Stats & Analysis

FOGO: Face off – Generate Offense


In my inaugural piece for US Lacrosse Magazine, I noted that 2022 has been a year of aggressive FOGOs. I mentioned the point totals that faceoff specialists have put up, which are the highest since the 2017 season.

It’s early, but it’s an interesting trend. In previous years, we’ve heard criticism of the faceoff-get-off model, where FOGOs have become so specialized that they can’t do anything but faceoff. So does this year signal a reversal of the trend? Are we heading back to an era of do-it-all midfielders?

Too soon to tell. It’s February. That said, we can dig into the stats and see what is driving this offensive renaissance.

Sharpshooters

Underlying this trend is a sharp improvement in FOGO shooting percentages. FOGOs are shooting a full 10 percentage points better than last season. And it’s the highest shooting percentage for faceoff specialists since I’ve been tracking these stats.

At 33%, you are right with or maybe a bit better than the median shooter. At 33%, you want the FOGO taking as many good shots as he can get.
Year
Shooting %
2022
33%
2021
23%
2020
27%
2019
25%
2018
26%
2017
27%
2016
24%

It’s early in the season. Maybe this percentage comes down. Maybe teams are just giving up better looks than normal off faceoff wins. Or maybe faceoff specialists and their coaches have put extra effort into making those players more of an offensive weapon.

Grounded Wings

There is an interesting longer-term trend that may be intersecting with the small sample size here. Wing play has become less and less of a factor on faceoffs over the years.

In the play by play logs, it notes who the faceoff guys were and who ultimately picked up the ground ball. That means we can flag every faceoff as being won by the FOGO or picked up by a wing. (Incidentally, you can also use this to see which teams rely on wing play to win faceoffs vs those that are powered by an individual FOGO).

The table shows the percentage of faceoffs that were picked up by a wing over the years. Pretty clear trend.
Year
Wing GB%
2022
29.3%
2021
30.0%
2020
32.0%
2019
31.8%
2018
33.5%
2017
34.9%
2016
35.7%

Fewer wing GBs suggests that more faceoffs are being won cleanly by the FOGOs. If that means that they are also getting into a position where they can take better shots, then that might lead to a higher shooting percentage. It’s hard to imagine that a 0.7% increase in FOGO wins could lead to a 10 percentage point improvement in shooting accuracy though.

But this decline in wing play is so steady and so long-lasting that it’s clear that something is going on here.

Maybe not aggressive, more like effective

As I’ve dug into the data a bit more, it seems to me that maybe aggressive was the wrong descriptor for the ’22 class of FOGOs. I have a metric (usage-adjusted-EGA) which represents individual player efficiency.

The idea is that you take total production (EGA) and account for how much a player has the ball in their stick. The resulting number is a player efficiency score. Higher is better obviously because it means that you are doing more with the chances you are getting/taking.
Year
FOGO uaEGA
2022
0.90
2021
0.85
2020
0.87
2019
0.85
2018
0.74
2017
0.79
2016
0.75

As I go back farther in the data set, the best year for raw FOGO point totals was 2017. But they took more shots that year and turned the ball over quite a bit more as well.

As a result, the efficiency metrics peg 2017 as one of the least efficient years for faceoff specialists. Maybe that is part of the reason for the hyper-specialization in the first place. Now, even though they aren’t shooting as much as 2017, the decline in turnovers and the increase in shooting percentage produces the high-water mark in efficiency that we are seeing this year.

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