rick leach

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Michigan goes into 2012 with the rarest of all birds (recently at least): a senior returning starter at quarterback. Since we can't count half a season from an injured Henne, the last time we saw this senior-type thing under center was the last time a QB wore 16: Navarre. It's been nine years!

History too has been a bit rough on senior QBs. Brady shared much of his last season with Henson. Todd Collins played almost as much as senior Grbac, who took away half of Michael Taylor's seminal season, who nabbed the bulk of Demetrius Brown's last year.

Since Bo's first year Denard is the 14th senior starter at Michigan. The other 13, by stats:

I'll save you some of the suspense: those are good efficiencies. And when that starter wasn't dinged it made for awesome seasons. Even counting '07, over these 13 seasons Michigan went 127-26-3, went to Pasadena 7 times (plus an Orange and Sugar and no bowl one year when Michigan finished 3rd overall), finished in the Top 10 of the Associated Press 11 times (avg finish: 7th), and won a National Championship. Small sample size and whatnot, but special years do seem to follow the seniors around.

Let's all shake our fists at: Chad Henne shoulder-hating god. Three shakes!

You also probably already figured that since players generally improve year to year, that senior quarterbacks are best. What I'm looking at here is whether there's maybe something about being a senior, whether its age, or whether that mythical senior tag has some weight. To the charts!

Click embiggens. The mythical senior tag didn't seem to do anything except as a function of experience. When broken up by age it wasn't any different than when broken up by how many passes he threw before coming. What age does seem to do is reduce variance. Look at the grouping of 5th year seniors (light blue). There's not enough data here to make a conclusion but I am intrigued by this concept of 5th year players producing no worse than a rating

A better way to decide if age or class means anything at all would be to use the Mathlete's database. Mathlete: you should do this some day: chart year to year improvement of quarterbacks and see what the progression curve looks like. What I'm doing here is just working with Bentley numbers for Michigan quarterbacks, since at least for these guys I can trust we know most of the exigent circumstances behind different swings. Just pulling returning starters and major contributors. In: John Navarre's 77 attempts in 2000, Tate Forcier's 84 attempts in 2010. Out: Drew Henson's 47 attempts in 1998. Show things:

<----Upchurch

Denard's freshman to sophomore leap was high, not unheard of. Rick Leach leapt a ludicrous 76.1 points in efficiency between his freshman and sophomore years, a matter of going from 32% completions and 3 TDs to 12 interceptions to 47.6% completion rating and a 13/8 TD/INT ratio. Michael Taylor made a leap similar to Denard's between his Junior and Senior seasons (first and second as at least a part-time starter). Drew Henson, Jim Harbaugh and Demetrius Brown also had huge leaps forward as juniors. If you're smelling a trend, these were all guys who to varying degrees considered "mobile" quarterbacks.

Visualized:

The way efficiency is wired, a shift in TD/INT ratio, a shift in completion %, and a shift in yards per attempt. Big chart of returning passers (either starters or guys who got a significant amount of playing time the year before) so we can see if any one of these factors might stand out. Bolding numbers that I think made the difference:

Bolded things of note: If I bolded the name or the amount of attempts you can just discount that guy since his year to year stats are thrown off by a huge difference in his role, e.g. John Navarre went from a guy who murdered MAC teams to full-time Big Ten passer who chucked things in the direction of Marquise Walker. Rick Leach basically learned how to pass a football (to his teammates). Henson and Harbaugh had matching junior leaps as they grew from leggy guy who might throw to polished passers.

Demetrius Brown had his numbers saved by Bo halving the amount of pass plays and going full-tilt option. Tom Brady stopped had a major turnaround in TD/INT as a senior, while Todd Collins and Jim Harbaugh went the other way. Johnny Wangler looks to have suffered (EDIT: was this when Carter injured? This is before my time.) his senior season, as YPA dropped terribly and completion suffered a little. I'm not sure Grbac's TD-INT ration can be explained by the similar loss of Desmond Howard—it's possible Dez's Heisman campaign simply separated itself from two similar yet pedestrian seasons.

What does this all mean for Denard? Most of the seniors touched up their games. Most had their big leaps as juniors, but I should point out of the 13 guys to make the biggest one-year leaps, 8 of them were redshirt juniors or seniors, i.e. Denard's age. Also working for him is running the same offense that he did last year. The transition ultimately came more to him than the other way around, though, so don't expect miracles. Working against him will be the loss of his favorite target, and the effective replacement of a tight end for a second back, which isn't always great for the passing game. Unless a deep threat emerges from the unknowns in the receiver corps, expect his YPA avg. to dip again, with a corresponding rise in completion % (something most seniors seemed to have done). I'd also venture Denard will cut down further on his interception and probably get his TDs up the same as Michigan's mite-y backs and receivers score more with screens. +4/-4 would be excellent. Meanwhile the team will win 10 games, place in the Top 10, and end the season in Pasadena, because that's what Michigan senior quarterbacks do.

Hopefully more zany Michigan-related stories come up. LSUFreek on the Armanti Edwards lawnmower incident:

It's the kittens that make it.

Meanwhile, Justin Feagin's planned transfer to Appalachian State is off. App St cites "academic concerns" and, you know, an attempted cocaine deal as reasons. Hopefully the academic concerns are just "you blew a scholarship because tried to broker a cocaine deal for a few hundred bucks and therefore can't be the sharpest tool in the shed" instead of an 0-for-2 APR departure.

UFER. It's less than a month before the season and I haven't heard a grown man lose his mind yet. Lame. Also fixed:

That comes complete with a frighteningly accurate reproduction of the play in NCAA that I thought would be lame going in but turned out to be dorkily impressive. Let's reproduce the :01 Manningham touchdown next.

Somewhere, Lloyd cackles over a snifter of brandy. Braylon Edwards has imbibed some terminology:

"The Browns and I are on the same page, and my team is on the same page," Edwards said. "I've never made any contract [demands], so I don't know where that would come from. That's just more rumors and hearsay to spark up more controversy."

It is very important to be on the same page, which Braylon Edwards is. Also he had one of the worst "catch percentages" in the league last year, which will surprise no one who watched Braylon on a regular basis but also includes passes to Tacopants and given the Browns' QB situation might not be his fault after all.

Aerials. Basketball? Why not?

That is a scatter plot comparing minutes returning to last year's Pomeroy ranking and is used as a rough estimate via which to predict the Big Ten by The Only Colors.  Limitations are acknowledged. For one: the chart doesn't take the fact that the vast majority of Michigan's lost minutes are two walk-ons and one guy buried on the bench when the season ended, or that OSU's recruiting class this year does not exist.

A couple of takeaways despite that: holy god Iowa is going to be bad, and if Robbie Hummel's back cooperates Purdue is your tentative conference favorite.

Back from the old testament. When Carcajous Attack(!) channels the departed spirit of Autumn Thunder with some charmingly horrible photoshop:

That's Dan Mozes, four-year WVU starter, Rimington award winner, and newest Barwis acolyte, as Moses, prophet of the Israelites. Mozes on Barwis:

"Mike gave me the fundamentals to get bigger and stronger," said Mozes. "He gave me the strength to do all that stuff. Coming out of high school nobody wanted me, and I had that chip on my shoulder. That's really the first thing you need to have. People always want to throw in external motivation, pep talks and stuff like that, but you have to be motivated from your own heart. That's one thing I had. Mike gave me the tools."

Barwis on Mozes:

"He's a tremendous strength coach. He has a great ability to show kids how to do things and explain why we do things and how it relates to football. He's a high-energy, explosive and passionate guy, and his work ethic is outstanding. Dan Mozes is what Dan Mozes is, and he's going to be that way in any job that he chooses. If he wanted to be a typist, he'd be the best damn typist around, because he goes as hard as he can."

We can add this to the pile of former Rodriguez players who don't hate the warped beings they were tricked into becoming, yes?

Slipup? This is old, but it sat in my inbox for a while and no one else mentioned it, so here's Rich Rodriguez talking about a year two turnaround:

"But it’s a different scenario," Rodriguez said. "The biggest difference is I had a quarterback that was my starter the first year, Rasheed Marshall, who had gotten hurt but he had at least started some games and he came back and was very talented and fit the system."

Is this a giveaway as to Nick Sheridan's chances at the starting job? Rodriguez does have a quarterback who was a starter his first year. You can parse that statement many ways, but most of them point towards freshmen. That's not exactly a surprise, of course, but FWIW.

Etc.: Wolverines come in #1 on a list of "Animal Mascots Ranked by Uniqueness, Cage-Fighting Skills, and Eco-Friendliness," which is pretty much awesome. Yrs truly is e-nterviewed about Michigan's upcoming season on Blog Ten. The O-Zone's Michigan preview comes in at 5-7 but seems more positive than that through the bulk of it.