Cards by the numbers, midseason review: Offense

Cards by the numbers, midseason review: Offense

This is the first in a series of posts taking a look at where Louisville stacks up nationally, as well as the Big East, in terms of statistics. To begin things, we will look at the offense and what they have done throughout the first half of the football season. Stats are courtesy of NCAA.com and BigEast.org.

National rankings

Total offense – 62^nd, 409.2 yards per game

Passing offense – 54^th, 242.2 yards per game

Rushing offense – 60^th, 167 yards per game

Scoring offense – tied for 38^th, 33.3 points per game

Redzone offense – 5^th, 26 scores in 27 redzone opportunities (21 touchdowns, 5 field goals), 96%

3^rd down conversions – 4^th, 45 conversions in 80 attempts, 56.3%

4^th down conversions – 8^th, 5 conversions in 6 attempts, 83.3%

Big East rankings (only counts Big East contests)

Total offense – 2^nd, 460 yards per game

Passing offense – 1^st, 304 yards per game

Rushing offense – 3^rd, 156 yards per game

Scoring offense – 1^st, 45 points per game

Redzone offense – tied for 1^st, 4 scores in 4 redzone opportunities (all 4 rushing touchdowns), 100%

3^rd down conversions – 1^st, 7 conversions in 12 attempts, 58.3%

4^th down conversions – 1^st, 1 conversion in 1 attempt, 100%

My take

Obviously, the Big East numbers are a bit misleading due to the fact Louisville has only played a single Big East game whereas all other teams have played 2-3 league contests, so we must take them with a grain of salt at this stage. However, we must also take some of the national numbers with a grain of salt as well due to the horrid conditions at Southern Miss which essentially eliminated a game’s worth of passing stats for Louisville.

With that said, I believe the two biggest reasons for the Cards’ success from an offensive standpoint, is their redzone offense and 3^rd down conversion percentage. The 3^rd down percentage speaks for itself. 56.3% through six games is tremendous and Charlie Strong will definitely take that the rest of the season. Football teams with that kind of success on 3^rd down will win a lot of games.

I am extremely excited about the redzone offense. We all remember how frustrating it has been the past two seasons to see Louisville have drives stall in the redzone, so the fact they are not only finishing every drive when they enter the redzone, they are scoring touchdowns on top of it is very encouraging. As the numbers above show, of UofL’s 26 scores in the redzone, 21 of them were for 6 points. I’m not sure they had 21 touchdowns in the redzone the past two seasons combined.

When you don’t convert for touchdowns in the redzone, you let the defense off the hook in many ways and keep the opposition in the game. But, when you score touchdowns, it really puts the pressure on the opposing team to match it. If Louisville keeps this up, they will be mighty tough to beat.