Initial 2017 Big Ten Power Rankings, from Bill Connelly
After profiling every Big Ten team, Bill Connelly has released his first round of Big Ten Power Rankings, and he sees the conference as a four tiered beast.
Tier 1 (in order): Ohio State, Penn State, Michigan
Tier 2: Wisconsin
Tier 3 (in order): Northwestern, Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, Maryland, Indiana, Michigan State
Tier 4 (in order): Purdue, Illinois, Rutgers
Connelly sees Northwestern as having the highest floor of the non-Wisconsin West contenders, and the best chance to unseat the Badgers. Since the East/West divisions were formed, the Wildcats actually lead the Badgers 2-1 in head to head play, although UW beat them last year. The September 30th matchup in Madison could be a big time game.
In terms of the East, Connelly predicts the following projected finish, which is very similar to what happened last year, with the differences being one-position flips between OSU/PSU and Maryland/MSU:
- Ohio State
- Penn State
- Michigan
- Indiana
- Michigan State
- Maryland
- Rutgers
Franklin is not a good coach
McSorley is extremely over-rated, and the throw the ball up as far as you can plan will fail this year without Goodwin. Not sure who his backup is, but I could see whispers by end of year. Barkely is a beast and will get his, however with our strength on the dline, and hole pluggers my guess is we bottle him up and keep him under 150 APY. 33-21 Meeeiichigan
Exactly. McSorley will come back to earth this year. Both of their lines are mediocre. We should be able to protect Speight, and on D we should swallow their OL. Barkley is great, but we've always handled him. Our coaching is far superior. You don't lose very often when you have an advantage on both lines and in coaching, no matter where the game is played.
Michigan lost to a worse team than PSU will be with a likely beter team than we will be in Iowa in an easier road enviroment, I'm not exactly notchign that game at psu as a win.
Okay. So?
You can come up with many different lines of logic if you go back and compare this Penn State game to every Michigan win or loss ever on the road. Comparing this game to 2016 Iowa, or any other previous road game, isn't very productive or indicative. Can only predict based on what's in front of you with the current year's version of each team. Also, if we play that Iowa game 10 times, we win 9. If this PSU game is a toss up (I'd actually put it 60/40 us), we only need to roll a 1, 2, or 3.
but it won't be the 2014-2016 versions either. If there was one place where the NCAA sanctions hit hardest, it was definitely OL. PSU could only sign so many players and OL really felt the brunt.
Obviously OL takes a long-time to rebuild, too, as HS players are very very rarely in a position to be a quality starter in their first 2 years on campus.
Anyway, 2017 was always the year that I was targeting for PSU's OL to be "back to an above-average B1G unit." I may be wrong. But my sense is many non-PSU folk are looking at the OL from a 2014-2016 lens.
Another thing which I think non-PSU folk sometimes miss: the "arm punt" offense which many deride was partially by design: a function of an average OL. Good OCs play to their strengths and away from their weaknesses, of course. If the OL does improve, you'll likely see less of the "arm punt" offense.
Maryland has the toughest Big Ten Schedule, in all likelihood.
Road games at Wisconsin and Minnesota, and a home game with Northwestern. MSU plays both Northwestern and Minnesota, but gets Iowa at home instead of Wisconsin, and Iowa projects to be worse this year than last year.
Plus, the head to head game will be in East Lansing this year between the two teams.
Fair point.
I guess this article starts with a Power Ranking with the tiers and then also goes into a projected standings, which are two different things.
Connelly has MSU 57th and Maryland 72nd in S&P+ so record or schedule aside, his projections are that MSU will be the better team. That does seem a little optimistic for MSU and more pessimistic than you'd expect for Maryland, but as others have noted his projections don't take into account all of their attrition, despite one of the factors being returning production.
My guess is that where it's off is that the algorithm essentially says, how good were you last year, how much of what you were last year is coming back (the algorithm should capture this for them), and how good are the classes expected to be that replace the production not returning (does not capture this)? The formula assumes upperclassmen leave and are replaced by recent recruiting classes, but for them, an abnormally high proportion of their attrition is from underclassmen that should still be in the program.
includes not only the team's performance from last year - but also (at consdierably smaller weights, but not a weight of zero either) a team's performance from 2 years prior and 3 years prior.
Connelly's a smart guy - he's including those variables for a reason. They have at least SOME proven ability to predict and some positive correlation.
But that may be a factor in MSU's projected S&P+ for 2017. Obviously, MSU was very very good in both 2014 & 2015.
and the purpose of doing that, i.e. the reasons it's correlated with future success, is essentially that it gives you a better idea of how good you were the previous year. Assuming most players are the same, it acts to smooth out the randomness of a single season that can be caused by injuries and such.
He points out this year, that he had been weighting previous seasons too much in the algorithm and now that carries only a factor of 19 percent compared to 56 percent of returning production from the season prior.
I don't think psu is a top 5 team like some have them but this board is also really underrating them because of the final score of the psu michigan game last year. The biggest difference is PSU's defence is a lot better when healthy than this board gives them credit for, and while McSorley threw up a lot of 50/50 balls to Goodwin their returning receiver production isn't actually that bad. I don't think their offense will take a massive step forward but I don't think it will fall back as much as some predict. They also have an incredibly easy schedule. It takes a Michigan homer to predict Michigan over PSU when you factor in the game this year being a night game in Happy Valley and Michigan having the harder schedule by having to travel to Wisconsin.
Well I think we are all homers here...
With regards to their defense, they only bring back one player (Cabinda) that they were missing in their blowout loss to us a year ago. Both DEs are gone, both non-Cabinda LBs are gone, their top CB Reid is out for the year. 1 good MLB and 1 good S can't alone make up a good defense. Now, their replacements may end up being good, but it's sill to predict that they will have a good defense based on what is known right now. Florida, Wisconsin, OSU will certainly be better on defense than Penn State. Air Force could be more formidable if they give up fewer big plays. Penn State's D will be good enough to win the good majority of their games, but it is not one of the 3 toughest on our schedule and it's not markedly improved from the defense we put 49 on last year.
Penn State does not "have an incredibly easy schedule", at least in Big Ten play.
They have to play on the road at Iowa, a place that we know is tough to play at, and they also have to play at Northwestern (a team poised to be a potential surprise Big Ten West winner). Then, they host Nebraska at home.
If anything, our crossover schedule is easier because of the anchor that a game against Purdue is on your strength of schedule.
All of this prognostication is fun and kills time and all, but does anyone else have the same nagging feeling as me when reading these threads that until we beat Ohio State, nothing else matters?
Ah, good ole Castle Grayskull. So much innocence in those days. Except for that total babe from my youth, She-Ra
" it was hard finding a worthy Michigan State defender for this list"
has that part right though.
to come out with his rankings before being able to fully digest the draftageddon results.
We'll be the best 10-3 team in the country.
Again.
I cant wait until penn state goes 2-2 to start the season....dont buy that shit at all.
Wisconsin is vulnerable to be challenged by somebody in the West, but I go back and forth on who that is. I think Northwestern has the highest floor, Nebraska has the highest ceiling, Minnesota (with its massive change in coach and personality) has the widest range between ceiling and floor, and Iowa has the smallest range.
I tend to agree with him here - I have to think someone will take swipes at Wisconsin for the top of the Big Ten West throughout the season. As for Iowa, surely Brian Ferentz can make that offense look less Greg Davis-ish and increase their range ever so slightly, right?
It was 9 times, but it arguably would've been 11 if we played them every year like we do now, as the only two off years during that time were 2003 and 2004, both years Michigan won the conference and years in which Penn State went 3-9 and 4-7.
Currently, we've won 3 in a row (although it should be 4 if we could've made a damn FG on one out of three tries in 2013....)
If Penn State is going to prevent another long term streak, this would be the year they'd likely do it, as they should be favorites at home. However, if we can push it to four in a row with a win this year, I don't see them beating us in 2018 in Ann Arbor with how much we return, and by 2019 the Harbaugh machine will be fully rolling.
2017 is definitely PSU's best shot at Michigan in Harbaugh's first 5 years.