Morning Distribution for Tuesday, November 1, 2022

A [FiveThirtyEight]( email [Morning Distribution]( Tuesday, November 1, 2022 Your daily briefing from FiveThirtyEight --------------------------------------------------------------- The Morning Story [Arizona State v USC]( [Short Passes Are All The Rage In College Football This Year]( By [Josh Planos]( On its surface, [last month’s shootout]( between the Oklahoma State Cowboys and Texas Tech Red Raiders seemed to offer little insight into the broader trends of where college football is headed. Yes, each side produced more than 30 points and 430 yards of total offense in front of a [sellout crowd]( at Boone Pickens Stadium, with quarterbacks Spencer Sanders and Behren Morton combining for [107 throws](. But offensive explosions like this are a dime-a-dozen in the Big 12, particularly when the Cowboys and Red Raiders link up. What was notable, however, were the types of plays that ignited the offensive fireworks. In the playoff era, only about 1-in-4 passes have targeted receivers either at or behind the line of scrimmage. This makes intuitive sense; the point is to move the ball down the field, so throwing it backward would seem to be less than optimal. But in that October game, Texas Tech and Oklahoma State each threw the ball zero or fewer yards downfield on more than 57 percent of their passes, both among the highest single-game rates measured since 2014. The Red Raiders attempted 41 passes that traveled no more than 2 yards through the air — the highest such total produced by any team in any game in the playoff era — while the Cowboys attempted 29, tied for the 18th-most. (For context, the average Football Bowl Subdivision team this season has thrown 32 times per game, period, across all distances.) [Read more]( --------------------------------------------------------------- Weekly Listen [Play]( [Politics Podcast: The Pennsylvania Senate Race Is On A Knife’s Edge]( [FiveThirtyEight] [View in browser]( [ABC News]( [Unsubscribe]( Our mailing address: FiveThirtyEight, 47 West 66th Street, New York, NY 10023.