ACC Offensive Plays Per Touchdown in 2008

Hey, look! More stats! That's right, it's another boring post that looks at non-traditional stats that in the grand scheme of college football mean very little and matter only to a select few.

The next couple days we'll look at plays per touchdown broken up by offensive rushing and passing and defensive rushing and passing. Simply put, it's the number of rushes (minus sacks) or passes (plus sacks) it took each team to score a touchdown or give up one in ACC play.

You might remember a similar post that looked at total offensive plays per touchdown. This one just splits it between rushing and passing.

Today, the offense. The nitty-gritty comes after the jump. Remember, the NCAA erroneously counts sacks as rushing plays so we have to do some adjustments.

This is just one way of measuring the explosiveness of an offense, rushing and passing. A lower number is better for offenses because it means they're scoring touchdowns at a higher frequency. As always, these stats are from the incomparable CFBStats.com.

(TD - touchdowns; Rush - number of rush attempts minus sacks; PPTD - plays per touchdown)

Georgia Tech is about where we thought it would be. The Yellow Jackets' version of the flexbone came together nicely and put up incredible numbers the last part of the season. And as bad as Clemson's offensive line was last year, the Tigers' combo of James Davis and CJ Spiller still got to the end zone at a pretty good clip against conference foes.

The Hokies hovered around the league average. Darren Evans and Tyrod Taylor got to the end zone a lot, but they also had a lot of carries, more than any team but Georgia Tech. Of course, the Hokies' offense hasn't been very explosive since 2003. As for Tech's passing game ... well, you may want to avert your eyes.

(TD - touchdowns; Pass - number of pass attempts plus sacks; PPTD - plays per touchdown)

And that pretty much tells you all you need to know about the Hokies' passing game. I will predict that the Hokies and Yellow Jackets both get much closer to the league average in 2009. Look for Duke and North Carolina's numbers to drop because of losses at wide receiver.

What's surprising is how bad Maryland's numbers were despite having Oquendo, Hey-Bey and Gronkowski. How bad could those numbers end up being in 2009 with the losses at wide receiver and on the offensive line?

The defensive numbers will be posted Thursday.