Last week we took a look at Virginia Tech's efficiency on a per-game basis based how many yards they gained compared to how many yards they should have gained against an opponent in that game. Today, we take a different look at efficiency, this time on a per-drive basis.
This will look at two factors: What percentage of available yards the Hokies gained and how many points they scored per drive. Last year's numbers are available here.
First up is yardage efficiency for the Hokies. For the purpose of these charts, I only considered non-garbage time drives. I went with Football Outsiders' definition of garbage time, which is when any team leads by more than 24 points in the first quarter, 21 points in the second and 16 in the second half. The amount of yards the Hokies chewed up in each drive is divided by the yards that were available to them.
Abbreviations: Yards - Yards Hokies gained in each non-garbage time goal drives; Avail - Yards available to the Hokies at the beginning of each drive; Pct - Yards/Avail.
| Opponent | Yards | Avail | Pct |
| Boston College | 334 | 671 | 0.498 |
| NC State | 443 | 1031 | 0.430 |
| Wake Forest | 415 | 452 | 0.918 |
| Duke | 211 | 344 | 0.613 |
| Georgia Tech | 351 | 587 | 0.598 |
| North Carolina | 402 | 843 | 0.477 |
| Miami | 384 | 821 | 0.468 |
| Virginia | 205 | 403 | 0.509 |
| Florida State | 439 | 632 | 0.695 |
| Total | 3184 | 5784 | 0.550 |
Next is points. Again, garbage-time drives aren't considered, neither are drives at the end of halves where teams merely wanted to run out the clock. The amount of points generated by the offense (defense and special teams scores are ignored) is divided by the total number of drives.
Abbreviations: Stops - Non-scoring drives (punt, downs, turnovers, etc.); TD - Touchdowns; FG - Field Goals; Drives - Stops + TD + FG; Pts/Drv - Offensive Points/Drives.
| Opponent | Stops | TD | FG | Drives | Pts/D |
| Boston College | 5 | 1 | 4 | 10 | 1.90 |
| NC State | 9 | 5 | 0 | 14 | 2.50 |
| Wake Forest | 1 | 6 | 0 | 7 | 6.00 |
| Duke | 1 | 3 | 2 | 6 | 4.50 |
| Georgia Tech | 5 | 3 | 0 | 8 | 2.63 |
| North Carolina | 6 | 2 | 4 | 12 | 2.17 |
| Miami | 7 | 4 | 1 | 12 | 2.58 |
| Virginia | 4 | 3 | 1 | 8 | 2.00 |
| Florida State | 3 | 5 | 1 | 9 | 4.22 |
| Total | 41 | 32 | 13 | 86 | 3.06 |
So, from 2009 to 2010, the Virginia Tech offense went down in both yards percentage and points per drive. Yards percentage dipped from 59.3 percent to 55.0 percent. Points per drives fell from 3.28 points per drive to 3.06.
Against the six bowl teams they faced in ACC play, the Hokies managed to gain 51.3 percent of yards and scored 2.62 points per drive. Against the three non bowl teams, they gained 69.3 percent of yards and scored 4.43 points per drive.
What's important about the percentage of yards consumed stat is it goes a long way toward winning the field position battle. Tech was good on the defensive end (numbers tomorrow), which along with the offense consuming over 50 percent of the yards available led to a huge field position advantage for Tech. In non-garbage time possessions, the Hokies had 18 drives start in the opponents' territory, while the Tech defense had only three drives start in their territory.