Nebraska and Matt Rhule elo ratings – what to expect

Hey everyone, I thought I would do another elo post and update the Matt Rhule stats from last year.

What is elo? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elo_rating_system

Teams gain or lose elo depending on how well they do in their previous games. And the difference between two teams elo ratings can be used a predictor for the outcome. Two teams at 1500-1500 should each win 50% of the time, and the number increases depending on the gap between the two teams elo ratings.

The elo used for CFB data comes from https://collegefootballdata.com/ which is run by a mod on r/cfb u/BlueScar, also a Michigan mod and took over and ran the Risk 2.0 game.

The elo ratings are assigned all the way back to the first games in the dataset, at the start of this millenium, Y2K, 2000. I’m not going to post the table for all the elos for Nebraska but here’s an average for each year, the min and max for that year, who the coach was and what rank that season was in the last 25 years.

https://preview.redd.it/c9fva1vtu6td1.png?width=611&format=png&auto=webp&s=c15c788d948aa48aa917995e243d7ea2d92aa37e

Here’s how each coach has done historically and up to last week post Purdue.

https://preview.redd.it/pg6xi6kdu6td1.png?width=306&format=png&auto=webp&s=0cd54126e2c6556789f44f79ddc51981e4cb5474

I think the fanbase has a fairly good read on these numbers although still probably give Frost too much credit over Riley, although Riley’s best years were the two years immediately following Pelini’s departure followed by a terrible year, ranked 24^th. Frost comes in 2018 on the rebuild and has our worst year in the table, but then his next few seasons they just can’t quite climb out of the hole. In 2021 the best 3-9 team in the country year, was actually a huge anomaly, that was the 14^th best season we’ve had since 2000, and easily Frost’s best. I also can’t find any other teams win a 3-9 record anywhere near an average of 1654 elo.

Anyways, with the coaching history out of the way for Nebraska let’s do a deeper dive into what this looks like for the now HC Matt Rhule.

I took the liberty dividing wins and losses into three categories depending on elo rating. Wins were considered good if we beat a team (read upset, even if small) that had a higher elo rating than Nebraska. Wins or losses were neutral if the expected outcome matched the elo rating difference, ie if we beat a team we were favored against that’s neutral and if we lost to a team that is favored against us, also neutral. Losses were bad if we lost to a team with worse elo than us, similar to the wins this includes very small differences (it doesn’t end up mattering a ton and we can visually filter them out)

So, what does the data look like? I’m not going to put in the entire table for Rhule’s 8.5yrs of HC experience, so I will filter each of the three categories so we can have a look, starting with the losses. The color code denotes which team he was coaching at the time: Silver for Temple, Green for Baylor and Red for Nebraska. Elo 1 is a teams elo before the game, and elo 2 is a teams elo following the game.

https://preview.redd.it/1w5np92fu6td1.png?width=975&format=png&auto=webp&s=d1f5a3e2b66150d704c75cfa5079eaf7af6b4aba

In total Matt Rhule has 13 bad losses over his 8.5 years of HC experience (4 with Temple, 3 with Baylor, 1.5 with Neb). 9 of those 13 bad losses came in his first year at each program (the rebuild). He has 4 total bad losses outside of year 1s which is insanely consistent, think about how many teams were upset this week alone – Alabama, Tennessee, Missouri, Michigan, USC. I will caveat this with, it’s a lot easier to have bad losses when every game is a should-win, but it’s still remarkable. His three bad losses with us were Colorado who took 92 points from us last season and we were 326 points above, Sparty which probably should have been our 6^th win, and this year we were 55points up on Illinois and lost 18 to them. When he was at Baylor he didn’t have a single bad loss after week 3 of year 1.

Now, let’s look at good wins.

https://preview.redd.it/48q6116gu6td1.png?width=975&format=png&auto=webp&s=f570222abebbedc91cc467e14a6788389120a2da

Matt Rhule has 17 good wins since his HC career started. His best win was Year 2 Baylor when they upset Oklahoma State. Last year for us we beat Illinois, and were ever so slightly behind Purdue when we beat them as well. Even though they were smallish good wins, other than the one in his first year at Temple, Rhule has had none in his year 1s, so hopefully that’s a good sign. In all honesty, we don’t have a truly good win like we saw at Baylor as of yet but, based on his history they’re coming. In year 2s, Rhule has had 5 upsets and in year 3s he’s had 7 upsets, he only has 2 in year 4s, but his only school where he stayed until year 4 thus far was Temple so it’s a sample size of 1 season.

So where are we in terms of progress? Well Matt Rhule’s average Year1s are 1450 elo, last year he had us over 1486. His year twos are only a slight improvement at 1493 elo, this year we are sitting at 1583. And his year 3s are where he really takes off, 1646 average which on the table above would be good for 15^th.

https://preview.redd.it/5gww810iu6td1.png?width=308&format=png&auto=webp&s=5c657e651862269be555bb7e4d24806a1883b9f2

Lastly, let’s take a look at our schedule thus far and what’s remaining. This is our elo week to week as compared to the team we are playing. The opposition elo is a snap shot to that particular week. Week one was an expected and convincing win over UTEP, followed by another two over Colorado and Northern Iowa. The Illinois loss as talked about above was a ‘bad’ loss from an elo perspective. Purdue and Rutgers were both expected wins, however Rutgers is fairly close elo wise.

What’s left? Well it doesn’t look great. We are favored against UCLA but at this point are lower than every remaining team on the schedule. This means that we will need some Year 2 Matt Rhule magic to pull off some upsets. If Matt Rhule’s consistency stays true we should be bowling post UCLA for sure, otherwise Iowa is actually the next lowest elo team remaining.

https://preview.redd.it/796n3o0ku6td1.png?width=858&format=png&auto=webp&s=777e5abf9ad6000254394e9b1d8a6daa42abe1e5

A couple of notes here to end the post. Colorado is rising, which makes our win look better. They upset Baylor (elo wise) and upset UCF. Their win over UCF moved them up to 1479 elo and they were underdogs of 274 points in that game. It’s possible Illinois climbs too, but right now after their PSU loss and bye week they’re still sitting at 1551 elo. Purdue is down to 1214, which is only 20 points above UTEP. Illiniois has Purdue, Minnesota, Sparty, Rutgers and Northwestern that they should be favored against. Rutgers also has a chance to climb a bit, they should be favored against UCLA, possibly Minnesota, and Michigan State. So, while some of our wins and our loss don’t seem all that impressive now, in hindsight it may show that we did fairly well against some tough competition.