football

As per ESPN/SI - ND's backup center Dan Wenger has suffered another concussion and will likely not play against Michigan. He was supposed to be the starter as per Irish's breakdown of ND Offense here on MGoBlog - but he was passed over because of the first concussion in practice. The second concussion essentially eliminates him from considertation against Michiagan.

Obviously, hope Wenger recovers and there are no long term ill effects. Though you do have to think that in an already inexpeciened O-line, missing a fifth year senior is not very good for ND.

Thoughts on how this will affect the game?

Link:

http://sports.espn.go.com/chicago/ncf/news/story?id=5548331

http://www.chicagobreakingsports.com/2010/09/kelly-wengers-notre-dame-ca...

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2010/football/ncaa/wires/09/08/2060.ap....

Didn't get a chance to see any of Purdue Notre Dame. Just wondering what people thought of the new Irish, Crist as a QB, etc. I'm too impatient to wait for Brian's scouting report.

The game summary only says so much.

Any opinions?

Way to go Akeem! 

http://www.rockathletics.com/news/2010/9/6/FB_0906103100.aspx

Ed: originally titled "OT: Spotted. Detroit Sports Media member who gets it."

 Don't get pissed for the subject line.

 It was Brando. And I know he hosts our coaches show, has for like 30 years, and has done play by play on the radio broadcasts since forever; BUT he also has done the Lions for a long time too, used to produce sports on Detroit TV, and is married to a Detroit TV anchor. He is a fan but he is no kool aid guzzler.

So I am stretching it out to the breaking point and calling him Detroit sports media.  They should include him with honorary membership or something. Those yutzes could use him. 

If you aren't buying my argument, no problem. I don't know if I do entirely either.

Anyways, he was on Huge today and it was mandatory take the longest route home listening.   He said avoiding turnovers makes a win this week very possible.  He also adeptly batted down Huge's theory that there had been no clutch defensive plays under Rich until the Floyd/Ozeh fumble against UCONN.  Then capped it off by crediting Rich with doing a great job in practices of reinforcing the lessons from last year and not believing  hype after early wins.

He basically said that the players have a handle on not letting down this year, because of the struggles after the good start last year.

Between Frank and Brando, we are really lucky to have guys like this handling the games, and doing these appearances getting out the word about Rich and the job he is doing. A lot of good Michigan fans, especially older ones, will never be on this blog.  They will listen to the radio though.  

I don't really know how to take this, because although he's a buckeye, I typically think Herbstreit's take is meh, fairly objective. But it seems like he's on the kool-aid for us pretty hard against ND, while Desmond's enthusiasm is quite tempered.

http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=5547646

I'm definitely in the camp with Howard, I was just a little surprised to see Herbie so high on Michigan after 1 game. Setting up his rivals for a fall maybe?

After only 1 game, there is not much data. I will update this after every game.

Synopsis: A quick look at the TOM would lead you to believe that this was a very good game from the aspect of turnovers. But, NSFMF!

Take a look at turnover data for an “average” team – we all should take a long sigh of relief. Our 3 fumbles were almost twice (184%)the average per game  and over the past decade 50% of all fumbles are lost. We lost no fumbles. In addition, UConn had only a single fumble which is 58% of average and they lost the one fumble. Although, we were very close to having several interceptions, interceptions were a wash – no interceptions thrown but no passes intercepted either.

This was the first game against a tough opponent. We won the game and won the turnover battle and I have been ecstatic every since. But, there is still much work to be done in the area of turnovers. We need to put the ball on the ground less and force more turnovers in future games.

The Extrapolation is a straight line: [Totals] X [12 Total Games / Games Played].

Here is the detail of each fumble/interception and a comment providing insight if the turnover (or lack thereof) was significant.

 Remember here are the correlations of TOM to WLM at season’s end:

TOM is a significant contributing factor in determining the WLM.

90% of teams with a positive TOM of 5.0 or greater had winning records
84% of teams with positive TOM had winning records
Only 41% of teams with negative TOM had winning records
Only 28% of teams with a negative TOM of -5 or worse had winning records

62% of teams with a positive TOM of 5.0 or greater had WLM of +4 or better (8-4 record or better)
38% of teams with a TOM of 0 to +4.0 had a WLM of 4 or better
Only 25% of teams with a TOM 0 to -4.0 had a WLM of +4 or better
Only 8% of teams with a negative TOM of -5 or worse had WLM of +4 or better

Details here:    http://mgoblog.com/diaries/turnover-analysis-part-3-what-impact-winning