Wondering what happened to the big scores in recent years? The days of marching up and down the field and racking up 63 points against teams? Well, in a word, analytics.

The Miami-Ohio State game was a microcosm of several trends in a sport that is evolving with analytics, technology, longer seasons and closer ties to the NFL. Offenses are as efficient as ever: FBS teams averaged 2.24 points per drive in 2025, the most of the last decade. But overall scoring is down nearly 8% since 2016, from 28.4 offensive points per game to 26.2. Why? Because teams are averaging 7% more time between plays and 11% fewer drives per game.

Clock rules changes, longer seasons, slower offensive tempo and a surprising factor — fourth-down success — have converged to produce longer, slower drives. And in 2025, it gave even a hypertalented offense such as Ohio State’s less time and fewer opportunities to dig out of holes.

“It comes down to efficiency,” Ohio State coach Ryan Day told ESPN. “I remember back when we used to run no-huddle all the time, and [mentor Chip Kelly] and I used to always talk about, ‘When you’re running 85 plays, you don’t have to be as efficient because you get 85 calls.’ It was all signal-based. You didn’t have coach-to-player communication, and the seasons were shorter. Now, the seasons are longer, roster-building is different, maybe we’re not going to have as much depth as we used to have. All those things come into play.”

The article goes on to explain tempo changes, the two minute timeouts, and increases in 4th down attempts (it wasn’t just Kirby) has lead to offensive coordinators changing their schemes and sequencing to include 4th down attempts.

While the trend has lead to fewer offensive drives (nearly two fewer per game), the points per game has decreased by nearly a point only, and plays per game has only decreased by about four.

what does it mean? Well, less back and forth possessions, unless both teams are highly efficient on offense like the Georgia-Ole Miss game during last year’s regular season.

Also, it means that the third down strategy may be changing, which is one of the more frustrating aspects of Bono’s offensive playcalling. What we see as giving up on the first down might actually be setting it up for a fourth down attempt, instead. With the average 4th down attempt rate increasing nearly 10% in the study, it’s easy to see that OC’s in the day of analytics and Moneyball are thinking opposite of the average fan on a third down attempt.

Dammit, Moneyball. That just makes things all the more frustrating.