Year	Rushing YPG	Avg. Oline size	Yards against top Competition*	Total Offense
2002	283.6	286.5	264 YPG 4.9 YPC	418.5 YPG
2003	212.5	291	176 YPG 4.3 YPC	368.9 YPG
2004	251.6	291.2		417.7 YPG
2005	272.4	292.5	266 YPG 2.3 YPC	388.9 YPG
2006	279.1	289.7	314.5 YPG 6.7 YPC	427.4 YPG
2007	297.2	290	322 YPG 6.9 YPC	456.2 YPG
2008	147.6	283.8	116 YPG 2.8 YPC	290.8 YPG
2009	186.2	291.1	95 YPG 2.7 YPC	384.5 YPG

* Top competition is teams with 10 wins or more 

 

So what am I trying to imply with this chart? I don’t really know, I went in with the assumption that would show that Rich Rodriguez’s offenses  had way smaller linemen at WVU and still  managed to run the ball down their opponents throats. This however is not the case, in 08 Our Line was the smallest a Rodriguez line had ever been, in 09 Our line jumped in size almost an average of 10 lbs and our rushing improved 40 YPG. I know that there has been a lot of talk this off season about getting our linemen bigger and stronger. I think the one thing that my chart doesn’t show is that the Big 10 has much better defenses than the Big East did. What really catches my eye is how poorly we have run the ball against top tier opponents. I realize that some of this is due to getting blown out and having to throw the ball, but boy we really need to improve this stat to be successful. In my next post I am going to compare Big East defenses to Big Ten defenses, see how big of a factor that plays on these numbers.

Bold Prediction: Our offensive line will average 10 lbs heavier next year and our YPG will go up to 240. We have to improve this against the OSU’s an Penn States of the world in order to be successful.