The first rankings for the College Football Playoff are looming. We can look around the SEC, where everyone has at least one loss and everyone has more than a few flaws and quite fairly ask: Is anyone here championship-worthy?
Well, let’s revisit a handy stat: yards-per-play differential.
A reminder from our early-season look: Take each team’s yards per play on offense and yards per play allowed on defense, and there’s your differential. It’s a way to measure how well a team plays complementary football: a great defense backed by a good offense, or vice versa, or a team being great at both.
Michael Brochstein, the late great writer of a popular Georgia fan blog, figured out that teams generally had to hit near or above +2.50 to win a national championship and +2.00 to make what was then the four-team Playoff. That largely has held up through the years.
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Every SEC team that made the four-team Playoff from 2016-22 had a YPP split of at least +2.00, and every SEC team that won the national championship was at +2.50, except for Georgia two years ago, which was +2.46 in the regular season. So, it was pretty close.
Last season, Alabama ruined the trend, finishing at +1.58 in the regular season (Georgia, in going unbeaten, was at +2.42). But Alabama did improve as the season went on, with Jalen Milroe getting the starting job and getting more comfortable. And in the era of the expanded Playoff, a big emphasis will be on teams playing their best as the season finishes, which brings us to how things stand this year.
We’ll break this down both by all games and then only those against power-conference opponents, which may provide a better indication.
First, all games in 2024:
| Team | Offense | Defense | Split |
|---|---|---|---|
 Ole Miss |
7.71
|
4.41
|
3.30
|
 Texas |
6.47
|
3.81
|
2.66
|
 Alabama |
6.88
|
4.68
|
2.20
|
 Tennessee |
6.35
|
4.23
|
2.12
|
 Auburn |
6.73
|
4.75
|
1.98
|
 Georgia |
6.41
|
4.7
|
1.71
|
 Florida |
6.34
|
5.34
|
1.00
|
 Arkansas |
6.84
|
5.87
|
0.97
|
 South Carolina |
5.33
|
4.51
|
0.82
|
 LSU |
6.45
|
5.71
|
0.74
|
 Texas A&M |
5.99
|
5.49
|
0.50
|
 Missouri |
5.59
|
5.26
|
0.30
|
 Oklahoma |
4.80
|
4.95
|
-0.15
|
 Vanderbilt |
5.39
|
5.61
|
-0.22
|
 Mississippi State |
5.88
|
6.54
|
-0.66
|
 Kentucky |
5.01
|
5.77
|
-0.76
|
Now for only games against power-conference teams:
| Team | Offense | Defense | Split |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Ole Miss |
6.99
|
4.94
|
2.05
|
|
5.83
|
4.13
|
1.70
|
|
|
Alabama |
6.67
|
5.25
|
1.42
|
|
Georgia |
6.19
|
4.90
|
1.29
|
|
Auburn |
5.90
|
4.70
|
1.20
|
|
Tennessee |
5.47
|
4.51
|
0.96
|
|
South Carolina |
5.36
|
4.75
|
0.61
|
|
Texas A&M |
6.08
|
5.57
|
0.51
|
|
Arkansas |
6.45
|
6.24
|
0.21
|
|
Florida |
5.79
|
5.66
|
0.10
|
|
LSU |
5.92
|
5.91
|
0.01
|
|
Vanderbilt |
5.05
|
6.11
|
-1.06
|
|
4.95
|
6.40
|
-1.45
|
|
|
Oklahoma |
3.96
|
5.45
|
-1.49
|
|
Kentucky |
4.44
|
6.05
|
-1.61
|
|
Mississippi State |
5.31
|
7.53
|
-2.22
|
Observations
• Ole Miss looks like a juggernaut, unlike its actual ranking. But remember that yards-per-play differential is meant to reflective, not necessarily predictive. So you can write this off by accurately saying that Ole Miss has played only one ranked team (LSU), with nobody else close to being ranked, and the Rebels lost at home to Kentucky. So that impressive split is going to come down.
But it could be pointed out that the Rebels’ two losses have been by a field goal each, and this is a team still regarded as loaded with talent. So if Ole Miss beats Georgia on Saturday — a distinct possibility — it will be right back in the CFP discussions, and its yards-per-play split can be viewed in a new light.
It’s instructive that an outlier last year was LSU, which was +2.45 in the regular season, the best in the SEC. But it did that with offense, its defense so bad. Ole Miss, on the other hand, is first in offense vs. power conference teams and sixth in defense.
• Texas is another team that hasn’t played a loaded schedule. But it’s a test case in another way: The Longhorns are first in defense (both overall and vs. power conference teams) but lagging in offense, which is surprising given the coaching and talent on offense. So it’ll be interesting to see where it ends up.
• Georgia, meanwhile, has faced three ranked teams and is about to face two more. So it’s notable that the Bulldogs rank better when you weed out non-power conference teams. But Kirby Smart’s teams have been great the previous three seasons because they have been strong on at least one side of the ball — second on offense in 2022-23 and first on defense in 2021 — but this year it’s not in the top five in either.
• LSU and Texas A&M look like pretenders, and they could be. Tennessee and Alabama look like real contenders, and they could be. But a reminder that these still can fluctuate, especially with some big games left. LSU’s numbers vs. power conference teams are particularly glaring, but it beat Ole Miss, which is dominating this stat (we aren’t pretending this is the end-all, be-all).
• Missouri, which has gone from preseason darling to basically out of contention, can blame its offense: It ranks 12th overall and 14th against power conference teams, despite Brady Cook, Luther Burden and what should be a much more productive unit.
• Vanderbilt and South Carolina, the two best teams in the unofficial vibes category, are in the bottom four in offense and not very high overall, especially Vanderbilt. But Auburn, now in the basement of the conference, is doing pretty well. So how are they doing it? As pointed out in a recent story, it has been another stat: sudden change points differential.
Yes, there are a few of these, and they all fit in the beautiful cornucopia of data that helps tell the story of a college football season.
(Photo of Lane Kiffin: Wesley Hitt / Getty Images)
