experience

Meta: New interim column name is interim. Rhymes with "talkin' points" if you have a heavy Midwest accent. Hakn means to nag in Yiddish, literally to bang on […a pot or teakettle]. The reference.

15236648183_abaab8a1c3_k

Every touch is a little bit of magic. [Fuller]

Early last month Brian forwarded me a reader question about the relative experience of Michigan's players, and asked for a lot of research:

What has been the average age and game experience of each of the teams’ skill groups over the course of the season for each of Hoke’s years coaching here?

I’d love to see a table or graph that showed age/game experience by skill group by year of tenure for all the skill groups.  Just data.

Everyone says – players aren’t developing.  I’m not sure whether it’s true or a function of getting better but younger less experienced guys on the field.

My impression Defense is improving – and that’s where Hoke started recruiting (if memory serves) – those are some of his third year guys now (still juniors and RS Sophs) – getting better all the time.  Offense – a year behind defense from age/experience.  Mostly Sophs and RS Fresh.  If that pattern is right and holds, a defense of 4th and 3rd year guys next year and an offense of 3rd and second year guys should continue to improve the product.  No?

Off the cuff, we were plotting out age progression of Hoke's recruiting classes back in 2012 (when most of the 2013 class was signed) and concluding that 2015 was the probable germination point. I think a big part of why Hoke was let go was Michigan doesn't at all seem on track for that to happen. As Hackett mentioned in his press conference, the 2015 team should be one of the most experienced we've fielded in memory across the board (provided there's no mass exodus, which is hardly a guarantee).

Yay for Good News! How Good's Our GNews?

To get a real answer I really think we'd need other teams to compare it with, and that's way too much work. Also not all positions are created equal and relative experience does not say how quality the experienced players are: the 2003 and 2005 teams were nearly identical, but the 2003 was one of the best under Lloyd while the latter we thought of at the time as painful. Deciding which positions mature at what rate and have which effect of outcome is beyond the scope of this study.  But I found two ways to approximate an answer:

1) Long ago I started keeping a spreadsheet of players, going back to the mid-'90s, with what years they were on the roster, when they left, and why. With some updating that was able to produce a list of how many scholarship players Michigan had available each year back to '97, broken up by year-in-program and eligibility and whatnot. By that count Michigan has the oldest team in 2015 in the post-championship era, with 85 accumulated years (average at UM for 1997-2014 is 68) since high school on offense and 83 (average is 61) on defense.

2) I scoured the Bentley team history pages (the links at the right on that page), for how many starts each player had. This turned out to be quite the rabbit hole, hence why it took me so long to produce a response. After fixing a bazillion duplicates and spelling errors and whatnots (like for example they have the Gordons mixed up), I had a list of starts by season of every Michigan player going back to 1994, which I've put on Google Docs for your perusal.

There's some other good tabs at that link if you like exploration.

[Money chart and more after the jump]

Gentleman-Caller

"Whatever you need to make you feel, like you've been the one behind the wheel, the sunrise is just over that hill."

                                                      —Cursive, The Gentleman Caller, The Ugly Organ

How about some good news regarding Michigan's football team? One runaway success you can attribute to this coaching staff is they've managed to hold onto their players, especially the ones they recruited. Better news: the thing about a lot of the teams that finished in the Top 10 in 2013 were they had lots of upperclassmen starters. Experience is still a big deal, and the only way to get that is to go a lot of years in a row without losing half your roster. Better better news: Michigan is (likely) going to be one of those teams in the not-too-distant future. Let's go right to the table:

% of PLAYERS REMAINING AFTER X YEARS FROM RECRUITING CLASSES 1993-'13

Class Recruited by Class Size 1 year 2 years 3 years P.O.E.* Usage**
1993 Moeller 23 91% 87% 70% 26% 68%
1994 Moeller 22 95% 91% 82% 82% 88%
1995 Moeller 19 95% 95% 84% 63% 84%
1996 Carr 20 95% 80% 65% 55% 74%
1997 Carr 18 100% 94% 67% 67% 82%
1998 Carr 19 100% 100% 100% 79% 95%
1999 Carr 23 100% 87% 87% 74% 87%
2000 Carr 19 95% 95% 84% 74% 87%
2001 Carr 21 95% 81% 81% 57% 79%
2002 Carr 21 95% 90% 90% 71% 87%
2003 Carr 16 88% 88% 75% 63% 78%
2004 Carr 22 86% 86% 77% 50% 75%
2005 Carr 23 100% 87% 61% 43% 73%
2006 Carr 19 89% 89% 79% 63% 80%
2007 Carr 21 100% 86% 67% 52% 76%
2008 Carr/RR 24 83% 71% 67% 50% 68%
2009 Rodriguez 22 82% 82% 68% 59% 73%
2010 Rodriguez 27 70% 59% 44% 37% 53%
Average for 1993-2010 21 92% 85% 74% 58% 77%
2011 RR/Hoke 20 80% 70% 70% x 71%
2012 Hoke 25 96% 96% x x 96%
2013 Hoke 27 100% x x x 100%

*(Played out eligibility, i.e. nonredshirted Sr's who played 4 years + guys who played 5)

**(Eligible seasons the class netted divided by 4 x class size)

There will be attrition from Hoke's classes as the position battles shape out, but for awhile there Michigan was regularly coming into a recruiting class's redshirt sophomore season with a third of that class already departed. As of now the only guy from that awesome 2012 haul not on the roster is Kaleb Ringer. You have to go back to the class of 2000*, which didn't qualify Reggie Benton, to find a class to make it this far as intact. It was so long ago that a guy from that class is now one of Michigan's coaches.

Plot the retention of the 2012 class to this point with the state of the classes before it coming into their 3rd season. It's stunning:

byclass

Years after coaching changes seem to witness an exodus spike, followed by a return to normal, which is to be expected. The last few years though…

---------------------------

*Even better was 1998. Henson (Yankees), Terrell (early NFL), Fargas (transfer to USC) and fullback Dave Armstrong (unrenewed 5th) were the only losses, and that was just a year of eligibility from each of them. Considering they were recruited after the championship year that's astounding.

---------------------------

[Jump for lots more charty charts.]

Selfie: Go save Christmas again.

10897667925_cc019a7dc4_h

[Fuller]

Kids! Gandalf the Maize's follow-up on which factors seem to be the most predictive of offensive line play compared the r-squareds of 19 things, from o-line experience as a whole, to their recruiting stars, to the left tackle individually, depth, QB talent, how much the team goes long, etc., and found the ONLY factor with relatively high significance is…

[drumroll…]

.

.

.

Interior. Offensive. Line. Experience!

Let's get a DotW to the wizard, and tell Funk to put some years on his charges, RIGHT NOW.

Ron Utah followed up by showing the relative age of Michigan's whole roster versus teams of significance.

Part II by dnak438 on Michigan's offensive regression this week went back and added 2011-12 to the study of YPP versus opponents, tracking it by dividing Michigan's yards per play each game versus the average that team gave up. The results are charts that really show the history of Al Borges's various offensive strategies:

allthree

Here's the progression:

[after the jump]