Go fourth and succeed: Why Texas Tech’s aggressiveness ought to be

• Expense Connelly, ESPN Personnel WriterJun 22, 2023, 07:00 AM ET

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  Expense Connelly is a personnel writer for ESPN.com.In a periphrastic method

, Texas Tech gamed my SP +rankings in 2022. I have actually long discussed a step I call postgame win span– it takes all the plays in a provided game, tosses them into the air and, based upon the statistics that tend to be most predictive (and which feed into SP+), states,” With all these stats, you could have anticipated to win this game X%of the time.”Add up all your postgame win expectancies from

a given year, and you get what amounts to a second-order win overall:” With all these stats this year, you could have anticipated to win X games usually.”In Joey McGuire’s first season in charge, Texas Tech’s second-order win overall was 5.8– okay against a top-15 schedule that featured five SP+ top-20 challengers, and sufficient for 32nd total in SP +. Their real win total? 8. In terms of the distinction in between wins and second-order wins, it was the third-largest overachievement in the country. Only Sun Belt champion Troy and BYU topped it.The Red Raiders beat Oklahoma 51-48 regardless of a 39%postgame win expectancy. They conveniently won games against Kansas(43-28)and Ole Miss( 42-25)in spite of quite tight statistics(postgame win expectancy: 65 %and 69%, respectively ). And against Texas in September, they pulled off an outright magic act, beating the Longhorns 37-34 in overtime in spite of getting outgained by 2.3 lawns per play(7.1 to 4.8 )and creating a far even worse overall success rate (48%to 37%). Postgame win span versus Texas: 2%. Usually, these four games should have produced about 1.8 wins; Tech won all four.Editor’s Picks 2 Associated Was this fortunate? Perhaps. Tech did recuperate all 3 fumbles in the win over Texas– two of their own (on drives that produced 10 points)and one from Texas in overtime (which ended the game)– and fell on an unsustainable variety of loose balls throughout the season. However they also rigged these games in their favor with an extreme willingness to go for it on 4th down.The Red Raiders were 6-for-8 on 4th downs versus Texas, and for the season they went all out a tremendous 52 times, quickly the most in the country.Of these 52 attempts, Tech converted 33 and went on to score 129 points after these conversions. After the 19 failures, they enabled 44 points.

That’s an earnings of plus-85 points, or almost a touchdown per game over 13 contests. Yes, there was a bit of good fortune in overachieving their win spans.

But it wasn’t all luck. McGuire played the chances, used 4th down as a win opportunity and won games with it.Your coach could do the same.