Evans Hall, Cal Football Stats & Analysis: Introducing the Nando's Heat Scale

If you ever find yourself near a Nando's Peri Peri, give it a shot

Nando’s Peri Peri chicken is a South African chain that has become a British staple fast casual joint and has expanded into the East Coast USA. Their signature chicken is marinated with peri-peri chili to give it the signature heat that can be measured with the following scale.

Currently the offense was operating on extra mild, basically the flavor profile for folks who think water is spicy. Fernando Mendoza brought the level up to mild if not medium levels for stretches of the game. The defense though… water might be too spicy for them.

In the previous 5 weeks I talked about the issue with the offense being off schedule on early downs leading to a high amount of 3rd downs attempted. We see here that against a top 25 ranked defense in CFB we were able to match if not exceeded some metrics that OSU has put up before meeting us.

What is encouraging is that we avoided 3rd downs by converting a large amount of runs on 2nd and <10. Which is a product of an efficient 1st down game by the rushing and passing offense. Note that we did not find ourselves too often behind schedule with negative plays.

On the PPA scale on down and distance, we have been playing up to if not over expectations against a high quality OSU squad. 3rd down passing leaves something to desire with 50% of the plays being negative in PPA but still a lower rate than OSU has been performing.

The run game remains incredibly explosive and efficient across the board, and it comes down to two dudes, Ott and Ifanse, and their guys on the OL.

Both of them are complementary players on the field. Ifanse is the go to guy when you need short yardage, but Ott totes the ball on early downs and gets more passing targets than Ifanse. Something worth noting that besides losing the extreme top-end of the run gains, Ifanse and Ott are roughly comparable on the ground on 2nd and 3rd downs.

We’re one of the most average offenses in the nation. With a lot of plays we’re not as effective in point making as others, and I presume it is because of the amount of running plays we run per game, we’re 14th in the nation in rushing attempts, you know like an average Air raid team.

We got our assess kicked on defense, especially on passing 1st and 3rd downs. Not much to say, OSU performed above expectations against our defense. That’s it, we just got our assess handed to us by OSU’s offense.

We’re such a pillowcase of a defense right now lol. That’s it.