Note: This is the first of two articles on Virginia Tech in the Red Zone. The next article will take a look at VT's Red Zone Defense and a bit of a comparison between the two.

But how does Virginia Tech DO in the Red Zone? How often were those pelvic thrusts followed by hands thrust in the air and the cannon lit for the boom that means Bill Roth just called "Touchdown TECH!"? The answer may surprise you. Let's look at the stats!

The Stats

In the Red Zone (inside the 20 yard line), the Hokies had 36 touchdowns (28 rushing, 8 passing), went 10-14 on field goal attempts, fumbled twice, were intercepted twice, punted once, turned the ball over on downs once (thanks, refs!) and ended one game inside the Red Zone.

That comes out to an 80.7% success rate, and a 63.2% touchdown success rate. Let's see how that compares to the rest of the Big East:

Big East Red Zone Statistics
Team	Success	TDs	%	TD%
MIA	58-65	50	89.2	76.9
BC	50-61	34	82.0	55.7
WVU	46-57	39	80.7	68.4
VT	46-57	36	80.7	63.2
SYR	41-51	33	80.4	64.7
PIT	41-60	27	68.3	45.0
TEM	27-41	16	65.9	39.0
RUT	16-26	13	61.5	50.0

 

Pretty indicative ... in a year where Virginia Tech came in fourth in the Big East, their Red Zone Possessions, Red Zone Percentage and Red Zone TD percentage were all fourth as well!

Inside the Numbers

Within those 57 possessions were 181 plays, an average of 3.2 plays per possession. Tech had 12 drives of one play only when they reached the Red Zone (an impressive stat) and the longest drive once the Hokies reached the Red Zone was eight plays, twice.

So let's break it down. You know Beamer, so you know Tech likes to run the ball. Just how much when in the Red Zone? Lots. VT had 123 runs to a scant 25 passes, plus 7 sacks, 14 FG attempts (10 made), 11 penalties and one punt. (Yes, that's right, the Hokies suffered the indignity of having to PUNT after a Red Zone possession. Tech may be the only team in the country that happened to, but full stats are unavailable.)

With those 181 plays, we saw the following:

13-25 passing, 135 yards, 8 TD's, 2 INT's,  7 SACK's
123 runs, 410 yards (3.33 YPC), 28 TD's, 2 FUM's
130 runs, 372 yards, (2.86 YPC) when counting sacks

That figures to a 3.8:1 run:pass ratio (123:32), and 5.72 pass plays per sack for Bryan Randall (23 passes—Grant Noel had the other two—with 7 sacks and 10 scrambles assumed. I took Randall's runs and estimated roughly a third were scrambles). That 5.72 pass plays per sack, in particular, is an ugly, ugly statistic. In the NFL the average in 2001 was one sack every 14.5 pass plays. Rob Johnson has the highest rate of sacks per pass play over the last 30 years of NFL. His ratio? One sack every 6.78 pass plays. (Randall's overall ratio is one sack every 8.3 pass plays, not good but still better. According to the Maroon Book, Grant Noel was sacked 20 times in 2001 with 254 pass attempts, for a ratio of one sack every 13.4 passing attempts.)

So what did running more than passing get the Hokies? Are there any statistics to back up such a high rate of running? Not to my eyes. As noted, VT had 28 touchdowns in 123 runs, or one touchdown every 4.4 runs. When passing the ball, however, the Hokies scored eight touchdowns in only 32 passing attempts (counting sacks). That's a touchdown every 4 pass attempts! Not just completed passes, ATTEMPTS. If you look just at completed passes, VT scored a touchdown every 1.6 completed passes inside the Red Zone. There's also a much higher yards-per-play rate within Tech's Red Zone passing game, a 5.4 to 3.3 edge when throwing the ball.

It's hard to say anything with any certainty with a statistical sample that small, but it appears that Virginia Tech's reliance on the run inside the Red Zone may have cost them some points. At the very least, it seems that a better mix may have gotten better results. The only statistics that are "pro run" are the equal number of fumbles and interceptions. With the same number of turnovers in so many fewer passes, an increase in the number of pass attempts may have led to more turnovers. But again, the statistical sample is so small that it's hard to say with much certainty.

Comparisons Abound!

In Tech's ten wins, they went 33-of-41 in the Red Zone, and went 13-of-16 in the four losses. Hmm, that breaks down just about perfectly, 80 percent to 81 percent, and a proportionally similar number of possessions. The touchdown percentage, surprisingly enough, is greater in the losses than in the wins, 69 percent as opposed to 61 percent.

Breaking it into two halves of a season, we see a little different story. Tech was 24-of-31 with 20 TD's through the Rutgers game, and 22-of-26 with 16 TD's from Temple onward. So while the Hokies got a higher percentage of scores out of Red Zone possessions in the second half of the season (85 percent to 77 percent), they had a higher rate of touchdowns in the first half of the season (61.5 percent to 64.5 percent). Combine that with the higher number of possessions in the first half of the season—they had almost one fewer Red Zone possession per game in the second half of the season—and that's a point differential of 152 to 130. An extra field goal a game. Know any games where that extra field goal might have helped the Hokies out?

All that said, however, the difference between the two halves, as well as between the wins and losses, wasn't all that statistically significant. We'll have some comparisons in the second article in the series.

Enough Stats. Who Got the Ball?

Bryan Randall
11-23 passing, 109 yards, 6 TD's, 2 INT's, 7 SACK's
30 runs, 48 yards (1.6 YPC), 3 TD 2 FUM (counting sacks)

Lee Suggs
64 runs, 181 yards (2.83 YPC), 17 TD

Kevin Jones
27 runs, 109 yards (4.04 YPC), 7 TD

Ernest Wilford
4 catches, 44 yards (11 YPC), 3 TD

Suggs and Jones

Their average starting positions are similar, and as one might expect when looking at plays inside the 20 yard line, are about halfway between there and the end zone. Suggs' average start on his runs was the nine yard line, while Jones started on the 10 on average. But when you look at their touchdown runs is where you start to see a difference. Suggs' average touchdown was four yards, and Jones' was for six and a half. Amazingly, all but four of Suggs' touchdowns were for five yards or less, and seven of them were one-yard plunges. That's as many as Jones had in total. The coaches, obviously, trust Suggs unquestioningly when they're in the shadow of the goalpost.

However, don't count Jones out. There's been a lot of discussion as to how much we'll miss Lee Suggs, and while we undoubtedly will, the stats seem to show that Kevin Jones is a more than suitable replacement, even close in.

While his average touchdown was six and a half yards, that was skewed significantly by two long (Red Zone long) TD runs, of 19 and 15 yards. His other five Red Zone TDs? All four yards or less. And on 3rd or 4th down, he converted four of six times, scoring touchdowns or keeping drives alive by getting the tough yards. (Suggs, by the way, converted nine of 13 on 3rd or 4th down, for a similar percentage.) No big worries on Kevin Jones being the Red Zone back for me!

And what about turnovers? Neither back, as you can see, had a turnover in the Red Zone. All four of Tech's Red Zone TOs came courtesy of Bryan Randall, with fumbles against LSU and UVA, and interceptions versus WMU and the costly one against WVU.

The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

With that in mind, the two best Red Zone performances were against Marshall and Miami, with six scores on six possessions in each game. Both have the same touchdown percentage as well (5 out of 6). Two topnotch performances, even if one did come in a loss. Right below that is Air Force. While Tech "only" went 4-4 against them (as opposed to the 5-5 against ASU), all their points came out of Red Zone possessions, so their success inside the 20 was extremely important to pulling out the victory.

Two games where the Red Zone offense could have really helped out more were Texas A&M and Temple. While Tech went 3-5 against A&M, only one of those scores was a touchdown. One touchdown in five Red Zone appearances definitely falls into the category of "bad." As against Air Force, however, Tech did score all our points from within the Red Zone. Similarly, against Temple they were 3-3 inside the Red Zone, but scored only one touchdown. That failure rate inside the Red Zone made the game much tighter than it should have been.

I'm sure everyone can tell me what The Ugly was: WVU. One turnover on downs (so sayeth the refs, at least) and one interception inside the Red Zone, with 2-4 overall (one touchdown, one FG). Those two turnovers inside the 20 literally lost the game for the Hokies, and represented the worst of the season's Red Zone performance. Close behind was the 2-5 logged against Rutgers which, as in the Temple game, made the outcome much closer than it really should have been.

So there you have it, probably more than you wanted to know about how the Hokies did in the Red Zone this season. Next week we'll take a look at defensive performance in the Red Zone, do a little bit of comparison, and see if we can draw any conclusions.

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