Iowa State is coming off a rough couple of seasons and has lost its last 10 games. However, a new coach, Paul Rhoads (a defense coordinator from Auburn…sound familiar?) hopes to turn the program around. The Cyclones definitely could use a boost in their defense which gave up over 35 point per game last year and only held one Big Twelve team (Colorado) under 30. Iowa State ranked in the bottom 10 statistically in scoring defense, total defense, pass defense, and pass efficiency defense. The offense was better and showed flashes, but still was tenth in the conference scoring only 25.3 points per game. New offensive coordinator Tom Herman is installing an up tempo, all shotgun offense that had his previous team, Rice, in the top 10 offensively.

Offense: Key Returning Players
It’s hard to get an accurate number of returning starters as the 2 deeps changed frequently. But at every position the Cyclones return a player with at least some starting experience, including QB Austen Arnaud and RB Alexander Robinson, who together combined for most of ISU’s yards last year. Arnaud had a record setting season passing throwing for 2792 yards and he also ran for another 401 yards. Robinson was the team’s leading rusher with 703 yards on 153 carries. Another bright spot could be the offense line who returns 3 full-time starters, C Alex Alvarez, G Ben Lamaak, G Reggie Stephens, and four others who started at least on game. Other notable players returning are TE Derrick Catlett, WR Houston Jones, and WR Darius Darks who set a freshman record with 49 receptions in 2008.

Offense: Key Losses
The Cyclones biggest loss is WR R.J. Sumrall. He was the team’s leading receiver last year with 57 receptions for 750 yards, including 7 touchdowns. He was also only 1 of 3 players to start every game last year on offense. Another loss is backup RB Jason Scales who had a good career at ISU rushing for 5 touchdowns in his final season.

Defense: Key Returning Players
The defense returns 12 players with starting experience. Most notable are James and Jesse Smith (FS and LB respectively). The Smiths were number 1 and 2 in tackles, both with over 80. Also returning are NG Nate Frere, DE Rashawn Parker, and LB Fred Garrin who all started every game last year.

Defense: Key Losses
About the only major loss is DE Kurtis Taylor. Taylor started every game last year and had a team high 11 tackles for loss.

For more information on Iowa State’s 2009 football team, read the Spring Prospectus.

A few days ago I posted about the predictability of Ken O’Keefe’s play calling. Since then, I have further analyzed the play calling data from last year and was able to come up with a formula for predicting pass or run for any given play (well almost any play…fourth down is not yet supported). I’ve permanently attached KOK Bot, which takes the current game condition (down, yards to go, field side, yard line, score, and time left in the game) and predicts the play as a pass or a run, to the side bar. [UPDATE: KOK Bot is not longer in the side bar.  The application is on the bottom of this post.] Go ahead an input some game situations and see what KOK Bot has to say. I tried this retroactively with the Iowa State game last year and KOK Bot correctly guessed 65% of the plays. That is pretty good I think, but like I said in my previous post, 65% is not really that predictable. Anyway, I plan on taking on KOK Bot head to head for one of the games next year to see who can predict the real KOK’s play calling more accurately. I’ll be sure to post about it then. Additionally, I plan on updating the formula accordingly when I have more data as more games are played. At some point, I may also try to figure out fourth down situations to determine punt, field goal, or go for it.

If you are interested in the formula and math behind KOK Bot, keep reading. If not, just go ahead and try the KOK Bot.

I split up the formula into 4 parts: Yards to Go by Down, Field Position, Score Margin, and Time Left by Winning/Losing. For each part, I found the correlation between the situation and the percentage of times a pass play is called. For the ease the calculation, I assumed linear relationships for each part. (more yard to go -> more likely to pass; closer to end zone -> less likely to pass; winning by less/losing by more -> more likely to pass; and less time left when losing -> more likely to pass) So, for each situation, I found the “line of best fit” to calculate the chance of pass.

Then, using the correlations, I weighted each part of the formula accordingly.

Lastly, I multiplied the chance of passing for each part by the weight and summed the results to get an overall percent change of passing. To determine if the play will be a pass or run I account for some randomness/unpredictability from KOK, so I have a randomly generated number between 0 and 1. If the number is less than the chance of passing, then KOK Bot says Pass, otherwise it says Run. If you want to see the whole calculation you can view the source of this page and read through the JavaScript.

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Down:	1st Down 2nd Down 3rd Down	Yards to Go:
Field Side:	Iowa's Opponent's	Yard Line:
Quarter:	1st Quarter 2nd Quarter 3rd Quarter 4th Quarter	Time Left:
Iowa's Score:		Opponent's Score:

Kirk Ferentz sums up the Hawkeyes spring practice in four words, "So far, so good." Adam Rittenberg from ESPN was in Iowa City on Friday and got a chance to talk to Ferentz and some of the players. It sounds like lots of progress is being made, and Ricky Stanzi has stepped up his leadership skills. Also confirmed is DJK's spot in the doghouse. Though he made a lot of big plays in 2008, Ferentz says " there are a lot of things that go on during the game that go unnoticed by the average person watching." Also exciting is the annoucement of 3 night games this year: Penn State, Michigan, and Michigan State. Rittenberg also has a good post on the difficult task of replacing Shonn Greene.

Our FCS friends to the north had a good 2008 season. The Panthers went 12-3, won the Missouri Valley for the second years in a row, went to the national semifinals, and finished ranked 4th in the nation. They had a respectable offense last year averaging 29.2 points per game and a good defense, giving up only 17.7 points per game while blanking two teams. They should have a good team again in 2009 and are Iowa’s first opponent.

Offense: Key Returning Players
UNI returns 9 starters on offense including QB Patrick Grace who passed for over 2,000 yards and ran for another 618 last year while missing 3 games with a knee injury. Other key returnees include WR Josh Collins who had 750 all-purpose yards, and RB Derrick Law who had 786 yards as the backup. The Panthers will also have a very veteran offense line returning 4 starters who will all be seniors.

Offense: Key Losses
Off of UNI’s roster this year is its leading rusher, Corey Lewis. He was second in the Missouri Valley with 1314 yards on the ground. Also gone is the team’s second most productive receive, Johnny Gray who had 728 all-purpose yards.

Defense: Key Returning Players
Only 6 starters return from a solid 2008 unit. The front 7 will be an experienced group led by senior LB Josh Mahoney who had 139 tackles and 3 interceptions. Joining him at linebacker is Jamar Thompson who also had a good year in 2008 with 110 tackles. The defense line is also solid with 3 senior returns. James Ruffin had 18 tackles for loss and 10 sacks last year.

Defense: Key Losses
UNI looses its entire starting secondary from last year. They will need to replace First Team All-Missouri Valley CB Darrell Lloyd, Safeties Curtis Meier and Nick Nelson, and CB Terrell McMoore who had a team leading 4 interception. Also gone is LB DeVeon Harris who had 104 tackles and 3 interception.

For more information on UNI’s 2009 team, check out the spring prospectus.

Ken O’Keefe takes a lot of criticism for being too predictable, too bland, too un-spread-like…When the Hawkeye’s offense struggles, the blame is put on his shoulders and “Fire KOK!” is a popular phrase. For the most part I think he’s doing a good job with the play calling, but I’ll be honest, I’ve had some angry feelings towards the man in the past and have thought the offense was too predictable. But O’Keefe said during the bye week last year, “How would you be able to predict exactly what's going on, even if you had our game plan?" So, that’s the question I’m trying to tackle.

The first, and worst step, was gathering every offense play Iowa ran last year…all 838 of them. I got my data from the Play-by-Play on ESPN and input it into an Excel spreadsheet to start my analysis. I looked at the Down, Yards to Go, Field Position, Time Left in Half/Game, and the Point Spread in relationship to a pass call or a run call and it revealed some interesting trends.

I’ve always thought Iowa was a 1st down – run, 2nd down – run, 3rd down – pass type team. And guess what, it is! On 1st down, the Hawkeyes ran the ball 59% of the time. On 2nd and 3rd down it was 68% and 36% respectively. When it was 2nd and less than 10 yards, Iowa ran the ball 80% of the time.

Another assumption I had was that when Iowa was losing, they would pass more, and when winning would run more. To my surprise, when down, KOK only called for a pass 51% of the time. That’s pretty balanced. On the flip side though, when winning, Iowa ran the ball 60% of the time. The play calling did get more predictable, however, in the fourth quarter. When down, it was 59% passing, and when up, it was 66% run.

And finally, field position…My guess would have been pass more between the 20s, and run when close to either goal line. For the most part this is how it shook out. I split the field into quarters though. Between Iowa’s goal line and the 25, they ran 61% of the time. Between the 25 and 50, it was very balanced with 52% runs. Once getting past midfield, however, the play calling become much more run oriented. Between the opponents 50 and 26, it was 58% runs. And from there to the end zone, 65% of the calls were rushing plays.

Overall, last year was pretty balanced…but with Shonn Greene obviously the numbers tip towards more rushes. The final tally came in at 354 pass plays and 483 run plays. I think there is enough information here to put something together that can predict the play calling with some degree of accuracy (more to come later!) but really, even when it does seem predictable I only have about a 60-65% confidence that I could pick pass or run correctly. And to me, that’s not really predictable.

Some interesting quick facts:

• When Iowa was up by 7, they ran 26 pass plays and 26 run plays.
• The most balanced game of the year was against Illinois. 51% pass – 49% run.
• The least balanced game was the bowl game against South Carolina. 30% pass – 70% run.
• Iowa likes to get out and establish the run, with more run plays in the first quarter than any other quarter.
• There was not a single pass play run the 4th quarter against Purdue.
• Against Penn State, Iowa passed the ball 15 times in the 4th quarter alone…they only ran 15 plays the entire first half.