What is Akron Good at?

The Zips are on a dream run of doing the impossible. Why are they always the underdog, and what happens if they prove us wrong again?

The Akron Zips (7–5, 6–2) are 21.5-point underdogs to the Toledo Rockets (10–2, 7–1) for Saturday’s MAC Championship Game at Ford Field. The Rockets are a well-oiled machine primed to win a conference they’ve recently dominated. The Zips are a historically bad program riding a wave of luck and opportunism and in a normal year wouldn’t even be here.

We know two things about Akron. First, it’s been an underdog all year, favored in just five games. Second, it wins anyway. How does a team capable of a division championship repeatedly find itself facing long odds? How does it overcome them? What if it does it again?

Good Thing Akron Doesn’t Play Games on Paper

The Zips are underdogs frequently because on paper they look like underdogs. Akron is inefficient on offense — it ranks 119th in S&P+ success rate — and has a defense that gives up plenty of yards. The Zips are 10th and 11th in the MAC in scoring and total offense, respectively. At five yards per play the Zips are better than only Ball State and Kent State. They’ve seen the red zone a paltry 26 times.

Akron’s 3.3 yards per rush is worst in the conference, and it lacks a player in the top 10 in rushing yards per game. It’s not better through the air. The Zips average a pedestrian 6.7 yards per pass with a 55.7 percent completion rate.

The defensive picture is better but still lacking. While Akron is fourth in the MAC in scoring defense (24.8 points per game), it allows nearly five yards per carry, which probably explains why it’s third worst in the conference in first downs allowed by rush. Akron also allows its opposition to complete 61 percent of its passes, the worst rate in the conference.

Advanced stats aren’t kinder. The Zips rank 110th and 73rd in offensive and defensive S&P+, respectively, and rank in the triple digits in success rate on both sides of the ball.

But Akron still wins. Akron is unusual.

Never Tell Me the Odds

Much of the story on paper isn’t great for Akron, but there’s evidence of things it does well that explains its luck. Akron wins three ways: turnovers, red zone play, and making/preventing explosive plays.

If you want to tilt the odds in your favor the turnover margin is a great place to start. The Zips have 22 takeaways, good for plus-seven on the season. Most of that damage came through the air, stealing 17 passes for interceptions. The turnover margin is a big reason Akron soared while Ohio sunk — the Bobcats sit at minus-four for the year.

Noted earlier was Akron’s fourth-best scoring defense. Despite allowing a ton of yards, they keep the score low by elevating their play in sections of the field opponents traditionally score in. When teams get into the red zone against the Zips (39 trips in 2017) they come away with points just under 77 percent of the time. That’s fourth-lowest in the conference. Also, 27 percent of Akron’s takeaways came in the red zone. If the Zips open the door, they usually slam it shut.

The offensive play in the red zone looks bad at first glance — 20 scores in 26 trips — but there’s a catch. Seventeen of those 20 scores are touchdowns, good for a 65 percent touchdown rate in the red zone. That’s tied with Miami for second in the conference. Akron makes the most of its opportunities.

Efficiency is key. If you can’t be efficient you better make big plays and prevent them. Akron ranks 56th in FBS in isolated points per play (isoPPP), which measures the expected points generated by successful plays. The Zips rank 33rd by this measure on defense, and are also pretty good at limiting opponents’ points per trip inside the 40 yard line (32nd in FBS).

Akron bends not breaks on defense, breaks not bends on offense. By making the most of trips to the opponent’s end of the field while restricting the opponent’s effectiveness in their own, the Zips eliminate some of the losses/gains made with starting field position. In other words, when things are going right Akron can score from anywhere — you can’t.

What if Akron Does it Again?

Aside from the simple fact that Akron would be MAC champions with a win Saturday, the upset would be a major development in the conference. First it would deny Toledo, one of the MAC’s top programs, the championship it seems to never be able to reach. Second, it raises the bar for an Akron program that shouldn’t have come so far just yet.

Akron is, no matter how you look at it, not a “great” football team. A win Saturday pushes the imagination to conjure up what exactly a great Akron team might be capable of. I’m sure the folks in the Rubber City have some ideas. Beyond that, Akron will have laid the blueprint for other incomplete programs on the rise in the East to find success a year or two ahead of schedule, like Buffalo or Bowling Green. It could make for some ugly football but some truly random results.

An Akron win solidifies the MAC brand of ultimate parity it has eagerly built over the years. The opportunistic Zips could upend everything we thought we knew about the MAC and become the face of a conference where anything can happen.