The thing is, I don't think Brian was taking a shot at Blueblooded.  If he was, then yeah, not really necessary in this forum.

My issue with points-per-possession is that it places the drives in somewhat of a vaccuum - you look at the number of drives, determine how many points were scored during them, and treats that as a static number. 

But there is context involved, and with a relatively small sample size (I think a single season, with lots of young players at key positions, is not a representative sample), you strip away the circumstances that are a very real part of this offense.  Let's say a team just scored on its 2nd straight long drive of the first half, gashing the defense in the process.  The offense will be sent out with the unstated goal of moving down the field quickly, to "answer" the other team with a TD-scoring drive.  While you would hope the coaching staff and the players would continue to run the offense as designed irrespective of the score, we all know that isn't the case.  Denard may keep the ball instead of handing off because he is trying to make a play, he might hold onto the ball too long waiting for a WR to get open down the seam instead of taking the shorter out, the coaches might call more passes, etc.  I think these circumstances are lost in any statistical analysis, and that creates an incomplete picture.  I do think that these higher-level stats should be part of any argument for and against this offense, but I think people sometimes fall back on them to justify their perspective instead of using them as a component for a completel opinion.

No problem. It isn't entirely exact because I don't have the time nor the inclination to go about subtracting penalty yards, etc.

It seems to me the diary at the center of this whole thing pointed to the points-per-possession metric specifically in Big 10 play. The problem with that metric is that it doesn't give a full view of how potent an offense is, but rather how well they execute, specifically the concept that the majority of Michigan's yardage has come when teams are playing vanilla defenses. 

I found this illogical and set out to prove the notion wrong. The only game where this holds weight is Wisconsin. Michigan State was a 1 score game at half and there was a RZ INT and a Missed FG in there. Iowa was 21-7 and there was a Missed FG and Punt in Iowa territory.

This offense is really, really good by pretty much any metric.

Sorry dude, but i remember having this exact same conversation with my dad after we found out who all was going to be leaving the team.  It was pretty evident our Offense was not going to be good the next year with everyone leaving and with RR changing the whole system.

Couple that with the fact that it took him a while at WVU i didn't think it would be any different here.

but I sure started thinking that in January of 2008, once it sank in that the bulk of the remaining talent on the team was graduating and there was almost nothing left.

I valiantly hoped that a bunch of guys who had displayed no particular talent to that point would somehow mature and step up to fill the rather large number of rather large holes, but by and large it never materialized.

I was pretty sure we'd lose to Utah to start the 2008 season, and while I didn't really expect 3-9, I wasn't too surprised by it.  It simply confirmed that the remaining talent was every bit as bad as I was afraid it was.

Once i knew threet or sheridan would be the starting QB, i knew we would have a tough time getting to a bowl no question..  No knock on those guys, but neither of them were fit for RR's system and i knew it was gonna be tough for them to win period.

I didn't expect them to only win 3 games, but i didn't think they would go to a bowl, maybe im the exception

my initial hopes were 6 wins in 2007 to keep the bowl streak alive.  i was hoping the D could do this on its own; knowing the O would not be good.  not so much.

year2: i was hoping for 8 wins.

year3: i was hoping to contend for big10 (9+ wins).

here we are in year 3 with 7 wins, hoping to get at least 8.  so UM is one year behind schedule according to my expectations (and i bet the expectations of a lot of others).  and year 4 could be like my year 3 hopes.  i think it would be premature to fire RR because our (my) expectations are behind by just one year.

i hope DB lets year 4 play out and if progress isnt made, then i cannot give any strong support for RR.  he would have had 4 years. 

I do not believe this is lashing out at blublooded and I think he should clarify that. That was an epic and very interesting diary.

I was referring more to a mood where you are liable to yell at your dog, your fanbase, your computer, your shoes, whatever.  Some things deserve it more than others but they're all bearing the brunt of a lot of frustration.

I dont' know if PPD is a fair way to compare the offense to other teams.

1.  First and most obviously: our FG kickers blow.  That is undoubtedly suppressing our PPD in relation to pretty much every other team.  I guess you could say that's part of the offense (I always thought of place kicking as special teams) but it's hardly the fault of Denard and Co, who are the ones gaining all the yards for use in that metric.

I wonder what each team's PPD would be if you removed points gained from FG from all Big10 teams (including UM)?  This would allow us to compare TDs per drive, which is a way to isolate the offense from the kicking units. 

2.   PPD have no correlation to the teams ability to move the ball down the field, simply with their ability to get points.  Take a hypothetical where through some stroke of brilliant luck, a team's offense always got the ball on the opponents 10 yard line (The other team's punter is really, REALLY terrible ^.^).  They would probably have a really high PPD, but that wouldn't tell you much about the ability of the offense because the field is so short.

Granted, I'd probably take that situation, but nobody has punters that bad in real life, right?  Ideally there'd be an even more refined metric to measure points per drive per yard from start of drive to end zone.  Or PPDPYFSoDtEZ for short.

3. I think we can all agree that the PRIMARY reason we're below .500 is the fact that our defense couldn't stop a bag of drowning kittens if it was about to crush another, EVEN SADDER bag of drowning kittens.  Defensive incompetence is more than sufficient to explain our losses. 

Blaming the offense when it's averaging 30+ points and 450-odd yards / game (compiled in post way below) is like the Kaiser blaming the Reichsarmee for not winning the Battle of Jutland*.  I mean, the german army almost never lost a battle in WWI but were starved out because the Kriegsmarine couldn't break the British blockade.

I'm not saying whether this is a reason to keep or fire RR.  That's a value judgement for each person to make.  But to say that the offense isn't good, despite most standard accepted statistical measures saying "They're pretty good,' by invoking a weird derivitive strikes me as a bit disingenious.  Especially when the defensive %@#$-storm is more than enough to explain our losses.

*This may have been the most esoteric similie I've ever made...but it kind of works.  Hell, I'm gonna run with it.

Oh stop with the dump "point system keeps people away" nonsense.  I have never once negged someone who made a coherent argument that I didn't agree with.  I will neg people who are clearly trolls or who spout off about something with little basis in reality, fact, and/or has t been brought up 100X before.  People don't post anything, don't really contribute, then act like they are "speaking to power" when they complain about not being taken seriously.  It's a message board on the internet - nobody is forcing you to post here, and the only thing the point system does is stop people from creating posts that have to be taken down later by the mods.  I don't always agree with Brian, but he has been right far more often than not, and I do think this blog represents a not-insignificant portion of the fanbse and, I hope, displays the type of logic and thoughtfulness you expect to see out of Brandon and co. 

EDIT:  Meant to be in response to OP of this thread.

I guess it depends on what Brian meant.  Did he mean that anyone that thinks the offense isn't enough of a reason to keep Rodriguez is a raving lunatic?  Or did he mean anyone who won't acknowledge that the offense has been a bright spot is a raving lunatic?  When someone starts throwing out terms like "raving lunatic" it woud probably behoove them to be a little clearer, since that's the kind of insult that tends to piss people off.

I've yet to run into ANYONE who thinks Rodriguez should be fired specifically for the offense.  What I HAVE run into are a lot of people who don't feel the offense is quite as fabulous as the numbers indicate, and feel that the offense is NOT a good enough reason to keep Rodriguez around in light of the rest of the problems with the team.  When you're sitting at halftime of the Wisconsin game looking up at 24-0, it is hard to argue with this line of reasoning.   If the argument in evaluating Rodriguez is  "ignore the defense and special teams, we have an unstoppable offense", then I think you have to expect the offense to at least score before the game is completely out of hand.

If someone is really trying to say our offense sucks or something like that, then yeah, that's pretty silly.   However, it is far from crazy to point out that our offense has been AWOL in the first half of our 4 losses, and that that is concerning and possibly an indication that the offense isn't the uber-unstoppable force that the numbers say it is. 

I'm pretty sure there would be almost no one saying anything about the offense if we weren't dealing with what is probably the worst defense in Michigan history and possibly the worst special teams too. 

reminds me of the post earlier this year "GERG CANT HEAR YOU HE HAS SUPER BOWL RINGS PLUGGING HIS EARS!"

My God you're a whining redacted. Get a backbone or scrub that quote from and picture of Bo. And get a different handle. I was here first.