With the 2011 regular season in the rear view — how hard is that to believe — we wanted to look back at some of our favorite stats to see who did what and who did it best this fall. Here we’ll look at a stat we call Quick Strike Offense.
While Quick Strike Offense has the word “offense” right there in the title — because it has to do with scoring — it’s actually a measure of a whole team’s ability to score. Good special teams units and strong defenses aid an offense in its pursuit of points. So what you’ll find below is a list from best to worst of each SEC team’s touchdowns-to-offensive snaps ratio. The lower the ratio of plays to touchdowns, the easier time the team had scoring.
Two teams in the league scored a touchdown once every 15 offensive snaps. Three others ran more than 40 plays between TDs. Below… the 2011 Quick Strike rankings (conference games only, including SEC Championship Game):
| School (SEC Record) | Touchdowns | Plays | Plays/TD |
| LSU (9-0) | 40 | 562 | 14.1 |
| Alabama (7-1) | 34 | 522 | 15.4 |
| Arkansas (6-2) | 32 | 516 | 16.1 |
| S. Carolina (6-2) | 28 | 551 | 19.7 |
| Vanderbilt (2-6) | 23 | 507 | 22.0 |
| Georgia (7-2) | 27 | 675 | 25.0 |
| Auburn (4-4) | 20 | 513 | 25.7 |
| Florida (3-5) | 17 | 470 | 27.6 |
| Miss. State (2-6) | 17 | 526 | 30.9 |
| Tennessee (1-7) | 11 | 492 | 44.7 |
| Ole Miss (0-8) | 11 | 515 | 46.8 |
| Kentucky (2-6) | 10 | 513 | 51.3 |
Notes:
* LSU was solid on offense, but a suffocating defense and a big play special teams unit help making scoring easy. Who would have thought going into the season that the Tigers would score touchdowns every 14 plays?
* The top four teams in the league were a combined 28-5 in SEC contests. Toss in #6 Georgia and that record goes to 35-7. But Vanderbilt — with its 2-6 league record — is clearly the exception to the rule. The Commodores could score touchdowns, but they hit only two field goals all season in SEC play.
* The bottom four teams in this category were a combined 5-27 in league games. Poor Kentucky — minus Randall Cobb and a quality quarterback for much of the year — managed a touchdown just once every 51 plays in SEC contests.
[...] in a series of year-end stat analysis pieces. Our look at Quick Strike Offenses can be found here. Now we go in the opposite direction. Below are our rankings for a stat we call Quick Sand [...]