brendan gibbons is also a stone-cold killer who can have my babies

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I got into an argument with a Michigan State fan—yes, right there is the problem—about our respective kickers last year. In true Michigan-Michigan State fashion the Spartan was making points using selective data (Dan Conroy has a better leg!) and the Michigan fan spent way too much time building data and constructing charts to demonstrate a nuanced and supportable conclusion (Dan Conroy has a better leg but Gibbons was money inside the 40).

I pulled kicking data from NCAA's game summaries and managed to get data points on 241 field goal attempts by Big Ten kickers last season. I also plugged each kicker's season into a Sabre.com formula for rating the position created by a guy named Jeff Yutzler, but his formula is WAY too kind in my opinion (as in there were 13 B1G kickers who scored in the A- range or above). For ease I've just ignored blocked FGAs since there's little the kicker can do about those. Table? Table.

Kicker Team 18-30 31-40 41-50 50+ FG% Yutzler%
Jeff Budzien NW 7/7 7/7 5/5 0/1 95% 99.8%
Matt Wile Mich - - 1/1 1/2 67% 99.6%
Brendan Gibbons Mich 7/7 7/7 1/3 1/1 89% 97.7%
Nick Immekus Ill 2/2 - 2/3 - 80% 97.1%
Paul Griggs Pur - 3/3 1/2 0/1 67% 96.9%
Brett Maher Neb 6/7 8/9 3/6 3/5 74% 95.7%
Mike Meyer Iowa 11/11 2/4 4/6 - 81% 95.5%
Dan Conroy MSU 8/8 5/9 10/15 - 72% 94.8%
Mitch Ewald Ind 9/10 1/2 5/6 0/1 79% 94.1%
Drew Basil OSU 4/4 2/4 1/2 1/1 73% 93.2%
Taylor Zalewski Ill 2/3 - 1/3 1/1 57% 92.7%
Jordan Wettstein Minn 4/5 6/8 4/6 0/3 64% 91.7%
Kyle French Wis 3/3 5/7 2/5 - 67% 91.5%
Sam Ficken PSU 8/9 6/8 0/2 - 74% 86.3%
Sam McCartney Pur 2/3 3/4 - - 71% 76.7%
Steve Flaherty NW - 1/1 - - 100% 64.4%
Jack Russell Wis - 0/1 0/1 - 0% 51.1%
Big Ten Total x 73/79 56/74 40/66 7/16 74.89% 94.3%

Michigan: home of high yutz values

This says Michigan's kicking is was really darn good, though low sample size applies for Wile of course. Here's a chart of Michigan and Michigan State field goal attempts last year. X axis and size represent distance, Y axis is the order in which the kicks were attempted. Click bigginses:

Michigan2012kicking

Gibbons was  perfect inside 42 yards, though in comparison to the Big Ten he took a lot of kicks in that sweet 25-35 yard range. Wile was obviously the long guy.

MSU2012kicking

Conroy was deployed a lot, and here you see he seemed to have a big hole from 35-45 yards. Inside that he's great, outside of that he's great; for some reason the dude missed a ton of FGs from medium range. Sort him by distance and it reads 13 goods, whiff, whiff, whiff, whiff, whiff, whiff, good, good, whiff, good, whiff, good, good, good, good, whiff, good, good, good. Kickers: weird.

[The rest of the conference after the jump.]

Here are the photos from Michigan vs. MSU. 

 

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Ice Cold

 

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Brady Hoke thought pass interference should have been called

 

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Taylor Lewan with Greg Mattison after the game


The complete Slideshow. I hope it doesn't suck.

 

All photos are Creative Commons licensed. If you have any questions or comments that you don't want to post on here. Feel free to e-mail me at [email protected].

"We're laying in the weeds. We've beat Michigan the last four years. So where's the threat?" Mark Dantonio

BRENDAN GIBBONS IS THE MOTHERFUCKING THREAT.

Celebrate. Pants optional. Brunettes mandatory.