
ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥'s offense sputtered to just 18 points in 100 plays at Houston.
The ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ Wildcats ran 100 offensive plays against Houston. How rare is that? Extremely.
Know what’s even rarer? That ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ ran that many plays and scored only 18 points.
The outcome at TDECU Stadium spoke to how inefficiently the Wildcats’ offense has been operating. As ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ continues to prepare for this week’s game against Southern Utah, we’ll show you exactly how inefficient it has been — and explore some of the reasons the offense has stalled.

Editor’s note: Each week throughout the football season, we’ll take an in-depth look at the ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ Wildcats from a statistical perspective.
Let’s start with those 100 plays. The Houston game marked just the sixth time in Wildcats history that they have reached the century mark. All have come since 2012, when Rich Rodriguez became the coach and brought his version of the up-tempo spread to ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥.
ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ averaged 69.8 plays per game last season. The national leader in 2017 was Syracuse, at 85.6. One hundred plays is a lotta plays.
Each of the previous five times they hit or surpassed 100 — against South Carolina State and Stanford in 2012, and against Cal, USC and Boise State in 2014 — the Wildcats scored at least 26 points. Their average points per game: 41.8.
ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ averaged .403 points per play in those games. That’s just about in line with the national average for FBS teams last season: .412. So if they had what would be considered an average day against the Cougars, the Wildcats would have scored about 41 points.
They have been well below average through two games. ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ is averaging .243 points per play, which ranks in the bottom third of the country. And that includes the safety against Houston, which bumps that number up from .231.
(For the purpose of this piece, we’re not removing defensive or special-teams scores from the calculations. In most cases, over the course of a full season, they make a negligible impact on the numbers.)
That figure — .243 — represents a startling drop from last season. The 2017 Wildcats averaged .591 points per play, among the best ratios in the nation.
Asked Tuesday how many points he would expect ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ to score while running 100 plays, senior receiver Shawn Poindexter said: “Shoot. With the ability that our offense has … we could score anywhere in the 40s or 50s once everything gets clicking.â€
Poindexter then was asked what’s holding the offense back.
“There’s a lot of things that go into it,†he said. “I’m not going to go into details, but we’re going to get it cleaned up.â€
Here are some of the biggest factors: