Gamecocks Versus Volunteers

Vol Passing Attack Is A Serious Threat

The Gamecocks play the University of Tennessee Volunteers this coming Saturday night (Halloween) in Knoxville, Tennessee. This post looks at some of the statistics generated by the Volunteer offense, and produces the data in two interesting graphs.

At first blush, most college football fans acknowledge the Volunteer offense because of its bruising running game. However, the two graphs below illustrate a little known fact . . . the Volunteers have a very dangerous passing attack, an attack that is producing significantly more yardage than the running game.

On October 10, 2009, the Georgia Bulldogs discovered this fact first hand in a 45-19 Volunteer blowout victory. The Vols passed for 310 yards and four touchdowns against the Georgia pass defense.

Below are two graphs. They take a bit of focus because there are data on both of the Y axis. First the rushing graph.

The first graph shows the Volunteer offensive yardage (orange line) cross-referenced against the opponent's relevant NCAA FBS defensive rank shown by the bars.



Until it was held to just 76 yards rushing against the Alabama run defense, the Volunteer offense averaged a modest 144 yards per game against some pretty average run defenses. Average would be a fair way to describe the Gamecock run defense. (The Gamecock rushing defense is currently ranked 70th nationally.)

The next graph shows the Volunteer passing yardage. The Volunteer offense has thrown the ball well against some highly ranked passing defenses.

The Gamecock pass defense is ranked 3d nationally. Only the Florida (2) pass defense among the past Volunteer opponents is more highly ranked.

It will be interesting to see if the Gamecocks defense can play as well against the pass as did UCLA (ranked 25) and Florida early in the 2009 season. Both of those pass defenses held the Volunteers to only 93 yards. However, nobody has approached any level of defensive containment of the Volunteer passing attack recently. It generated 267 yards per game on average over the last four contests . . . including a 265-yard game against a very stout Alabama Crimson Tide defense.

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