1 record so far thanks to a number of contributors, new and old, but one group that hasn’t received the attention it may deserve is the Rebels’ running backs. No one player is putting up Lexington Thomas-type numbers so far, but Pro Football Focus notes that UNLV has already racked up 354 breakaway yards on the ground, a number which leads the Mountain West at this juncture.
PFF defines breakaway yardage as “rushing yardage on designed attempts more than 15 yards” but, if you’re looking for a layman’s version of why this is significant, it’s also worth mentioning UNLV already has eight runs of 20 or more yards after totaling 16 in the 2022 season and 11 in 2021. It remains to be seen whether they’ll be able to maintain that pace against less charitable defenses like Colorado State, Fresno State, and Air Force in conference play, but there’s reason to feel good about what Vincent Davis, Jai’Den Thomas, and company have already accomplished.
