I'm floored. I can fathom under 50%, maybe 30 or 35%, but this is ONE POINT EIGHT PERCENT. Bill's not saying that from the perspective of the beginning of the game. Bill's saying if both teams played the same way, statistically speaking, Vanderbilt would almost never win.
I didn't watch but I followed live stats and listened to some. In years gone by We've experienced weird flukes where we got outgained by almost 400 to 200 yards and won on a timely fumble. This was not that.
Here's a deep dive from the Alabama perspective. AFAICT our success rate deficit (Bama 55%, Vandy 42%) was because we faced a lot of 3rd downs and were terrific at converting them. I don't know why our explosiveness is so poor compared to theirs -- I don't think of us as "three yards and a cloud of dust" but maybe. Even so... Vanderbilt 418 yards. Alabama 394. How can Bill's stats say that we were that lucky? Anyway it's not just him. Sagarin has us 44 spots behind Kentucky. And you know about this weekend's betting line.
I actually do think there's something those guys' models (at least Connolly's) are missing. And I also think they're not missing much, that recency bias is huge, and that Vanderbilt fans thinking we've solved our problems earlier are no different than Bama fans thinking Kalen DeBoer had solved SEC football a week ago. We're better than 13 point dogs to UK, but maybe not that much better.
I didn't watch but I followed live stats and listened to some. In years gone by We've experienced weird flukes where we got outgained by almost 400 to 200 yards and won on a timely fumble. This was not that.
Here's a deep dive from the Alabama perspective. AFAICT our success rate deficit (Bama 55%, Vandy 42%) was because we faced a lot of 3rd downs and were terrific at converting them. I don't know why our explosiveness is so poor compared to theirs -- I don't think of us as "three yards and a cloud of dust" but maybe. Even so... Vanderbilt 418 yards. Alabama 394. How can Bill's stats say that we were that lucky? Anyway it's not just him. Sagarin has us 44 spots behind Kentucky. And you know about this weekend's betting line.
I actually do think there's something those guys' models (at least Connolly's) are missing. And I also think they're not missing much, that recency bias is huge, and that Vanderbilt fans thinking we've solved our problems earlier are no different than Bama fans thinking Kalen DeBoer had solved SEC football a week ago. We're better than 13 point dogs to UK, but maybe not that much better.
