Hard-Fought Yards | by Jay

One thing I noticed in looking at the NCAA offensive rankings is the way we're grinding out the yards this year. Despite having the 12th-best offense in the country, we rank only 36th in yards per play (5.77).

How does that happen? Well, seeing as we're #2 in the country in plays run per game, it sort of makes sense.

Plays Per Game, best 20 teams

O-Rank	Team	Games	Plays	Plays/Gm	Yds	Avg	Yds/Gm
14	Missouri	6	516	86.00	2858	5.54	476.33
12	Notre Dame	6	509	84.83	2938	5.77	489.67
4	Northwestern	6	496	82.67	3172	6.40	528.67
28	Oregon St.	6	490	81.67	2572	5.25	428.67
38	Indiana	6	490	81.67	2464	5.03	410.67
13	Oregon	7	555	79.29	3411	6.15	487.29
15	Houston	6	474	79.00	2843	6.00	473.83
17	Purdue	6	469	78.17	2747	5.86	457.83
5	Arizona St.	6	468	78.00	3112	6.65	518.67
29	Nevada	6	468	78.00	2566	5.48	427.67
11	Minnesota	7	545	77.86	3432	6.30	490.29
25	Boise St.	6	467	77.83	2597	5.56	432.83
85	Tulane	5	387	77.40	1671	4.32	334.20
70	Georgia Tech	6	464	77.33	2159	4.65	359.83
2	Texas Tech	6	463	77.17	3437	7.42	572.83
31	Boston College	7	538	76.86	2964	5.51	423.43
1	Southern Cal	6	458	76.33	3678	8.03	613.00
50	Western Mich.	6	458	76.33	2353	5.14	392.17
60	Illinois	6	458	76.33	2254	4.92	375.67
3	Michigan St.	6	457	76.17	3288	7.19	548.00

In comparison, check out USC: best offense in the country, and also the best yards-per-play average. Reggie Bush will do that for you. We, on the other hand, have no gamebreakers at running back; as Pat mentioned below, our longest run of the season is backup QB David Wolke's 22-yard scamper.

We're not a quick-strike offense, and I think a lot of that is by design. Occasionally we'll hit on a long pass, but mainly, we just grind it out, control the clock, move the chains, and punch it in the end zone when we get down close. We're a yardage- and time-eating machine.