Hidden Turnovers: The Unofficial Stat That Wins Games

If you have read our first couple of blog posts you may have caught reference to a term we refer to as Hidden Turnovers. We believe hidden turnovers are so important and so under-emphasized in the media and in television broadcasts that we wanted to craft a dedicated blog post to them. You may have noticed our slogan at the top of this website – your official source for unofficial college football stats. Well, hidden turnovers may be the most important unofficial stat in college football. 

What is a hidden turnover? There are plays, or series of plays in that occur throughout a season that are just as meaningful, and impactful as turnovers, but don’t get reported as turnovers. We focus on three of these types of events. The first is a 3 & out – where the offense fails to achieve a first down in three plays, and punts on fourth down. This does not get reported as a turnover in the box score, but how different is this than an interception on the 6th play of a drive that the defense recovers at their own 30 yard line... not much. A 3 & out has the added benefit of keeping the defense off the field, and when a defense is able to string together multiple 3 & outs in a half they can generate tremendous momentum.  

The second type of hidden turnover we consider is failed 4th down conversions, or a turnover on downs. Again, this does not get reported in the box score as a turnover, but that’s exactly what it is – why else would they call it a turnover on downs? The third type of hidden turnover is a missed field goal.  

Now that we’re clear on what hidden turnovers are you may be asking yourself “are they important?” You can bet your Buckeyes tickets they are! In order to see just how important they are, we evaluated every game involving FBS teams last season, and calculated how many times the team that won the turnover battle won the game.  We performed the same analysis for hidden turnovers.  

In the 910 games we evaluated the team that won the turnover battle also won 515 times. So if a team won the turnover battle they had a 57 percent likelihood of also winning the game. When we filter this down to the 361 games involving 2 Power 5 (RIP) teams this percentage rises to about 60 percent (217 out of 361 games).  

Now let’s do the same thing for hidden turnovers. Last season the team that won the hidden turnover battle won 637 games, or had a 70 percent chance of victory (241 of 361 games). When we look only at Power 5 vs Power 5 teams the likelihood was almost 67 percent. Here’s the really interesting part – in 113 of the 241 games won by the hidden turnover champ the winning team lost the turnover battle.  

We also looked at scoring margin in these games, and the results were the same. In the games where the plus turnover margin team won the game the average margin of victory was 19.6 points, versus a margin of 16.0 points when the plus turnover margin team lost the game. That’s a difference of about 3.6 points – the average point value of winning the turnover margin in 2023.  

This same analysis for hidden turnover margin results in a scoring margin difference of 10.5 points (21.2 point margin when plus hidden TO team wins – 10.6 point margin when plus hidden TO team loses). So on average in 2023, winning the hidden turnover battle was 3.0 times more valuable than winning the turnover battle. 

Why are hidden turnovers so important? We believe there are 2 reasons. First, hidden turovers are very common. Last season we estimated over 10,000 of them. Turnovers, on the other hand, are comparatively rare - there were less than 4,000 last season. So ask yourself this question... Is it better to dominate a very common statistic, or a less common statistic. Teams that excel at getting off the field and owning the line of scrimmage, especially in critical situations have more opportunities to affect the game. The second reason is that turnovers are unpredictable and often times lucky. An in interception that slips through a receivers hands first... a fumble where a defender spears the ball with the crown of his helmet (a play that would be called a penalty if his helmet hits anything but the ball). Give me a defense that is built to get off the field over one that is built to nab interceptions all day long!