Jake Rudock

[Ed(Seth): Standard bump] 

Best:  Falling Back

In addition to Saturday’s game being on Halloween, it also fell on the last day of summer daylight savings time, when we set the clocks back an hour.  Colloquially, people call that “falling back” an hour, so you get another hour of sleep (well, for those of us without little children who apparently rise and fall based 100% on sunlight and morning cartoons) in exchange for earlier nights. 

For so much of this game, it felt like UM was falling back into the old rut that had formed around the program for nearly a decade. For years now, UM has shown an uncanny ability to fall apart as the season progressed, playing down to competition and letting one loss mushroom into more as the leaves and clocks changed.  Last year it was letting understandable losses to Utah and Minnesota submarine a game against Rutgers and, later, Maryland.  The year before it was blowing a winnable game against Nebraska following a demolition at MSU, which followed extremely close calls to UConn(!) and Akron(!!).  I won’t dredge up the RR years, but you can look up those late-season horror shows if you want.  And after the gut-punch that was MSU, UM fans probably shouldn’t have been as confident in a smooth bounce back by the Wolverines.

Certainly, Minnesota looked the part of a pushover.  The Gophers, down Jerry Kill at the top and a bunch of skill players from last year’s team, had stumbled into the game, losers of 2 of their last 3, including blowout losses at Northwestern (27-0) and to Nebraska (48-25).  They couldn’t really run the ball or pass it (take it away, Jim), had a defense that was scuttling a bit after being the bedrock for the team last year, and generally looked like a team that was playing out the string.  But it was also a night game, deep in the heart of Jerrysota, and it was being officiated by B1G refs, which meant that absolutely nothing should be expected to go the way it looked on paper. 

On UM’s first drive, Jake Rudock threw an ill-advised shovel pass to Peppers that was picked off, giving Minnesota solid field position that they used (with the help of another recurring element of this game, bat-sh!t crazy passing plays by Minnesota, this one a falling-down 31-yard catch by the receiver between three defenders) to score a FG.  Even though UM scored TDs on their next two drives, Minnesota just kept hanging around, scoring another FG and began to stymie the UM offense, forcing a punt and a fumble on consecutive drives.  And they continued to have amazing luck in the passing game, with Mitch Leidner completing a 52-yard TD that was both behind and inside his receiver in tight coverage, who then made Jarrod Wilson miss and scored.  Minny took a lead into halftime thanks to another nutters long reception, a sure interception that Dymonte Thomas instead volleyballed into the air, for a late FG, and UM was struggling to run the ball (45 yards at HT) or really get anything going in the air (after starting off reasonably accurate, Rudock was completing a bit over 50% of his passes for about 6 ypa).

[Hit THE JUMP to see how many straws we can grasp (hint: one)]

[Ed-S: Bumped from diaries]

Who needs a football fix? Every year I like to size up the relevant QB competition to Michigan in an effort to convince myself that we’ll go undefeated. Please see the following links for the ghosts of seasons past as well as an overview of the general thought processes behind these projections (2010, 2013, 2014). I was unable to post diaries for 2011 and 2012. This exercise is pretty hit and miss but its fun so let’s get to it.

I don’t actually expect anyone to click through to all those links so here’s a summary of the foundational ideas I’ve developed over the years:

1. As far as I’m concerned, the feel good year end rating for a QB is about 140. It’s a tough standard but that’s what the subjective good looks like. Great starts setting in above 145.

2. I treat player skill as a ratcheting riding-a-bike type thing. You don’t just forget what you once “knew” When performance recedes, its because of other factors outside of skill. Therefore, performance must be parsed in order to not over assign skill to a given performance.

3. I strive for an accuracy of +/- 4 points in passer rating. I.e. 131 vs. 135 and 135 vs. 139 are acceptable but 131 vs. 139 is a miss. Below 130 is bad and if I put you in that category and you score at or below 130, I claim a hit.

4. Barring injury, if I pick the wrong starter the a priori assessment carries over to the replacement. More on this later.

5. I use Bill Connolly's RB Rating system to guide my commentary regarding specific players. I had developed a version but, the data streams I needed dried up and his method accounts for most of the factors I did so its good enough for me.

[Hit the Jump for a post-mortem of 2014 QBs]