Football: Ducks performance vs advanced stats

Merry Christmas Duck fans. With the home playoff game in the rearview mirror and the next challenge up being a New Years Day Bowl Game I wanted to take stock in this team right now and compare it to the last

two seasons and how I was feeling at Christmas.

I’ve found the 2025 version of the Oregon Ducks to be difficult to evaluate in large part due to the schedule they played this year. In completing the research for this article I came across two facts that accurately describe the somewhat strange schedule the Ducks have faced this year.

Please note for the purposes of examining Oregon’s schedule from 2023 to 2025 I’m excluding the 2024 Rose Bowl and 2023 Fiesta Bowl to make it an apples-to-apples comparison across all 3 seasons as the 2025 Ducks will not play their New Years Day game until Next Week

Here are the number of F+ Top 10 opponents faced pre New Years Day

• 2023 = 2
• 2024 = 2
• 2025 = 1

Without having that 2^nd marque game you might think Oregon had a weak schedule, but

Here are the number of F+ Top 20 opponents faced pre New Years Day

• 2023 = 4
• 2024 = 2
• 2025 = 5

What the Ducks lacked in top-end elite opponents this season they made up for in overall depth of the schedule. But without a marquee signature win this season what was the most impressive this team has looked?

Advanced stats to the rescue. With the help of Hythloday I was able to construct a formula for evaluating each of the Ducks performances this season. I’ll save the long boring explanation of the actual math and just explain what I was attempting to do.

Using F+ ratings I was able to determine the expected YPP gained and allowed that an average FBS team would put up against each of Oregon’s opponents. Then I could look at what the Ducks actually did in that game and compare the difference. The more YPP gained by the Ducks offence over expected being a better result and the fewer yards per play allowed by the Duck defense under expected would be better. Those two numbers could also be combined for an evaluation of the teams performance overall.

5 of Oregon’s 12 games against FBS competition the Ducks had a Net YPP performance above expected between 2.63 and 3.45 and these games represent Oregon’s 6^th-10^th best performances of the season by this metric. The games that fall outside of this range are the ones that are interesting and I think are worth more discussion

Oklahoma State 4.89 Net Yards Per Play Above Expected (3^rd Best Performance)

I wrote about this game earlier in the season when we had no additional context so it’s interesting now to view it with some context. Back in September I was trying to say, “great win, BUT… Oklahoma State might be really bad”. Given that Oklahoma State preceded to lose its next game to a Tulsa team that would finish the season 4-8 in the American and then fire Mike Gundy I don’t mind taking a moment to pat myself on the back.

But what I’m trying to do today is to evaluate Duck performances with the context of the quality of the opponent. And even in attempting to account for how bad the Cowboys were this season this was still the Ducks 3^rd best performance of the season. Hey, sometimes when you mess with the Bull you get the horns.

Northwestern 1.66 Net Yards Per Play Above Expected (2^nd Worst Performance)

This was a strange game. I think there were a lot of additional factors at play here that lead to a bit of sleepy performance from the Ducks that we did not see at any other point in the season.

• The game was played in front of 12,000 people
• At 9AM
• On the banks of Lake Michigan

Most importantly, though skewing the YPP numbers Oregon posted, specifically on defense, where some big plays Northwestern were able to hit in garbage time against some backups and 3^rd stringers which is why numbers adjusted for meaningful play are always better. But what can I do aside from encouraging people to read more from Addicted To Quack.

Indiana 3.41 Net Yards Per Play Above Expected (7^th Best Performance)

This is the one game from the clump of games where Oregon performed similarly given opponent however I thought it was worth discussing as it was novel in the fact it is the only Ducks loss thus far this season. While it seems counter-intuitive to say that the Ducks one and only loss on the season was an average performance from them this is where opponent quality kicks in. Because Indiana is an excellent football team it is expected that they would cave in an average team. Oregon performed much better than an average team would as there Net Yards Per Play from this game was only -0.62 Put in simpler words it was a “Quality Loss”

This does not say that should Oregon have the opportunity to play Indiana again they would have no chance. But what I think it does say is that should Oregon have the opportunity again they would need to play an excellent game and that shouldn’t be surprising as Indiana is an excellent team themselves.

Rutgers 9.33 Net Yards Per Play Above Expected (Best Performance)

No one believes me when I, or anyone at ATQ, says this because it’s Rutgers. But the degree to which Oregon routed Rutgers this season may be one of the single best performances I’ve ever seen from a Duck team and takes the cake as Oregon’s best performance this season.

Whether it was the Ducks being additionally fired up to avenge their first ever loss in Big Ten regular season play who knows but this was as complete and dominant showing as I’ve ever seen.

Wisconsin 1.17 Net Yards Per Play Above Expected (Worst Performance)

Immediately following the best performance of the season, the Duck turned in their worst performance of the season against Wisconsin. And while there was some very inclement weather and a QB injury later in the game the Ducks struggled to move the ball in the first quarter before all of that. This was definitely a clunker of a performance against a bad team, but as the saying goes, Win your Clunkers.

Iowa 4.62 Net Yards Per Play Above Expected (5^th Best)

My number one takeaway from this game was that. Yes it was close, yes an end of game 2 minute drill was required but Oregon wasn’t that lucky to win the game, Iowa was lucky it was even close.

Oregon had:

• Net YPP of +2.37
• Net Explosive rate of +9.39%
• Net Success Rate of +12.92%
• Post Game Win Expectancy of 95.4%
• Expected Margin of Victory of 12.1

Overall a very good performance against a good team in a very tough environment. Especially with the last minute injury losses heading into the game.

Minnesota 4.68 Net Yards Per Play Above Expected (4^th Best)

Following up the Iowa win Oregon came home on a short week and played a very complete game against Minnesota who would go 7-5 in the Big Ten. After some up and down performances in the middle of the schedule Oregon appeared to be trending in a really positive right direction post 2^nd Bye.

What happened though was a slight dip in overall team performance the final two weeks of the year but here it may be helpful to look at the offence and defense separately

As you can see the defensive performance in the 4 game stretch to end the season was very consistent and the offensive performance takes a hit the final two weeks of the regular season. My theory is that a large part of this was due to injuries that were mounting on the offensive line in the final two games of the regular season, based on how that unit was trending up until the Minnesota game.

James Madison 4.99 Net Yards Per Play Above Expected (2^nd Best)

Believe it or not but based on this metric the James Madison game was Oregon’s 2^nd best performance of the season given the quality of opponent. As you can see from the chart that graphs offensive and defensive performance separately, this is entirely due to the strong performance from the offence as this was the 2^nd best offensive performance given opponent this season but also the 2^nd worst defensive performance given opponent this season. But again, Garbage time is called garbage time for a reason people.

In fact, I did notice a trend. Here are the 6 bottom half defensive performances of the season in order of ascending quality:

1. Northwestern
2. James Madison
3. Wisconsin
4. Oklahoma State
5. Oregon State
6. Minnesota

These are also all 6 games this season that had a significant amount of garbage time while the other 6 defensive performances, that is the 6 best performances, had little to no garbage time aside from the Rutgers game.