Previewing the Arkansas game with advanced stats

Welcome back to Fun With Numbers, our weekly look at Aggie Football through the eyes of advanced stats. The Aggies are riding a 3 game win streak, how have they looked doing it? And what are their chances of keeping that streak alive for another Saturday? Let’s dive in.

What Do We Know?

Both squads head to Jerry World (for the last time, thank God), with 3-1 records that break down similarly:

-Handled business against an FCS opponent

-An ugly win over a G5 team

-First SEC matchup of the year victory

-Early season loss to an out of conference, P4 opponent.

The Aggies are about a 4 point favorite, which is how the SP+ sees the game going down, while the FEI predicts an 8 point Aggie win. Let’s take a closer look and see how things look with 4 games worth of data.

Aggie Offense vs Razorback Defense

The A&M offense has been… ok. They followed up a great performance at the Swamp with a bit of a dud against Bowling Green. There are some things to love for sure, the OL looks so far ahead of where it has been the last couple of years and Reed is able to keep the offense moving somewhat efficiently in Conner’s absence thanks to his legs and his friends in the backfield. There are some red flags though early on, the Aggies are failing to convert on scoring opportunities at an alarming rate and remain near the bottom of FBS in explosive plays.

On the other side of the ball, Travis Williams enters his second year as a DC for the Razorbacks with a unit that defends the run really well and does a pretty good job of preventing big plays. They hadn’t been generating a ton of havoc (the Hogs have been having an even harder time getting to the QB than the Aggies have) but they forced Auburn into 5 turnovers last week and 2 sacks. The secondary has been an issue though, teams have had a lot of success attacking them through the air, and the Razorbacks have 15 missed tackles in coverage.

Aggie Defense vs Razorback Offense

The Aggie defense is not quite living up to what a lot of fans hoped them to be in the preseason, but they’ve still been pretty good. The Front 7 has been suffocating against the run, and while they’re only credited with 4 sacks in 4 games, opposing teams are definitely feeling pressure from the 24 QB hurries the defense has accumulated. Their biggest problem is runs breaking loose through the LBs and DBs, and the secondary play has fallen off a little at times. If the Aggies can simply stop a couple of extra big plays a game, it would be a lot easier to feel better about them going forward. Bowling Green scored 2 touchdowns in the matchup, one on a 65 yard play to the TE who got lost in coverage, and one on a 40 yard trick play run. Stopping just one of those in the third quarter and that game gets a LOT less interesting.

They may have their work cut out for them this week. Transfer QB Taylen Green has looked progressively worse in the passing game since the Oklahoma State loss (turning in completion percentages of 42% against UAB and Auburn) but similar to Marcel Reed, he’s got the legs to make up for it. Against Auburn, he rushed for 80 yards, about half off those coming on designed runs and the other half on scrambles, and 5 runs going for 10 yards or more. Transfer RB Ja’Quinden Jackson has been a good enough replacement for Raheim Sanders, and Armstrong (15.1 Yards/Catch) and Sategna (21.3 Yards/Catch) are the type of guys that could cause problems for any good secondary.

So What’s the Verdict?

Like most years, this feels like a game the Aggies have a decent advantage in, but all signs point to this one being closer than we’d like. It’s a strength-on-strength on either side of the ball type situation, neither QB doing quite enough through the air to attack the other’s vulnerable secondary but bring a huge advantage to the game with their legs and ability to extend plays.

The Aggie offense has to find a way to be somewhat efficient in the passing game, which means either Conner coming back and playing like the expectation we have for him (doubtful for this week) or Marcel Reed has to make some progress on that front (somewhat more likely for this week). If the Razorbacks are unable to load the box and attack the running game downhill as often as Bowling Green did last week, we’ll see a lot more of what Klein was able to do against a very lost Florida defense in Week 3. On top of that, the Aggies simply have to get better at finishing drives. This is something Klein was very good at during his time at Kansas State, last season the Wildcats finished 2nd in the country in Points/Opportunity. Converting just one or two of those field goals to touchdowns against Bowling Green makes it a lot less interesting of a game.

On defense, the Aggies will need to step up in the middle of the field in short passing situations. So far, the linebacking group has had a tough time in coverage, and dreadful once the opponents run game gets into the second level. They’re doing a good job of putting teams in Passing Down situations (39% of plays, 16th in the country) but have to get better at getting off the field. That will be tough considering this Razorback group is 26th in Passing Down Success Rate and 40th in Passing Down Explosiveness, but here’s hoping their offensive line is still struggling with protection and the Aggies up front can grab a few more sacks.

My prediction: A couple of weeks ago I picked the Aggies to win an ugly game in The Swamp and it didn’t pan out quite that way. And maybe it’s a cop out to just repeat that prediction, but until the Aggies start consistently making things happen in the passing game and as long as the defense is prone to busted plays, every game feels like it could be closer than we like. I’ll take the Aggies to win 23-17, the Arkansas rush defense is good, but hasn’t faced an attack quite like this one.

Final Notes

As always, thanks for reading along. Next week, we’ll be breaking down a game against what could be a Top 10 Missouri team. Check out these sites below where all of my info comes from.

• Bcftoys.com for Brian Fremeau’s FEI data and other fun projects from him.
• ESPN.com is the home for all of Bill Connelly’s SP+ info, including the Returning Production data. You’ll need to subscribe to ESPN+ for most of his stuff these days.
• CollegeFootballData.com is a great site for data and charts that you can download and play with on your own time, in case Fun With Numbers isn’t filling that statistical void in your life. Most of my data comes from here.

Questions? Comments? Criticisms? You know where to leave ‘em.