moving the (stati)sticks

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[Bryan Fuller]

The title of the post still says “Post-Indiana,” but I seriously considered bucking convention and naming it “Pre-Ohio State.” With the stakes of The Game as high as they’ve been in a decade, it only felt right to look at where the two teams’ advanced stats are similar and where they’re different.

Still, it’s worth discussing what happened against Indiana. The offense took a fairly large hit in overall efficiency, falling from 23rd to 41st in success rate. The rushing offense’s success rate saw a nearly identical drop in the national rankings, falling from 21st to 42nd. The passing offense did even worse, with the success rate falling from 45.3% to 42.5% and from 26th to 50th. On standard downs, Michigan’s offensive success rate only dropped from 51.5% to 49.5%, but their ranking tumbled from 22nd to 43rd. The offense fared worse on passing downs, with their success rate dropping from 34.4% (39th overall) to 31.5% (62nd overall). The offense had a difficult time keeping on track, and their inability to pick up the necessary yardage to stay in manageable down-and-distance situations led to the drops in success rate. Of note is that the offense struggled in that department across the board (passing, rushing, standard vs. passing down, etc.) but with little impact on their other numbers, which stayed fairly stable. A few long runs helped keep the offense’s explosive play-realted numbers afloat.

The defense, already at or near the top of most categories, saw little movement. One of the bigger changes was in the defense’s IsoPPP, the number Bill Connelly uses to track explosiveness; Michigan moved up from ninth to fourth. That’s pretty much it. The defense is good. The stats are good. They both remained so against Indiana.

[After THE JUMP: how Michigan stacks up against Ohio State according to S&P+ and FEI]

[Eric Upchurch]

We should have known from the start. Ace and I got dropped off at the northeast corner of Kinnick with a simple task: get the parking pass and credentials. We picked up the envelope, untangled the strings on our credentials, and found precisely zero things that were definitely or even slightly resembled a parking pass. We now needed the guys to somehow turn around and come pick us up without bringing traffic to a screeching halt, and from there we needed to go to the parking garage and hope they’d accept the email that said we were approved for parking.

Ace and I crossed the street to wait and ran into Kelly and Jacob, two of The Daily’s beat writers. They were looking for a missing co-worker. Hindsight’s 20/20, but it should have been obvious in that moment that there were four Michigan media members on a corner and not a single thing going right for any of them, and that ended up serving as an omen for the night. We then dove into the van as the guys drove up, pulled up to the parking garage, and were shut down by the attendant. And the one in the next lot. And the one in the lot after that.

We ended up parking behind the equivalent of a coney on the outskirts of campus, running out of time to go to Demorest’s tailgate, and one of us slipped and fell partially down a hill while making fun of someone’s taste in music. It was me. I fell down a hill.

I didn’t notice the blinking neon “Hey, I’m a metaphor and something’s not right here” sign, and a lot of that is because you can usually count on nine games worth of data to be somewhat predictive. According to Football Study Hall, Iowa went into the game with a 5% win probability. They then forced Michigan’s offense into far and away their worst performance of the season en route to a bizarre, special teams-fueled upset. With game and cumulative numbers in hand, we can see how big an impact one bad game has while also preliminarily judging how predictive the performance was.

[Hit THE JUMP to find out how off Michigan’s offense was according to S&P+ and FEI, and a quick look at Indiana’s advanced stats]

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[Upchurch/MGoBlog]

Things actually went pretty well for Maryland. They piled up 367 yards at a 5.6 yards-per-play clip. Their average start was on their own 25.1-yard line, which is a couple of yards behind opponents’ average starting spot against Michigan, but their success rate was a very respectable 35%. Maryland had four players who had 30+-yard receptions on the day, including one that went for 47 yards. They even picked up 19 first downs, a surprising 12 of which came via the pass.

All of that didn’t lead to much in the way of points, of course. Maryland finished with three points on three scoring opportunities; their doinked field goal and tunnel screen that got tackled at the one-yard line as time ran out in the first half could both have been converted and it still wouldn’t have mattered considering the way Michigan’s offense was operating on Saturday.

Michigan averaged 10 yards per play. They had 10 drives and posted 10 scoring opportunities. They averaged 5.9 points per scoring opportunity. Their success rate was 65%, they picked up 31 first downs (including a 14-14 split passing and rushing), and they finished +2 in turnover margin. They were, in effect, unstoppable.

Maryland had a pretty good game relative to what opponents usually do against Michigan’s defense; it once again came mostly via a couple big busts and didn’t make a big impact on the defense’s overall stats. The story of Michigan’s season to this point isn’t how dominant the defense has been, but how far the offense has come. Last season the defense was statistically great enough to prop up (until that one game) the middling offense.

This year, Michigan’s defense has spent most of the season atop the S&P+ rankings and in the top 10 of defensive FEI (they’re currently ranked sixth). The offense’s success rate and explosiveness (IsoPPP) have steadily climbed, their average starting field position has been the best in the nation for a while, and the offense as a whole is now ranked eighth per S&P+. According to FEI, the offense is the best in the nation; they were ranked third before Maryland, and they climbed multiple spots after they game in every category offensive FEI tracks. This is not 1997 and it is not 2015. Michigan finally has an offense that should worry opposing coaches in its own right. They happen to couple it with the best defense in the country. It’s going to be an interesting two months.

[After THE JUMP: more on Maryland, Connelly’s Five Factors, combing through FEI, and looking at Iowa’s stren—looking at Iowa]