Five Factor Tracker Week 2 Review: Tennessee vs. Austin Peay

 [There are five factors that highly correlate to winning in college football: finishing drives, efficiency, explosiveness, field position, and turnovers. The 5 Factor Tracker attempts to record Tennessee's relative success or failure in these categories throughout the season.]

Tennessee Offense vs. 2023 Opponents' Defense

Notes: 

• Despite Saturday's showing, UT remains among the top teams in each of these categories other than explosiveness. More on this in the next section. 
• Interesting how UT's number match up with Florida's. More on that later this week. 
• A week after A&M being the only team on either chart to have no red, this week they barely have any green (at least on defense). Looks like Jimbo gonna Jimbo after all. 
• oh look georiga's defense is really good again neat

Tennessee Offense vs. Austin Peay

This reflects each team's totals through the first two games. If you're interested in how the two teams fared hear to head in advanced stats, check out the advanced box score on collegefootballdata.com. I won't be updating APSU's numbers after this week because it has to be done by hand rather than imported. 

Tennessee kicked too dang many field goals on Saturday, which dropped the Vols' PPO by nearly a point and a half, and improved the Govs defensive PPO by about as much. Had UT continued the robust 6.13 PPO they carried into the game, you and I would have felt a lot better about the outcome. Tennessee still created plenty of scoring opportunities (7) Saturday, but I believe Josh Heupel saw his QB and WR out of sync, and paired with an inconsistent (to put it gently) officiating crew, decided he'd just take the points each trip and put the Govs down 3 points at a time if need be. 

The only other concern is explosiveness. Tennessee's success rate is really good--an abysmal 1st quarter Saturday notwithstanding. The Vols are staying on schedule and ahead of the chains, but not by a lot. There's just not a bunch of PPA being added on those successful plays. Trust your eyes on this one; if the Vols continue to rely on screen pass after screen pass, that number will likely stay low. It will jump up when you start seeing downfield passes completed. 

Tennessee Defense vs 2023 Opponents' Offense

Thoughts: 

• Everyone's down on Bama's offense after the Texas loss, but most of the numbers look good if they ever start creating scoring opportunities.
• Seems like a lot of red on this chart--is offense overall down this year or are offenses just struggling to get in sync so far?
• oh look georiga's offense is really good again neat

Tennessee Defense vs. Austin Peay

Tennessee's defense played really well again this week. I know some will say that even 13 points is too much to give Austin Peay, and that the Govs' QB ran wild all night. But the Vols are still giving up very few PPO and holding teams to a low success rate. And the havoc plays are outstanding. The number you see on the chart is still not accurate--figuring by hand instead of CFDB's data I've got the Vols at 35.3%. Tennessee leads the nation in TFLs per game, sacks per game, total sacks, and is second nationally in total TFLs. Aaron Beasley leads FBS with 6 TFLs. CRY HAVOC, indeed. 

Considering the shifts and tricks APSU was using offensively, plus the fact that having the ball hit you in the back is now pass interference apparently? (but only if you're in a Tennessee jersey, of course), the Vols' defense did a fantastic job of limiting Austin Peay's effectiveness overall.