Alabama Statistical Preview

Welcome to the first statistical preview of the 2013 season...no promises yet on regularity, but I'd like to get one of these out for each game if at all possible and welcome any feedback - post in the comments what kinds of statistical breakdowns you'd like to see for each opponent and if at all possible I'll accommodate.

On to Alabama, and first a disclaimer: Whereas during the season I should have plenty of up-to-date numbers to work with, the season has not yet started and for the ratings included in this preview I was forced to use end-of-season ratings from 2012. I think we all know that not much has likely changed significantly for either team.

Computer Rankings

First up, we compare the computer rankings for each team:

No surprise here as the majority of computers have Alabama ranked #1 in the country, and Virginia Tech anywhere from the mid 20's to, well, almost 70th.

Computer Predictions

Next we take a look at how those rankings translate into a predicted result and include the Las Vegas spread as well (which changes regularly so please don't post to let me know every time it moves some):

So if you were looking at the spread before this and thinking that 18.5 sounded cruel, you now realize that compared to most computer systems that's being quite generous...most have us somewhere in the mid-20's.

Ratings

Finally, we'll take a look at one particular rating system provided by Football Outsiders - S&P+. Feel free to visit their site for descriptions of how their ratings are calculated, but for now I'll just show how we compare to Alabama on Offense, Defense, and Overall:

Needless to say they are statistically the superior team on each side of the ball. In fact, to illustrate just how good Alabama is, our Defense S&P+ was #19 in the country last year - and our rating is closer to #2 (Oregon) than #2 is to #1 Alabama.

The good news? The S&P+ ratings are from the end of last year and are hopefully not too accurate. For Alabama, I would think they are not too far off. But for Virginia Tech, with new staff and new players, they are likely not particularly accurate...let's just hope they're wrong in the right direction.