I'm a Data Scientist by trade and thus I love looking at analytics to delve into how good certain football teams were/are. My last post here was in the preseason where I projected OSU to win the Natty based on a bunch of hodge-podge data points that were strangely predictive. You can find that post here:
This time, I created a table that compares each OSU football team since 2007 (that's as far back as the dataset goes) using the F+ analytic model that combines Bill Connelly's SP+ and Brian Fremeau's FEI models into one score. Here's a link to their model website if you're interested: https://www.bcftoys.com/2024-fplus
The tables compare the Total F+ ranking and ratings across every OSU team since 2007 as well as their Offense and Defense ranks/ratings as well. I also created a view that looks at the same by each of the last three OSU coaches on average. I also added two columns to the end of the table that tallies each team/coaches record against the FINAL F+ model's Top 10 and Top 25 for that season. I don't care much about these subjective "Top 25" games from AP Poll voters that don't watch football.
Here are the tables:
Ordered by Year: https://imgur.com/a/osu-f-ratings-EUWPim6
Ordered by F+ Total Rating: https://imgur.com/a/clSfjGN
Takeaways:
The 2019 and 2024 teams are a cut above the rest of the OSU teams in the modern era. I don't think this would surprise many OSU fans. The 2019 team was slightly better offensively while the 2024 team was slightly better defensively. I am personally saying the 2024 team is the best considering they won the National Championship and posted a ridiculous 6-1 record against Top 10 F+ teams.
In terms of specific units, the 2021 offense was the best while the 2023 defense was the best (this was a bit surprising).
When comparing coaches....man how lucky and spoiled have we been?
Day has produced the best teams between the three coaches but Meyer has the best Top 10 winning percentage. Tressel's numbers should be taken in context due to alot of his tenure not being included in this table. I did not put the 2011 season under any coach. Anybody that wanted Day fired after putting up consistent elite team every year have been out of their minds. Something people forget is that this is Day's first ever HC job. He is still learning on the job everyday. Meyer and Tressel has plenty of HC experience before getting to OSU.
For those claiming that this 2024 can't be the best team because they lost two games. My rebuttal to that would be to look at the 2012 team in this table. The 2012 team went undefeated but is the second worst OSU team in the modern era. Records in this sport lie all the time. The 2024 team played a gauntlet schedule. Records lie but overall performance does not.
