i might eat a lemon on the internet

As per usual with first UV of season, some of this is a bit dated because of preview week.

I HAVE HEARD THE PEOPLE. I acknowledge that the people demand I eat a lemon. I will eat a lemon, because I guess I'd rather be the guy who eats a lemon on a technicality than doesn't eat a lemon on a technicality.  I request that you, the people, acknowledge that my call that Desmond Morgan would be pushed out of Michigan's starting lineup appears to be a good call after he was probably Michigan's best LB in game one and led the team in tackles despite not technically starting. I plead nolo contendre to this lemon, basically.

We'll do it this Sunday at the podcast taping as part of this kid's quest to awarenessize people about weird food allergies that people don't understand at all yet, something Ace has been dealing with for years.

A new challenger appears! Elliot Mealer's Hoke impression is solid gold:

I dream that we will get enough of these to have a Hoke Impression Bracket someday.

Also gold. The Gameday Mean Tweets segment may have been shamelessly lifted from Jimmy Fallon, but lift away, sirs:

[EDIT: apparently this is an autoplaying video, so no embed. Here is the link.

I formally request you steal the thing where Ron Swanson reads tweets from young female celebrities next.

The ND cheating thing: resolved? Well, first: the investigation's tentacles reached out and added safety Eilar Hardy to the Kendall Moore, KeiVarae Russell, Davaris Daniels, Ishaq Williams quartet. Message boards are naturally buzzing with rumors ranging from they're all done for the year to they're all back by Michigan. As of three days ago the investigation was "reportedly complete"—that's when Hardy got suspended.

Everyone involved here was supposed to be out the door when it happened. FWIW, I had a good source suggesting that was the case as well. I didn't mention it because when Bruce Feldman is reporting something piping up with a "me too" is some Darren Rovell business, but now that there's doubt about the final outcome here it seems pertinent.

If there are reinstatements that impact the Michigan game they're going to have to come quickly, what with most of these guys missing nearly a month of practice. As of today's ND presser there was no update. Could you insert these guys on one or two days of practice? (Friday is a walkthrough.) Getting late.

One guy who is out. Austin Collinsworth did something to a knee ligament, missed the Rice game, and is projected to miss the Michigan game. As of three days ago he was out two to four weeks and getting some of that horse placenta action:

“There's a chance we could have him for week three,” Kelly said. “He had a PRP [platelet-rich plasma] treatment on the weekend, so we'll see what happens."

Rice is a spread, so ND was in a nickel package most of that game. They brought in Elijah Shumate next to sophomore Max Redfield; Mattias Farley played nickel the whole way. Shumate busted on the Rice touchdown. Shumate was a touted recruit, as you might expect.

One guy who doesn't read MGoBlog. That would be Scott Satterfield, the Appalachian State coach:

“This game was not what (Michigan) had shown all last year,” said Mountaineers coach Scott Satterfield. “Why they did that, I don’t know. … It was all game. Even the last drive, they were playing man.”

They did that because they had been doing it all offseason. I don't think it's unreasonable for you to read, like, one article about Michigan's defense this year.

Oh that makes more sense then. After Wisconsin finished gacking the game away to LSU, Badger head coach Gary Andersen said he "didn't know" why Melvin F-ing Gordon got three carries after a 63-yard romp in the second quarter. It turns out there is a reason for this other than Andersen being hypnotized by Les Miles's scary voodoo eyes:

Badgers coach Gary Andersen said on Monday that his junior running back suffered a hip flexor strain during the game. Gordon later told reporters that the injury occurred late in the second quarter. …

"I should have let them know, let Coach A know and stepped up and told them, 'Look I need to be in there," Gordon said, according to Fox Sports Wisconsin's Jesse Temple. "I put that on myself."

So that makes a little more sense. Also making more sense: Joel Stave's arm injury has caused Wisconsin to shut him down. He was not available to relieve the overwhelmed Tanner McEvoy. Cold comfort to Wisconsin fans today, though. Jamiemac has a breakdown of the game—Warren Herring going out was a huge problem.

At least the game spawned an LSUfreek all-timer?

Here's a breakdown of the Beilein offense. No doubt you will see this again as Ace goes over it in detail for you after his high school football responsibilities have been completed, but here's 15 minutes of John Beilein's offense categorized by play type:

Wildcats continue dropping like flies. Northwestern DT Sean McEvilly, he of the most disappointing name pronunciation in the league, is out for the year with a foot injury. This is a problem. You no doubt remember Michigan's offensive line looking functional against the Wildcats last year. Now take a starter off that line.

Also in personnel issues affecting distant games, Maryland loses receiver Levern Jacbos and some other guy. They are still set on receivers thank you.

McGary clarification. Many folks picked up on part of the McGary VICE interview in which he seems to say "so what, I committed a literally victimless non-crime" about his draconian NCAA suspension. This is a hot take even if it is a correct hot take. But he's really talking about people annoying him on social media:

"I still get people on Twitter and Instagram still commenting on stuff, saying, oh, you did drugs. Well, you know what, I did, whatever. So what? I learned from it. It was in college. They'll understand when they're in college."

He does say what he did was "the opposite of harming somebody" and "just don't get caught," which is a take hot enough for me.

More Pastujov hype. This one is for the older brother Nick.

Michigan commit Nick Pastujov plays a perfect mix of aggression and skill. Difference maker when breaking down the play, soft hands.

— Sean Lafortune (@SeanLafortune) August 24, 2014

Solar car! Michigan wins again yo.

Blind recommendation. This just went up so I haven't had a chance to read it but Smart Football on the MSU defense is going to be worth your time.

PEPPERS UPDATE. Didn't practice Sunday, expected to play. Michigan does not talk about injuries.

Another nail in the already quite-nailed coffin. Patrick Omameh is probably going to be Tampa Bay's starting right guard this fall. So Michigan had a line with three NFL players on it in 2012 and Denard Robinson and couldn't run the ball except with Denard Robinson.

I can link this now. Jane and Ace talked about their experience of the Horror on EDSBS.

The second half is a haze of Michigan pushing their way back in miserably slow fashion. I spent much of it staring at the clock. I had no idea how many emotions were building until… Mike Hart gave Michigan a one-point lead with a remarkable, weaving touchdown run from around midfield with under five minutes left. One of my roommates, standing next to me, literally wept with a mixture of joy and relief.

(Jane: I had left the stadium by then. I couldn’t do it. I saw where this was going, and I strongly believed that if I went home and went to sleep, I would wake up and this would all be a horrific dream. As a small child, I used to have nightmares that a raptor dressed as a postal worker ate me while my parents stood and watched. I have significant experience in bad dreams. I watched the rest of the game on ESPN’s Gamecast.)

This is literally the only thing I have read about the 2007 game despite the entire universe breaking their longform budget to provide opportunities for me to do so.

Do you think you may be getting ahead of yourself, sir. AP:

Michigan power running game looks like glory days

Have we learned nothing from last year's "IT LOOKS LIKE ALABAMA!" quote from Gerry DiNardo?

One sign this may not be a very clued-in article: the repeated use of fictional house divided child "De'Veon Bell." Not that I wouldn't take De'Veon Bell on my team. That would be like trying to tackle a centaur.

Etc.: Saturday game replay.  All explanations of why the Appalachian State rematch was scheduled have far too few fantasies about scorpion pits for my taste. Will Leitch on being a part of the studio audience. Scouting Christian Hackenberg. Nussmeier gets an 11: nuts and gum.

Want an amateur NPSL soccer team in town? Here's an indiegogo for it.

Upchurch

What is Hoke pointing at?

Option 1: Dick Vitale with stitches on his nose. Deadspin rumors are often just that, but I have it from the guy who was walking ahead of Dickie V when this occurred that the account of announcer meeting glass before the Ohio State game is mostly true. Variations: it happened more like an hour and half (as opposed to just-) before the game, and it was the glass next to the door (not the glass door itself) that transferred Dickie's forward momentum into Dickie's face in much the same way that air wouldn't have. Tirico behind him stood stunned for a moment before he registered Vitale was possibly really hurt. Staff sat him down in a side room at Crisler and then released him to do the broadcast, which given the circumstances I admit is pretty boss. Usefulness of this knowledge to you is minimal unless you were among those particularly annoyed by the inanity of Vitale's color commentary, but it is important if you are to fully appreciate this epic comment by suspected MGoReader "snoop-a-loop":

University of Michigan Emergency Department
Date: 2013/02/05
Time: 19:01
Patient: Vitale, Dick 73M
Chief Complaint: "I WALKED INTO A PANE OF LAMINATED SAFETY GLASS! THAT THING WAS SOME OF THE HARDEST GLASS EVER! THERE MUST HAVE BEEN A MALFUNCTIONING SENSOR! COMPLETE REJECTION BABY!"

Option 2: I think he just recognized something and is like "hey that totally reminds me of…

."

I'm giving Max an epic basketball Hoke point for this photo essay that matches the iconic Fab Five pics to the 2012-'13 team doing the similar things. Judging by how long it took me to match the four above I figure this took quite a while longer than it looks. 100 more points to whoever can find a Game…Blouses from 20 years ago. Closest I can find so far:

.

Companion piece is GOLBOGM's well-written look at each of the main players (by position) on this year's team up through the Indiana game. He also put together a rundown of the remaining schedules among Big Ten contenders, though it needs an update after last night. Profile says this guy's only had an account for 11 weeks but I've seen him popping up with great comments in various threads, so keep an eye out for the guy with the Hoke RAWR '97 avatar:

LSAClassOf2000 wrapped up Basketball History Week with a comparison of the current team vs. all those since the last national championship squad. Before going on a charting binge he posted a direct statistical comparison of averages which I must front-page:

Stat	1988-2012	Current Team
FG%	45.80%	50.50%
3PT%	35.10%	40.20%
FT%	70.80%	70.50%
Rebounds / Game	35.6	36.4
Assists /Game	14.2	15.4
Points Per Game	71.9	77.8
Offensive Eff.	1.008	1.181
Defensive Eff.	0.993	0.915
Off. Rebound %	31.80%	31.40%
Def. Rebound %	68.80%	74.60%

The mean of 1989+Fisher+Ellerbe+Amaker+Beilein-to-2012 is not a stat (I'm building a new hoops database which I intend to break that up a bit better), but this is how we feel about the basketball team in a nutshell. Free throws and offensive rebounding are sore spots but on par with our typical teams. Where these guys differentiate themselves is they make their shots and win the board battles on defense. Defensive efficiency is down less than offensive efficiency has run off the charts, and the result is 1 more point for every four (total) possessions than we're used to.

I am highly unlikely to devour something unpleasant. These SEC schools with sudden and inexplicable five-star windfalls need to be stopped says AC1997; getting Ole Miss to pee in a cup is harder than it sounds, replies Zone Left. I co-sign the thing about how it's hard for anyone but a journalist with an agenda to uncover evidence—players don't rat, fellow students have no interest in Bartman'ing their own teams, and everybody at the program level has dirt on everybody else. I'll add it's even harder to get a laughably incompetent and profit-motivated NCAA to investigate without tripping over itself, or to sanction to a degree that it's any kind of deterrent.

In this regulatory environment Urban Meyer is technically right in calling out the rest of the conference for its miserly ways. "…I mean we're giving out cars and cash all over the country and you can't match a few grand to a five-star receiver in your backyard?"

Mathlete pointed out yesterday that it's just the top of Mississippi's class that's noticeably different from their historical hauls. I take it as more circumstantial evidence that something was fishy about the top guys, since a "Freeze is just a better recruiter" or "players think Ole Miss is on the up" explanation should have seen a more even distribution of success. There was no across-the-board greater interest in Ole Miss this year among 4-stars, which is the greatest indicator that a program is recruiting at a higher level. Rather they got the same 3-stars they always get, and to that added a ridiculous success rate among the elite of the elite. If this happened naturally I'll eat something unpleasant—let's make it the sleeve of an MGoShirt if no evidence emerges in the next four years because I'm not sure I want to bet the entire digestive tract on how poorly Ole Miss can cover their tracks a lemon because there's already a tag for that. I'm guessing what happened is like in Blue Chips, where Ole Miss decided to leap into a game they figured everybody else was playing, and got burned by Superman III- slash Office Space-level over-success.

Etc. Primer on Lacrosse opponents. Mock Rock videos—chatster points out that the native dance Sione Houma and the football team are doing is the Haka from New Zealand's Maori, but nobody knows where they got if form—perhaps Russell Crowe is hovering around the program again?

[Hit THE JUMP for the board stuff, and why I am suddenly a huge fan of Michigan's rowing team.]

Turnover margin is a notoriously jittery stat that does not often repeat year to year. Turnovers are infrequent and hugely impactful, so they tend to wander all over the place without much rhyme or reason, slaying or rescuing seasons. Yes, there are obvious repeatable factors that correlate with good or bad turnover margin on a macro level. Get to the quarterback and he will explode in a confetti of bad decisions; allow the opponent to get to yours and watch the same thing occur.

On a micro level, sometimes you eat the bear… sometimes the bear eats you.

Michigan ate the bear last year, recovering around 75% of available fumbles. I know people want to believe there is a narrative that supports this model of football. When I returned from the Mattison coaching clinic presentation, one of the items I mentioned was that Michigan treats all incompletions as live balls in practice. I didn't think that was much of an explanation but a lot of commenters seized on it.

There does not have to be a reason that events transpire. It's not an Eastern thing. Sometimes you eat the bear. Sometimes the bear eats you.

Michigan ate the bear last year, and how. SBN's Bill Connolly put together a stat called "adjusted turnover margin" that assumes an NCAA-average fumble recovery rate (50.3% for the D) and NCAA-average PBU-to-INT ratio (21.9%), compares it to your actual turnovers gained, and calculates a points per game figure Connolly figures is just the bounce of the ball. Drum roll…

Five Teams Who Benefited Most From Turnovers Luck
1. Michigan (+3.97 points/game)
2. Maryland (+3.97)
3. N.C. State (+3.61)
4. South Carolina (+3.61)
5. Oklahoma State (+3.40)

I am Jack's utter lack of surprise. Michigan's overall fumble recovery rate of 75% was first in the nation by a whopping eight percent! (Maryland was #2 at 67%.) They were three standard deviations above the mean! They were a full standard deviation above the #2 team in the country! This aggression against regression to the mean will not stand!

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

This is the point where I talk about how lucky Michigan got last year and a lot of people say "nuh-uh." This gets a little frustrating on both ends. I get frustrated that something like that Sugar Bowl doesn't bring the point home; people who disagree with me get frustrated that I'm downplaying Michigan's success or being grim about next year.

They're not entirely wrong. I do think that if you replayed the 2011 season 1,000 times Michigan ends up 11-2 in relatively few of them. They were only sort of close in one of their losses*, won two-and-a-half nailbiters** and acquired 10 more turnovers than Connolly's model expects. Michigan also had the benefit of a soft schedule (no Wisconsin or Penn State) in a down Big Ten and an Ohio State team in shambles after tatgate. It was pretty uninspiring in terms of 11-2 years featuring wins over ND, OSU, and a BCS opponent despite undergoing massive transition costs and operating with a slap-dash, attrition-ravaged roster.

Which is to say: WOOOOOOOOOOO. Yes. Score.

But once we get past the woo and start talking about setting expectations for year two we should not base it off what Michigan did last year but what they should have done, what they lost to graduation and attrition, who they return and add, and who they play. We should start with the premise that Michigan was super lucky last year and probably won't be this year.

This doesn't mean their turnover margin is doomed. It just means their turnover margin is doomed unless Denard Robinson becomes a lot more responsible with the ball. Michigan got away with being –7 in interceptions because of the fumble surplus. That covered up a lot of blemishes last year.

What should we expect Michigan's turnover margin to be next year?

 

Happy Arguments

I am arguing it will be worse. I made similar arguments for much of the Rich Rodriguez era when Michigan was hugely negative every year and dammit it never changed. 

Experience at quarterback. This is a double whammy to the good for Michigan: they've got a senior starter entering his third year and—even more important—his second year in Al Borges's system. A number of Michigan's turrible interceptions a year ago came paired with hand-wavingly-open receivers Michigan's quarterbacks just missed, like this one Gardner chucked against Purdue:

The ball is in the air here, but it's going to the double-covered Gallon instead of the hand-wavingly open Junior Hemingway. This wasn't pressure—Gardner had all day—it was a huge coverage misread. In year two these things should significantly diminish.

Fitzgerald Toussaint could be Mike Hart-like. IIRC Toussaint has not fumbled as a Michigan ballcarrier. As carries move to him from other sources—largely the fumble-prone Denard—Michigan should reduce the number of fumbles that can go against them. Fumble prevention/extraction is a skill.

The defense should be sack happy. Michigan finished 29th last year without getting great production out of its three-tech or weakside defensive end. Will Heininger had one sack last year; Craig Roh and Jibreel Black combined for 5.5. If the moves of Roh and Black inside upgrade the pass rush at three positions, the blitz-mad Mattison D will be in QBs' faces even more than they were last year.

Complicating factor: Mike Martin only had 3.5 sacks last year but his disruption opened things up for other people.

Protection should be good if the line is healthy. Lewan is an all Big Ten left tackle (at least) and Schofield is a touted recruit with a year of quality playing time under his belt with all the tools to pass protect on the edge. Wicked blind-side hits on Denard should be rare.

Sad Arguments

Denard is just turnover-prone. This has been a fact by air and ground ever since he hit the field. While he's going to improve with experience, sometimes players never have that light bulb pop on. Toussaint will shift some carries to his five points of contact but Denard will still get a bunch of carries, and he'll cough the ball up some.

Chucking sure interceptions up to Hemingway will result in interceptions because Hemingway is gone. Unless these are going to Gardner.

Hello massive reversion to the mean on fumble recoveries. If Michigan recovers over 70% of available fumbles this year I'll eat a lemon. Probably at the Rose Bowl.

If a tackle goes down, yeesh. Everyone's assumption is that this would see Kyle Kalis step in at right tackle. Mega-hyped recruit… and a true freshman.

Seriously, Denard is walking variance. I think Michigan will preserve its fairly positive TO margin. If they don't, we will all be sad about Denard's inability to shake the turnover bug. I can't predict he'll be better or worse until we see him play.

There's a reason a couple departing seniors picked Robinson—who was an All-American as a sophomore, remember—as a "breakout player" in that Rothstein article from yesterday($). He could break out. He could run in place, and not know which it will be makes predictions here even more useless than they have been in the past.

You may now return to thinking about Taylor Lewan on a tandem bike.

*[Even if Michigan does score against Iowa they have to get a two-point conversion and then win in OT, which is like a 20% shot.]

**[OSU should not have been since there was no reason to overturn the Toussaint TD that would have ended it.]