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Stats breakdown for Texas vs. Mississippi State shows advanced measures love the Longhorns

Joe Cookby:Joe Cook•09/24/24•

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Kelvin Banks
Kelvin Banks (Will Gallagher/Inside Texas)

The No. 1 Texas Longhorns welcome the Mississippi State Bulldogs to Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium on Saturday for the Longhorns’ first-ever Southeastern Conference game.

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Here’s a comparison of Texas’ and Mississippi State’s standing nationally in certain conventional and advanced stats.

Standard Stats

Via UT game notes

College Football Insiders

A reminder: The Longhorns are great and near the nation’s best in almost every advanced statistical category save for defensive rush rate over expected.

What does that measure? According to CFB-Stats’ Parker Fleming, it looks at given down, distance, yard line, and game state, how often do you call designed runs relative to an average team?

Fleming has reiterated that RROE is not a measure of quality. It’s a measure of what opponents are doing against a defense.

For most of these pictures, Red = Bad and Blue = Good. That doesn’t apply for this particular stat, it just illustrates how often a team is calling a designed run relative to an average team.

The Longhorns have allowed 96 yards per game on the ground this year, and aside from a long touchdown run surrendered to UTSA, opponents are mostly running the ball to burn clock and get back to the locker room in one piece.

ESPN Football Power Index

Texas remains the No. 1 team in FPI with a rating of 29.1, a full 1.1 higher than Alabama’s 28.0 and almost 9.0 points higher than No. 7 Miami (Fla.). FPI’s projected win-loss record for the Longhorns is now 11.6-1.1.

Texas has a 26.9 percent chance of winning out, a 40.0 percent chance of winning the SEC, a 93.0 percent chance of making the playoff, a 38.1 percent chance of making the national championship game, and a 23.9 percent chance of winning the national title. All those percentages are up from last week.

Texas has the No. 5 strength of record and the No. 18 toughest remaining strength of schedule.

Mississippi State is No. 118 in FPI.

For reference, ULM is now No. 55.

ESPN SP+

The Longhorns check in at No. 1 in SP+, up from No. 3 last week. Texas is No. 2 in offensive SP+, No. 9 in defensive SP+, and No. 80 in special teams SP+. They did not change in the offensive and defensive rankings, but Jeff Banks‘ phase moved up 23 spots from last week.

Mississippi State is No. 77 in SP+. The Bulldogs are No. 66 in offensive SP+, No. 86 in defensive SP+, and No. 68 in special teams SP+.

FEI

Texas is the No. 3 team in FEI, same as last week. Texas is now No. 5 in offensive FEI and No. 4 in defensive FEI. The Longhorns are No. 17 in special teams FEI, down five spots from last week.

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Mississippi State is No. 92 in overall FEI. The Bulldogs are No. 74 in offensive FEI, No. 103 in defensive FEI, and No. 99 in special teams FEI.

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