Earlier this week, Zac Jackson looked at potential problems for the Buckeyes when the first BCS standings come out.
The takeaway: Not only does Ohio State need teams ahead of them to lose in order to move up in the human polls, the computers used to in the BCS standings formula are not fans of the Buckeyes, either.
Well, you can add the Football Outsiders advanced statistics to the list of rankings not favoring Ohio State at this point in the season, too (If you're not familiar with Football Outsiders, think of them as the gridiron version of SABRmetrics.).
The first release of their overall rankings (called F/+) that puts together stat guru Bill Connelly's S&P+ rankings (based on a combination of measurements of explosiveness and efficiency, think of it as on-base plus slugging percentage, or OPS, in baseball) and Bruce Fremeau's FEI (which measures drive efficiency) had the Buckeyes 15th in the country. That had them not only barely within shouting distance of unbeatens such as No. 1 Alabama, Florida State (No. 2) and Oregon (No. 4) but also trailing once-beaten Stanford (No. 5) and LSU (11) as well as three 4-2 teams (Georgia, Utah and Washington).
Of the two measures, the Fremeau measure is more bearish on the the Buckeyes, particularly the defense, where an inability to prevent explosive drives (those that average at least 10 yards per play) is the biggest contributor to a defensive ranking of 27th. The offense, which has been much more proficient at producing explosive drives than methodical ones, checks in at only 26th.
As for Connelly's S&P+, this week brought a change in the rankings because preseason projections were stripped out of them and drive-based was data added.
Turns out that was not a good thing for Ohio State, which was already lagging behind the rest of the nation's unbeaten teams when the last version of the numbers was released last week.
Ohio State dropped from 13th to 18th nationally while Wisconsin shot up to ninth from No. 21 in overall S&P+. Michigan State, which was seventh last week, dropped to 13th but remained ahead of the Buckeyes.
So, what is it about these numbers that has Ohio State a somewhat stunning third in the Big Ten, a league they have widely been assumed to be the class of all season?
On offense, the Buckeyes are a solid 15th in play efficiency and an even better eighth in drive efficiency, but they are only 29th and 32nd in those respective measures on defense.
Those who have watched Ohio State extensively this season might not be surprised to see the deficiency on 'D'.
The S&P+ rankings find them to have been equally mediocre on standard and passing downs as they check in 39th nationally in both categories. While they are 12th in S&P+ against the run, they are just 54th against the pass, two more numbers that seems to align with the eyeball test.
