Rethinking the turnover battle in college football: Why winning is more than just taking the ball away

It’s time to rethink what it means to win the turnover battle. It’s a cliche uttered by everybody in football — coaches, players and media alike. Early in every television broadcast, an analyst presents the “keys to the game,” and almost without fail, one of them is to “win the turnover battle.”

It isn’t a brilliant observation to say taking the ball away from your opponent while not giving it away helps you win games. It does. However, numbers show forcing turnovers is less important than what you do next.

Turning that extra possession into points means more.

Here’s a chart showing the top 20 teams in the country by turnover margin over the last seven seasons in games against FBS competition.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that most of the teams appearing in the chart have been successful on the field. But watch what happens when we look at points-off-turnover margin (points scored off turnovers minus points allowed off turnovers) per game.

In the first chart, which was strictly turnover margin, five teams that have won a national title in the College Football Playoff Era are in the top 20, while eight have made the CFP. When we changed to points-off-turnover margin there were still five national championship winners in the top 20, but the top three teams have all won a title. Furthermore, nine of the 20 have reached the CFP, including the top five teams.

It’s not a coincidence, but the correlation is better shown by looking at both statistics in relation to a team’s win percentage. After all, not every team can realistically compete to win a national title, but all are trying to win games on Saturday.

We’ll start with simple turnover margin compared to win percentage. Like the previous charts, this is strictly against FBS competition….

Source link : https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/rethinking-the-turnover-battle-in-college-football-why-winning-is-more-than-just-taking-the-ball-away/

Author : Tom Fornelli

Publish date : 2024-06-11 18:21:32

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