How the Lou Groza Award Finalists Stack Up

About a month ago, Daniel Carlson and 19 others were named Lou Groza Award semi-finalists, the award for the NCAA's best place kicker. To help compare the kickers, the Lou Groza Award website provides some basic kicking stats: field goals made and attempted, a breakdown of those field goals from certain distances, extra points, etc. All well and good, but what if there was single number to rate and compare those kickers?

I made an attempt at that a few weeks ago. Using field goal attempts since 2005 (data from fbsdrivestats.com), I was able to find out just how many points an average field goal attempt is worth from a given distance. You can read more about it here, but the quick summary is this.

Obviously the further the field goal attempt, the less likely it is to be made. All 18-yard field goals (basically from the one-yard-line) since 2005 averaged 2.90 points. All 28-yard field goals averaged 2.53 points. And all 50-yard field goals averaged 1.38 points. The actual averages are a little noisy for shorter field goals and sample size is a problem for the longer ones, so instead, I'm now using numbers given by the trend line shown on the image above to smooth it out a bit.

Finally, to measure an individual kick, just compare what happened (0 or 3 points) to what happens on average. Make an 18-yard field goal? That's worth 0.10 points over average. Miss it? That's 2.9 points worse than average. Add all the makes and misses together and you get total points over average.

Now that the regular season is over and the Lou Groza is down to three finalists, let's see how they measure up.

Just looking at total points over average, Auburn's Daniel Carlson leads the way. He's put 12.13 more points on the score board than an average place kicker would have. UCLA's Ka'imi Fairbairn has contributed nearly one full point less this season, but with three fewer attempts, he actually holds the edge in points over average per attempt. Memphis' Jake Elliot has had a great year but is short of the other finalists in both measures.

So, in my humble opinion, the award is down to Carlson and Fairbairn, and with a little touch of homerism, I'm going with Carlson. Welp, that's it! War Eagle! See you next ti... WAIT!

The finalists were announced after week 12, before the last two weeks of the season? Each of these finalists had another game? Some other semi-finalists had two!?!?

After being named finalists, Carlson went 2/3 in the Iron Bowl, Fairbairn went 0/1 against USC, and Elliot didn't even have an attempt, though he did kick 9(!) extra points, which I haven't taken into consideration. The numbers above reflect these games, but what about the other semi-finalists? How do they measure up to the three finalists now that the regular season is over?

Some, like LSU's Trent Domingue, never had enough attempts to show whether they were on a lucky streak or were truly better than the rest. Domingue in particular had only missed one attempt when the finalists were announced, but he had only 12 attempts. He then went 2/5 the next week. Good call, Lou Groza voting committee.

There are definitely some snubs, though. Two kickers earned more points over average this season than Carlson, Utah's Andy Phillips and Boise State's Tyler Rausa. Rausa just beat Carlson with 12.36 points over average, but Phillips beat everyone by at least two whole points with 14.59 points over average.

The rest of the top nine according to total points over average are shown below.

* = Lou Groza Award Finalist

Clemson's Greg Huegel had a great season, finishing just under Carlson. As a team, Clemson did edge out Auburn, but one field goal was kicked by senior and 2014 Lou Groza Award semi-finalist Ammon Lakip, who effectively lost his job after being suspended for an arrest over the summer. The numbers above are for Huegel alone.

Appalachian State's Zach Matics might be the best kicker in the country this year. He earned 0.83 points more than an average kicker would per attempt, nearly double many others on this list. But he had only 14 attempts, barely more than one per game. As much as the Lou Groza Award rewards quality, it also rewards quantity and Matics just didn't have enough opportunities.

Rounding out the top nine are North Carolina's Nick Weiler and Duke's Ross Martin at number 7 and 8 before the last finalist, Elliott, comes in at number 9. Keep in mind that Clemson and North Carolina had an extra game, too, but like I said, quality and quantity count.

So, if I had a vote and could vote for anyone, finalist or not, I would have to vote for Andy Phillips, who ranks first is total points over average and third in points over average per attempt. (Western Kentucky's Garrett Schwettman is second, but with only 15 attempts this year, he ranks only 15th in total points over average.)

Now, to the data visualization!

This represents every field goal attempt by each of the top nine kickers according to total points over average. Greens were made. Reds were missed. The size of the circle represents how much good or bad it did to that player's numbers. Click here for a larger version or click here for an interactive version of each chart. If you want to see the chart for another team, let me know in the comments and I'll make it.

Finally, here is a table with the numbers for all 128 teams in the FBS. It now includes all games against FCS teams, but it does not separate different kickers for the same team. These are team-wide numbers, no matter how many kickers attempted field goals for them. That's why Clemson ranks ahead of Boise State and Auburn in the table below, but not in the individual numbers above.