Jon Dwyer vs. Darren Evans

2:53 PM Major apologies for the Formatting FAIL this morning. Didn't see it until this afternoon.

HT to F4H at Gobber Country for initializing this:

Is Jonathan Dwyer an engineer's dream athlete?

F4H wanted to look at the efficiency yards of Jon Dwyer vs. Darren Evans and see who seemed to be the most efficient running back for his respective teams. Efficiency stats were taken strictly from the conference games. OOC games are outliers and are tossed out.

F4H will highlight Evans' load of work being completed in the Red Zone while the majority of Dwyer's runs, carries, and touchdowns come from beyond the 20-yard line. Evans scored all 11 of his touchdowns from the Red Zone while Dwyer only scored 2 of his 12 touchdowns within the same boundaries. But as all Tech fans know, the Jackets strike quick and fast. They get long touchdown runs from the open field and very few Red Zone attempts, while the Hokies had the most conference Red Zone attempts (34). So this discussion is open to some subjective conclusions.

To calculate a player's efficiency simply take your opponent's yards-per-carry (YPC) without sacks and multiply by number of carries against that specific opponent. These are your Expected Yards. Then divide the player's actual yards in the game by the expected yards and you have your efficiency.

When it comes to efficiency against conference opponents, Dwyer dominates.

Evans vs. Dwyer: ACC Efficiency

Name	OppYPC	Rush	ExYds	Yards	Eff
Evans	4.3	184	796.4	852	1.070
Dwyer	4.3	134	580.1	905	1.560

Granted, efficiency stats are not 100% solid to look at, especially when you are using them for football simply because there are so many outside factors that you can't take into account such as injuries both directly and indirectly affecting other players. Plus, numbers can be skewed in various directions when comparing to Georgia Tech simply because of the unique offense we run that runs so many backs (Evans ran the ball 50 more times in conference compared to Dwyer) But they can be a good discussion point. Diesel was held under his expected yards 1 time while Evans was held under his expected yards 3 times.

I'll let F4H conclude:

Dwyer's efficiency is astronomical. My guess is you'd be hard-pressed to find a running back from a BCS school who did better against his conference opponents than Dwyer did. Evans is a good back who fits into Virginia Tech's offense as well as Dwyer fits into Georgia Tech's. However, I give the edge to Dwyer for the conference's best running back.

If you like more of theses statistical viewpoints, later this week we'll take a look at GT's defensive efficiencies.