How TCR will be grading Illinois Football in 2023

I enjoy visualizations. Putting numbers to what we see happen in our day-to-day lives is helps me understand things better. Adding the context behind the numbers — I think — helps drive home a point.

I want to show Illinois through numbers for each game this year. It’s not just the stats but a deeper analysis of what made Illinois win or lose the game. For each game this year, I will dive into the qualitative portion of the stats, but I want to explain the quantitative side for today. I want to share what these charts mean, and how I will interpret them moving forward.

So here we go.

Chart 1: Points + Cumulative EPA

As I explained last week, cumulative EPA is the expected points added each play of the game. A positive EPA means that the play will gain you points, a negative EPA means the play will take points away.

I chose to add all the EPA from each play to show performance over the 150-some plays throughout a game — both on offense and defense. I will differentiate this…