Bonus Graphs: ‘Bama topline numbers through October

It’s a midseason bye week, so I’m not doing a deep dive or a game review today, but I figured I’d plot out the team’s top-line numbers so far to give some zoomed-out perspective on the Tide in 2024. Given how angsty folks are around here about the 2 losses we’ve accrued, the top-line numbers actually do look steady and respectable overall.

Alabama 2024 performance through October

Here’s how we’ve done according to efficiency — Success Rate (SR) — and explosiveness — Explosiveness Rate (XR) — through the Mizzou game. The red lines are the Tide’s performance, and the dotted lines are those of opposing offenses (so, a proxy for the performance of Alabama’s defense).

A few things stand out immediately to me … like the fact that Alabama’s offense has been the more efficient one in every game this season. And yet we managed to lose two of these!

One loss shows some telling signals in the data: Alabama’s explosiveness took a dip in mid October, tying in this metric with South Carolina and losing on explosiveness to Tennessee in the 3rd Saturday. Given how close the XR’s and SR’s were in both, it shouldn’t be a surprise that the SCar game was very close, and that the Tennessee game was a close loss.

That said — and you’ve heard this from me this season already — the Vanderbilt loss was bizarre. Yes, it’s frustrating to see the Tide give up 3rd downs, pick sixes, and odd plays otherwise. But, honestly that Vandy loss was truly incredibly low likelihood and very odd. Heck, that game is literally the high water mark for the 2024 Tide offense’s efficiency (57% SR) so far, and some of the largest gaps between Alabama and it’s opponent in both measures. It’s fair to say that a team with Alabama’s talent shouldn’t have let this be a close game in the first place; but it’s also fair to say that given the team’s down-by-down performance in this game, it should’ve been a win anyway. It’s weird. It’s frustrating.

Other notes on 2024 so far:

1. This Bama offense is still above average (NCAA average SR is still around 42%), but does dip below that a few times. We also don’t soar above it as often as, say, the Tua offenses did (though we’re nearly as explosive, at this team’s best).
2. That WKU game had us all nervous going in — first game post Saban, perhaps an under-appreciated G5 team — but it looks downright charming in retrospect. What a beating.
3. USF was another disappointing hiccup for Alabama’s offense, but the defense still held the bulls to sub-30% SRs, which is quite low and resulted in a solid SR gap for Alabama.
4. Georgia did indeed creep back on Success Rate (SR) during their unlikely comeback, but despite their 4th quarter Jekyll and Hyde act, they still weren’t nearly as explosive as Alabama in this game. (And keep in mind that SP+ win expectancy still expected Alabama to win this game >90% of the time, even with the SR creep-back).
5. Besides the two mid-Oct games mentioned above, Alabama also had the more explosive offense in every game, and has an explosive offense (on average) in general!
6. Yes, Mizzou was banged up, but this was a nice bounce-back across the board. Keep in mind that a lot of that efficiency for the Tigers was during garbage time.

Alabama 2023 performance (plus the Rose Bowl)

I thought I’d pull the same numbers for the 2023 team — Milroe’s first Alabama offense, Saban’s last Alabama team — for reference here.

Topline numbers do kinda average out the same as what we’re seeing in 2024 so far: if we see 42% SR as league average, then actually this 2023 team actualy hovered below that more often, especially at this point in the season. It wasn’t until November that this Tide offense got to the good parts of “the Milroe show”: he and the offense were great in November and did just enough in the last 2 games to get into the playoff.

The defense started well last year and really blanketed some teams. You can see that 30% SR mark as low and likely a loss for opponents, and Alabama’s defense kept opponents around or below that number a lot (even in wacky games like that Arkansas comeback).

But the defense wasn’t as steady across games last year, at least on SR. In fact, Alabama’s opponents beat us on efficiency three times in the season (Texas loss, TAMU win, Georgia win, Michigan loss, nearly Tennessee and LSU too), and matched us on XR in even more games (USF, Ole Miss, LSU, Auburn, UGA, Michigan). We won some close games last year … rather than the less fortunate record we’ve produced in close games this year.

The more I look at it, the more I think … that 2023 team could have some great games, but we were pretty lucky to rally late in the season, get a few coin flip wins, and get to the Rose Bowl (and nearly the tidle game) in Saban’s final season.

And, look, these numbers don’t predict or inform everything, but they do have me feeling fair-to-good about DeBoer’s first Alabama team so far. The next few weeks will be very critical for seeing that trajectory through (or not); and in the longer term, we’ll learn if this is more about “Saban’s talent left on hand” vs. “DeBoer’s philosophy already sticking and working.”

Roll Tide! I’ll see you after LSU.