LITTLE CASESARS BOWL Tuesday, December 27th @ 4:30 p.m. Click on the bowl logo for MORE info!!!!

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Today’s blog will continue with my series of analyzing the most/least improved units over the last 20 years. Each day this week I will have a new offensive or defensive statistical category to examine and today I will breakdown total defensive yards.

There are many factors that contribute to a significant change in total defense. First, a team may see a significant improvement if they return a bunch of experienced starters from a team that was relatively inexperienced the year before. Naturally a team that loses a bunch of starters especially their star players from an experienced team will usually see a drop off in total defense. Read more…

Today’s blog will continue with my series of analyzing the most/leas improved units over the last 20 years. Each day this week I will have a new offensive or defensive statistical category to examine and today I will breakdown total defensive yards.

There are many factors that contribute to a significant change in pass defense. First, a team may see significant improvement if they return a bunch of experienced starters especially in the defensive backfield. Naturally a team that loses a bunch of starters especially their cornerbacks and safeties could see a significant drop in pass defense. Read more…

I have been publishing a Most Improved Teams list since 1999 and the list hit a home run that very first year. I pegged Hawaii as my #1 Most Improved Team and they were coming off an 0-12 record in 1998. The then “Rainbow Warriors” simply set an NCAA record for largest improvement ever by going to 9-4 in 1999!

This year there are 19 teams on my Most Improved List and these are all teams that had losing records last year but ones I believe will be bowl eligible this year. Last season I had 22 teams on the list and 12 of them were bowl eligible at the end of the year! Do you think it is easy picking teams with losing records that will have a winning record the next year? 

I went back to 1992 and there have been 918 teams that had a losing season. Of those 918 teams only 261 had a winning record the next year which is 28.4%. That means if a team is coming off a losing season there is over a 70% chance that they will have another losing record the next year!

Over the last eight years 96 of the teams that have made my Most Improved List have been bowl eligible the next year. In that same eight-year span there have been 424 teams with a losing record and of those 424 only 111 have gone onto a winning record the next season (26.2%). Now you do the math here but as you can see very few teams go from a losing record to a bowl the next year if they are not on my Most Improved list. Read more…

Turnovers can have a huge impact on games and on a team’s season. They can also lead to many misleading final scores. During the season I list all of the previous week’s misleading final scores on PhilSteele.com in my Monday Daily Blog. By reading about them each week you can uncover some underrated and overrated teams throughout the season.

Here are a couple of examples from last year. Iowa St benefitted from +8 in TO’s vs Nebraska and pulled out a 9-7 win. Nebraska turned it over 4 times inside the 5 yard line and lost despite a 362-239 yard edge. The next 2 weeks Iowa St was overrated and they lost by a combined 69-18 vs Texas A&M and Oklahoma St despite only being slight underdogs in each.

Florida St appeared to pummel BYU 54-28 on the road but they only had a 512-475 yard edge as they benefitted from +5 in TO’s. The next week FSU entered the Top 25 but lost to USF at home as a 2 TD favorite 17-7 and BYU bounced back with a 42-23 whipping of Colorado St.

Turnovers can not only make a difference in a game but can make the difference between a winning and losing season. Read more…