Texas A&M Football: 3 reasons the Aggies will beat the Arkansas Razorbacks

Play number disparity will decrease

It has become a trend now for the Aggies to be at a play number disadvantage by the time the game ends— usually a pretty big one, at that. This is an issue as, obviously, the more plays you run, the more chances to score you have.

The SHSU game was the lone outlier, with the Aggies running 67 plays to the Bearkats’ 55.  However, most egregious and most notable was what happened the following week, when App State ran 82 plays to A&M’s 38. Even in the win over Miami, the Canes ran 77 plays to the Aggies’ 52. A narrower margin, yes, but still not great.

However, what has kept A&M afloat despite this issue is scoring efficiency, which I touched on briefly in my last point. A&M is currently averaging 0.395 offensive points per play (not a great mark), but, as I said, they’re allowing only 0.120 defensive points per play. Put another way, A&M’s offensive snaps have been about 3-and-a-quarter times as valuable scoring-wise as their opponents.

What about Arkansas? The Hogs have averaged a much more passable 0.504 offensive points per play, but their defensive numbers are comparatively unimpressive, giving up 0.373 defensive points per play. This makes it such that Arkansas’s snaps have been only 1-and-a-half times as valuable scoring-wise as their opponents’. I’ll add that Arkansas has run 7 more plays than they’ve defended this year, while A&M has run 59 fewer plays than they’ve defended.

On a more macro-scale, these scoring efficiency numbers play out as well. A&M is right at 2 points per drive, while allowing only 0.839 points per drive defensively. Arkansas is scoring 3.05 points per drive, but they are also allowing 2.08 points per drive on the other side of the ball. This means A&M’s drives have been about 2.4 times as valuable as their opponents’, while Arkansas’s have only been about 1-and-a-half times as valuable as their opponents’.

Now, these stats are not opponent-adjusted, nor are they forward-facing— they’re merely descriptive of what each team has done so far. That said, however, I think there is something to be gleaned from these stats. You can see from these numbers how evening out the play numbers would tilt the scales in favor of A&M in this matchup.

They’ve consistently had higher scoring efficiency per play and per drive than their opponents by a bigger margin than Arkansas; so, while the game will still in all likelihood be much more of a nail biter than the raw numbers suggest (if each team runs a similar number of plays and A&M’s plays are three times as valuable, it stands to reason that A&M would triple up Arkansas in scoring— something that seems very unlikely), this could end up being a key stat all the same.