Toxic Differential

[Blakejc]

Rhule used this phrase in a recent presser and I'd never heard it before. I'm always keen to track the stats the coaches track, so I decided to look at toxic differential for 2023. See the link below to the spreadsheet I created:



Essentially it's the correlation between turnovers and explosive plays. In formulaic terms:

[(offensive plays of 20+ yards - opponent plays of 20+ yards) + (takeaways - giveaways)] = Toxic Differential

I always like to break things down into top 10/top40/top 100. Top 10 is elite, Top 40 or better should be the goal, and there's never an excuse to be worse than 100th in anything. I say Top 40 or better because being good at everything all the time means you're actually a great team (see below). The top 10 in toxic differential correlates pretty accurately to the best teams in the country. Michigan was 1st, Georgia 3rd, Texas 12th, Alabama 16th, Washington 17th.

Top 10 Toxic Differential: +33
Top 40 Toxic Differential: +13
Top 100 Toxic Differential: -11

Nebraska was -9 (T95th) in Toxic Differential in 2023

Explosive Plays of 20+............. 44 (106th)
Opp Explosive Plays of 20+..... 36 (T4th)
Takeaways.................................. 14 (T106th)
Giveaways................................... 31 (T132nd)

The main takeaway is there is so much meat on the bone for this team. I've said before with giveaways, just go from historically bad to bad. Go from 31 giveaways to 21 (T96th in 2023) and you make a massive improvement.

The ultimate goal should be Top 40 in all 4 categories. That'd look like this:

Explosive Plays of 20+............. 67 (+23 from 2023)
Opp Explosive Plays of 20+..... 50 (-14)
Takeaways.................................. 20 (+6)
Giveaways................................... 15 (+16)

Suddenly our Toxic Differential goes from -9 (T95th) to +22 (T23rd).

Maybe the defense continues to lock opponents down at an elite level. Suddenly you're talking a Toxic Differential of +30 or more.

 

[2010sarenevercomingback]

Thanks for the breakdown. If I was nitpicking at the stat itself, I think turnovers need to be weighted more heavily than 20+ yard plays, as a takeaway is more valuable than a 20 yard offensive play, and a giveaway is more toxic than giving up a 20 yard play.

Something like:
[(offensive plays of 20+ yards - opponent plays of 20+ yards) + 2x(takeaways - giveaways)] = Modified Toxic Differential

 

[Pepe Silvia]

Thanks for the breakdown. If I was nitpicking at the stat itself, I think turnovers need to be weighted more heavily than 20+ yard plays, as a takeaway is more valuable than a 20 yard offensive play, and a giveaway is more toxic than giving up a 20 yard play.

Something like:
[(offensive plays of 20+ yards - opponent plays of 20+ yards) + 2x(takeaways - giveaways)] = Modified Toxic Differential

I'd like to see turnovers reflect where they occur. We had a stupid amount that occurred deep in our own territory last year

 

[HuskerPAC]

I'd like to see turnovers reflect where they occur. We had a stupid amount that occurred deep in our own territory last year

It seems like our starting field position for as many years as I can remember has been dog shit. We can’t return a punt, have dumb penalties, or some other fundamental issue pops up.

Seems our opponents always start 50 and in and we always start with 80+ yards to go.

 

[SlumpBuster]

It's definitely an interesting stat to look at, I would agree though that the impact weight is slightly off because turnovers are probably the most impactful aspect of the game positive or negative.

Without doing any analysis or research into it, 2x does sound pretty close.

 

[Blakejc]

Thanks for the breakdown. If I was nitpicking at the stat itself, I think turnovers need to be weighted more heavily than 20+ yard plays, as a takeaway is more valuable than a 20 yard offensive play, and a giveaway is more toxic than giving up a 20 yard play.

Something like:
[(offensive plays of 20+ yards - opponent plays of 20+ yards) + 2x(takeaways - giveaways)] = Modified Toxic Differential

That makes sense. I feel like you’d need a formula to figure out how it should be properly weighted and I’m not that smart. Like it’d actually be 1.783x or something like that.

Looks like Bill Billick originally thought of the stat in 1998.

https://www.nfl.com/news/toxic-diff...-indicator-of-success-in-nfl-09000d5d82435ffb

 

[Blakejc]

It seems like our starting field position for as many years as I can remember has been dog shit. We can’t return a punt, have dumb penalties, or some other fundamental issue pops up.

Seems our opponents always start 50 and in and we always start with 80+ yards to go.

If you click around on that spreadsheet you’ll see I’ve tracked field position the past couple years. It’s abysmal. And certainly some losses can be mostly blamed on field position.

Colorado’s SFP against us was the 43 yard line
Our SFP that game was the 24.5.

They had +240 hidden yards in field position alone that game. Ridiculous.

 

[Alcaus]

You could weigh turnovers based field position but that's a time consuming prospect.

Maybe use PPP and weigh it against the value of a turnover which this article sites as ~5 pts.

College football's 5 most important stats

Explosiveness, efficiency, field position, finishing drives, and turnovers are the five factors most directly correlated to winning football games. Check out the numbers.

www.footballstudyhall.com

 

[Mavsker]

I don't know if you need to weigh turnovers by where they occurred. Turning it over inside your opponents red zone leaves points off the board for you, but it's offset by your opponent then having to drive the length of the field for their own points. And vice-versa.

 

[stonesak]

Toxic differential?

 

[Boondock_St_Sker]

Using this metric…