Mid-Week Metrics: Mythbusters: Manball edition
Power. Strength. Toughness. Big Ten Football.
This is the new (old) Michigan football. What this actually looks like remains to be seen, but I wanted to test out some of the core tenants and clichés of the Manball philosophy to see if there power still rings true today.
Bring on the charts!
Check here for a run down of the background behind the methods.
Myth 1: Passing too much on offense makes your defense ill-prepared for the rigors of Big Ten play.
I tested this myth for both all college football and the Big Ten exclusively. If it’s going to be true anywhere, it’s going to be true in the Big Ten.
To judge how much a team passed, I looked only at first half plays where teams haven’t made half-time adjustments and should be executing their intended game plan and not reacting much to score and time considerations. I then compared the quantity of first half passes against the defensive success. First I looked at all of the FBS:
That’s a whole lot of buck shot and not a lot of trend. There is a slight trend toward more passing = better defense but the effect is not statistically significant.
But as I mentioned earlier, the Big Ten is different than the rest of FBS, it is the nativeland of Manball. So if you look at Big Ten teams in Big Ten games over the last eight years, does the picture look different?
Here at the least the slope is going in the “right” direction but the effect is still small and insignificant. Even if it was statistically significant, the difference between the low (10 passes per first half) and the high (25 passes per first half) is worth one game a season, an advantage sure, but nothing monumental.
Finding: Unlikely
Myth 2: Long Scoring Drives Rest a Defense
Unfortunately I don’t have any good tools to tell how rested a defense gets, but I can look at the outcomes of subsequent drives following a scoring drive of various lengths. Does a defense have better outcomes after a long or short scoring drive, does any of it matter at all?
Looks like the rest is more beneficial to the offense than the defense. Defenses give up 20% more points after a 15 play scoring drive by their offense than a 1 play scoring drive.
The usual correlation does not equal causation applies. Worse teams could be more likely to score on longer drives than good teams. Other issues could be at play but I felt comfortable that this overall myth does not hold true.
Finding: 
Myth 3: Running Teams Do Better in the Red Zone Than Passing Teams
I had two ways to look at this one. Is it about running the ball in general, or is it about running the ball once you are in the red zone? They are usually the same thing but I wanted to test out both to see if one rang more true than the other.
First, comparing how much teams run between the 20’s to red zone effectiveness, measured in [points on red zone trips]/[7*red zone trips]:
This looks a lot like Myth 1. Some slope but no significance. Even at a significant r sqaured, the difference between 30% rushing and 60% rushing is worth less than a touchdown in red zone production over the course of an entire season.
Here is what it looks like when you change the x-axis to reflect playing calling within the red zone:
Slope increases, as does r squared although there is still a ton of noise.
The case is not strong, and there is definitely more than one way to skin a cat in the red zone but I would leave the door open on this one:
Finding: Plausible, but evidence weak
Myth 4: Offenses With Running Quarterbacks Break Down As The Season Progresses
This one is probably not a manball myth, necessarily, but a good one to look at. Let's go straight to the you-know-what.
Did not see this one coming. Sure last year clouded my mind a little bit but I did not expect QB running offenses to be this dominant. That’s a very real gap between QB running offenses and non-QB running offenses.
The weekly data here is a bit noisy but it looks as though offenses built around running QBs peak in early November but are still pretty strong come bowl season. The overall trend roughly mirrors statue QB offenses although the statues do have a bigger uptick come bowl season than other offenses.
Finding: Busted
Myth 5: Offenses With Running QBs Have Worse Defenses
Not a lot of fancy numbers or charts on this one. Only real numbers of note are that the 100+ carry group from Myth 4 have an average defense of that is 0.2 points per game worse than then 0-99 group, that’s worth less than a game a decade.
Finding: Busted
Myth 6: Run Oriented Offenses Do Better In The Fourth Quarter
This is one of the key tenants of a run-based offense. The ability to hold the ball with a lead late. Unfortunately the NCAA doesn’t provide time stamps for plays and so I don’t have them in my database, making a good estimation of clock killing impossible to determine from my data. All I can provide analysis on is the ability of different combinations of run and pass to score points, not run out the clock.
Partially because objectives change in the fourth quarter, but the likelihood of scoring is the lowest in the fourth of any given quarter. That means all situations will tilt toward the negative in my analysis. What I can look at is how much teams run in the first three quarters and compare that with their overall performance in the fourth quarter when the game is within two touchdowns.
I hope I didn’t just give away the ending, but if you are going to be a running team you better come into the fourth quarter with a lead. One of the strongest correlations of the day points to strongly diminished returns in the fourth quarter for teams heavily invested in the run.
Finding: Busted without a lead, inconclusive running out the clock
What Does This Mean For The Future of Michigan Manball?
Right now the evidence still points to Manball being more of a philosophical theme than a practice of playcalling but that doesn’t mean it’s not going to happen either. Nothing I have seen indicates that it can’t win a lot of games but it is definitely far from a Decided Schematic Advantage. As all good Michigan fans know, Manball can be effective in most games as long as you have better talent and you aren’t playing from behind.
August 18th, 2011 at 8:44 PM ^
Great work as usual. I do wonder about the whole "running teams win games" mantra, since good teams tend to be good throwing AND running the ball; that's why they are good. Teams that are one-dimensional tend to be exposed by good defenses, and over time they suffer as teams figure out whatever they do well. For example, Purdue's spread attack used to confound B1G teams that weren't used to it, but toward the end even mediocre defenses were having some success slowing them down. Those Boilermaker teams couldn't run the ball to save their lives some seasons, and as a result teams started to load up on DBs and dare the QB to pick them apart. It didn't work with Drew Brees, but as be begat Orton who begat Painter who begat whoever, you saw it fail.
I won't make this about RR because I don't think the Mathlete was going that way, but these numbers prove that the failure of his reign wasn't on the offensive end. I have full faith that Borges & Co. will take advantage of the players available and produce a good offense; it will be up to Mattison to turn those players on defense into a cohesive unit.
August 18th, 2011 at 8:54 PM ^
Nothing above proves anything about Rich Rodriguez one way or the other since the data isn't specific to Rich Rodriguez or Michigan. It doesn't prove that he failed offensively. It doesn't prove that he failed defensively. It doesn't even prove he failed at all. You could arguably state that based on the post, RR's offensive methods generally work in college football. That's probably as strong of a statement you could make if you don't make any assumptions. Whether they already did or would have worked in the future at Michigan have absolutely nothing to do with Mathlete's post.
August 18th, 2011 at 10:44 PM ^
Perhaps the Mathelete didn't mean that post that way, but the whole "Manball" theme is heavily slanted toward the Hoke = Bad Hire camp. The use of stats and charts and regressions to tell us that Rich Rod was really a blazing success while Hoke is a fool for his beliefs is getting a bit old. Ask yourself what is really the point of taking a bunch of things that Hoke never said and disproving them if you don't mean this a shot at Hoke?
August 19th, 2011 at 1:43 AM ^
You're preaching to the preacher, you're not going to find me railing against anything Hoke has done or said to date. As if the manball thing wasn't absurd enough, though, Bronxblue trying to claim that Mathlete's post proved RR's offense was successful took it a step further. That's all I was trying to point out with that post.....that even if the manball meme was applicable to Hoke (most of us know it's not by now, except for Cook and his legion of doooooooom), Mathlete's data did nothing to "prove" that RR was good, bad, or indifferent in any aspect.
August 19th, 2011 at 9:53 AM ^
In what strange, bizarro, completely fucked up world have we teleported to in which "passing offense" describes what Rodriguez runs?
The vindication of passing offenses applies not a lick to Rich Rodriguez, who ran 59.1% of the time last year, while Hoke ran a near perfect 50/50 split.
This is a heap of irrelvencies tagged with an anti-Hoke buzzword despite the fact that constructs it tests have nothing to do with either Hoke or RR.
The framework here is "here are some numbers about football".
August 19th, 2011 at 9:55 AM ^
The success they had wasn't from being one-dimensional, but rather from using an offense that wasn't familiar to Big Ten DCs. Once they had some exposure to it, the novelty had worn off, and talent and coaching became more of a factor again.
Purdue has produced quite a bit of NFL talent over the years (which frankly is pretty surprising, especially when you consider that quite a bit of it has been on defense, and it's been a long time since Purdue's defense has been good), but none of that talent was at WR. Only two guys in the spread era have made it to the NFL, Brian Alford and Vinny Sutherland, and neither had a game with more than 1 reception in the NFL. Anyway, without a great QB running the offense, and without solid talent at WR, there wasn't much to make the spread a threat, so for the most part, it's become no more effective than Purdue's offense was before Tiller's arrival.
Purdue's running game varied between reasonably productive and not so much, but those fluctuations didn't reflect the team's success nearly as much as the skill of the guy running the offense. In 2005, for example, Purdue was getting 5.4 YPC from its top two backs (234 carries total from Void and Sheets), but the two-headed monster at QB wasn't very good (only 5.9 AY/A from Kirsch and 4.5 from Painter), and Purdue didn't break .500. The previous year, the top two RBs were closer to 4.0 YPC, but with 9.0 AY/A from Orton, Purdue was 7-5.
In 2008, Kory Sheets had over 1100 yards at 4.8 YPC, but Painter managed just 5.7 AY/A and Purdue sank to 4-8 ... anyway, you get the idea. I think it would be more accurate to say that once Brees graduated and DCs had more experience against the spread, they realized that it was just average WRs in space, and with faster DBs, they could challenge weaker QBs more, and so you get what Purdue has now, which is a bad offense for the most part.
I don't disagree with your general point, that an offense built around only rushing or only passing is more vulnerable than a balanced offense, just that Purdue isn't a good example of a one-dimensional offense.
August 18th, 2011 at 9:05 PM ^
The idea of Manball isn't just about power-running or toughness. It's about a certain mentality. The mentality of "We have a certain way of doing things, you know that we are going to do it and it doesn't matter that you know this, because we are better than you and you can't stop us".
This is fine if you have a certain level of satisfaction in your team. it is fine if you are Michigan from 1968 to 2007, because you can out-recruit just about everyone and are garaunteed to have a winning record simply because very few can compete with your level of ability. However, it's those tricky games against innovative teams (Oregon, App. State) or equally/slightly more talented teams (OSU/USC) in which this mentality fails and often leads to embarassment and frustration.
There in, you see why Rodriguez was hired: because this approach is not enough to be an elite team, unless you can recruit at such a high level that you can out-talent everyone all the time. Due to location, higher standards and lack of in-state talent, this is impossible at Michigan and thus makes me wary of a return to the way things were. As much as everyone will say after the the RR experiment "See! You should have been happy with what we had", I just remember feeling let down a lot.
I remember being embarassed by a bad OSU team in 2004. I remember losing game after game in the last minutes in 2005. I remember feeling like our 2006 team was a fraud after we were outclassed by our equals in the final two games. I remember feeling like the 2007 season was over before it began.
Remember that article on Yahoo after OSU was beaten by USC in 2009? It is comical in hindsight because it lauded Rodriguez and Forcier and demonized Tressel for using Pryor the wrong way and we all know how things turned out for that quartet. But one point that was made is this: The games that matter are the big ones. If you are an OSU or a Michigan, you can out-talent teams to the point where 8-9 wins should be a garauntee. It's those last 2-3 difficult games you need to win to prove you are elite. And there is the perfect description of what was lacking with Michigan football when the switch to Rodriguez was made.
Manball at Michigan can only go so far.
August 18th, 2011 at 9:14 PM ^
Agreed. The general disaster that was RichRod doesn't change certain historical details from the Carr years, viz:
* When a young wide receiver was inserted, Michigan almost always ran the ball.
* On running plays, the RB would almost always go in the same direction as the pre-snap fullback bunny hop.
* As the 'blog noted, Michigan's W-L records when leading / trailing going into the fourth quarter were disturbingly similar.
Here's hoping that Hoke doesn't prove to be Lloyd Lite. I honestly don't think that will happen; he's done a great job so far.
August 18th, 2011 at 9:32 PM ^
Agree with your agreement. I recall vividly, while at the 2007 Rose Bowl, thinking that Carr/DeBord had literally lost their minds after the 19th failed zone left play in a row. Honestly, I thought that they both had cracked under the strain.
This is why the Rodriguez hire was so exciting to me, and why I'm so sad it didn't work out. Football, after all, is entertainment, and goddamn if I was not entertained by DeBord. On the bright side, I think that Borges soooooooooooo != DeBord and that Hoke is throwing red meat to the grumpy grumps who got tired of losing (understandably) but has no intention of returning to "we're gonna run zone left and see if you can stop us oops you did now let's punt from your 35 yard line."
Also, I hear this Mattison fella can coach defense, so that's nice.
August 18th, 2011 at 10:14 PM ^
A few other historical details:
Lloyd won 70% of his games.
He won a national title and 5 conference titles.
You had a generally positive expectation that Michigan would win every game it played, save the Rose Bowl. Every loss except to Ohio State was normally an "upset."
You had a belief Michigan could, and would, come back to win games in the fourth quarter, because of the resolve of the coaching staff.
The teams normally improved as the season went on.
August 18th, 2011 at 10:38 PM ^
Lloyd was a very good coach. That's true. I probably should always preface every post with that.
However, as I stated above, winning that 70% is not the point. It's the big games that matter, that prove whether or not your program is truly elite. Over the second half of his career, Lloyd and his teams did not prove that. It's not even worth arguing over because it's 100% true and you know it.
As for the belief in a comeback coming from the coaching staff?? Really? Certainly not.
In fact, my belief stemmed solely from the fact that "This IS Michigan" and that came from coaches prior. I'm baffled where you come up with that nonsense.
Edit: and teams improved as the season went on?? And then what, nose-dived the last two games practically every year?
August 19th, 2011 at 6:48 AM ^
I think you're going "straw man" there. I don't think your parent poster denied that Lloyd had any success at UMich. He was merely pointing out some imperfections.
- - -
The simple-minded here (a group from which you're excluded, btw) tend to view RichRod's failure as proof that everything the prior regime(s) did was perfect. Similarly, RichRod's biggest supporters from the beginning seemed to believe that Lloyd was a nincompoop.
August 18th, 2011 at 10:22 PM ^
This post is crazy, and I don't have the energy to fisk the crap out of it.
Regarding 2006, you consider losing by 3 on the road to the number one team after the program's icon died to be "outclassed?" Give it a break, if that game was in Ann Arbor they'd have won.
Do you really think the recruiting landscape has changed so much since 2007 that Michigan can no longer compete without a spread run philosophy? Haven't Hoke, Hecklinski, Mattison, Montgomery, Borges, Funk and Smith blown a shotgun blast through that idea with their recruiting the past six months?
Don't overstate the reason Rich Rodriguez was hired at Michigan. He was hired because Greg Schiano turned the job down. He was hired because he was sick of working at his alma mater (red flag #1). He was hired because his agent was told to find him a new job at a prestige program (red flag #2). He was hired because Bill Martin had no hiring plan (red flag #3).
Don't act like this was a planned move by Michigan. Rich Rod was hired because of circumstance and desperation, which is a nice way to characterize his entire time in Ann Arbor.
August 18th, 2011 at 11:18 PM ^
You have an incredibly biased opinion that refuses to consider anything but what you've concocted and it shows. Try looking at things from the middle rather than standing firmly on one side.
Losing by three? Basically correct, but out of context when considering the circumstances in how that final score came about. We were down ten, scored a touchdown late and attempted an onside kick. We were outgained by 100 yards and gifted turnovers. We were outclassed. And really, if Lloyd couldn't get his team fired up to win that for Bo, that's on him.
As for recruiting, I'm not sure what you are going on about. My point was that Michigan should be able recruit well enough to out-talent Purdue, Minnesota, Illinois and Iowa and garauntee 8-9 wins a year, but when it comes to being able to out-recruit USC, Texas, SEC whoever, it's probably not going to happen and thus the philosophy of "us simply being better than you and we will win" will not fly in games against those elite schools.
As for Rodriguez being hired, I'm certain that you have little clue to what you are talking about as you weren't involved in the hiring. But go on and pretend you know the facts.
August 19th, 2011 at 12:47 AM ^
It's always funny to me how any post remotely criticizing Lloyd gets negged late at night. You'd think his ardent supporters would be in bed by nine.
August 19th, 2011 at 1:49 AM ^
Funny to see a RR-til-I-die guy like yourself make the argument that the final margin was not indicitive of how the game played out. Typically RR guys like you are on the other side of that argument, defending all of the useless yards and garbage time touchdowns Michigan was able to put up against quality opponents in blowouts the last few years.
August 18th, 2011 at 10:27 PM ^
I am trying to think when, in the history of the world, has so much time, effort, and (virtual) ink has been spent on one quote uttered by one man who actually never said what he was quoted as saying. (Brian said Manball, not Hoke.)
Brent Farve saying he was going to retire is the only thing I can think of that comes close.
August 18th, 2011 at 11:33 PM ^
Great work, but I think you are straining a bit to use the data to prove your preconceived ideas. Particuarly with regards to myth #2 . I do not think that looking at the next drive is a particualrly sensible way to test whether a rested defense is more effective. Rather it is a cummulative effect over the course of a game. It would be much more interesting to see if time of possesion in the first 2 quarters is related to scoring in the 4th quarter in close games. Or even more interesting in the final two minutes.
With all due respect I also can't agree with your dismisive conclusion to myth one that
"the difference between the low (10 passes per first half) and the high (25 passes per first half) is worth one game a season, an advantage sure, but nothing monumental."
In a 12 game season 1 additional win is huge! That's the difference between a B1G championship game appearance and a third tier bowl.
Again, I enjoy your work even if I don't always agree - Thanks! and keep it coming.
August 18th, 2011 at 11:33 PM ^
Great work, but I think you are straining a bit to use the data to prove your preconceived ideas. Particuarly with regards to myth #2 . I do not think that looking at the next drive is a particualrly sensible way to test whether a rested defense is more effective. Rather it is a cummulative effect over the course of a game. It would be much more interesting to see if time of possesion in the first 2 quarters is related to scoring in the 4th quarter in close games. Or even more interesting in the final two minutes.
With all due respect I also can't agree with your dismisive conclusion to myth one that
"the difference between the low (10 passes per first half) and the high (25 passes per first half) is worth one game a season, an advantage sure, but nothing monumental."
In a 12 game season 1 additional win is huge! That's the difference between a B1G championship game appearance and a third tier bowl.
Again, I enjoy your work even if I don't always agree - Thanks! and keep it coming.
August 18th, 2011 at 11:39 PM ^
As the Interwebs will allow....and Rich still isn't coming back as coach. It didn't work, even if the charts said it should. (Show me a chart that explains that, and we're getting somewhere). Get a grip over that fact, people.
August 19th, 2011 at 12:46 AM ^
The main point is that many of the myths that people seem to believe are necessary to win in the Big Ten aren't necessarily true.
I brought up Rodriguez because this ties into many of the more inane reasons people have for feeling he was a failure. You yourself have used many of these arguments (the spread, Denard, etc.) when the reality is his failure had little to do with such things and more to do his failures off the field, which in turn translated into failures on the field. His time here holds some relevancy to the main post.
August 19th, 2011 at 9:30 AM ^
If by "failures off the field" you mean "firing Shafer and hiring a head of hair as his replacement," having 3 1/2 coaches on defense in 2010, and having redundant coaches on offense (Magee, Smith and RR), then I agree with you.
But nothing off the field caused the defensive hell in 2010 that wasn't Rodriguez's 100 percent responsibility.
August 19th, 2011 at 10:59 AM ^
Really?
Isn't that exactly what I just said?
It's funny to me how the people who want others to "let it go" cannot at all except any opinion other than their own: That RR was the single worst thing that ever happened to Michigan football and nothing good could have possibly ever come from it.
August 19th, 2011 at 2:22 PM ^
Because I just didn't see the use to respond to them all.
But as Chitown pointed out better than I ever could, many of the "myths" aren't things anyone has ever purported to believe, and seem to be propping up the failed past once again. (Like you're attributing to me...I'm not sure where I've ever said the spread, or Denard couldn't work. I've said time and time again I don't care about what offense we run, I want to see a great defense. Then have fun on offense. And I haven't said since 2009 that Denard couldn't be a QB - back when everyone was saying it - I've only ever said he can't have the crap beat out of him every game at his size, stay in, and win games for us. Just that his carries and straight ahead no option runs cut down).
And you get to my point. I'm not sure what we learn about the past by analyzing what should have gone right, but didn't. And still left to wonder...why, why WHY? That'd be like instead of Desimated Defense articles we were getting charts showing why, in theory, the numbers show that all of Lloyd's recruits should have made an AWESOME defense...but didn't. If we got 1/10 the number of post, charts, graphs, analyzes, and whatever else on WHY "uber-offensive genius who should have succeeded because all these charts say his system should have" failed so misterably, maybe that's something we could learn from. Because you learn from history your mistakes so you don't repeat them. What you learn from mistakes that really, really should have been successes, because look how it plots on my chart, doesn't really teach me anything to avoid in the future. It just makes me go "huh, why didn't it work?" even more.
August 19th, 2011 at 12:59 AM ^
Is just tired and played out. I enjoy your posts, Mathlete, but come on...we all know MANBALL = rhetorical device and general-tendency-towards-aggressive-line-play for Hoke, and not much else.
Schematically, it's even more threadbare, as for Hoke's crew it seems to consist of running a moderately larger number of power run plays from the I (which we DID run here and there last year) and installing a...wait for it...PASSING-based offense mixed in with copious quantities of our speed-running-and-vertical-passing offense from last year.
So why are we still debating the concept of MANBALL at all? Why is this an interesting or even relevant topic of conversation?
Sorry, but seriously...
August 19th, 2011 at 1:13 AM ^
Over the last 3 years I've become quite sick of what stuff looks like on paper. I don't care about Rich Rod's excuses, decimated defense bullshit and Mathletes PAN statistics. If anything you guys have proven that all the offseason studying and charts do not mean a damn thing. Can't wait till the season starts and we win games on the field and we stop listening to all the speculation.
August 19th, 2011 at 1:57 AM ^
Damn skippy. Problem is, when we start winning, these same over-analyzing stat junkies will find ways to discredit the wins and use their models to say we are "getting lucky" or getting better results than what the numbers should be allowing for. God I hate paper sports....
August 19th, 2011 at 7:43 AM ^
It doesn't matter what play you call...Its all about execution ..Or lack of......
August 19th, 2011 at 8:36 AM ^
The only stat I'm interested in(other than W-L) looking at come January 2012 is first downs. This will be the most revealing number in respect to the "success" or failure of the incoming offense. We've all heard the expression "playing downhill" and anyone who's ever played even varsity high school football, especially on defense, understands the mental/emotional effect of surrendering first downs. As a defensive player at that level I know without a doubt that if an offense gets a quick score from a broken/gadget play you experience a few seconds of "grief" followed by a "lets go out and get em next time" uptick in emotion. However if a team is just getting 1st down after first down it will break you. Evidence of this is the Michigan defense of 2010. A first down is a victory for an offense and a defeat for a defense. When they begin to pile up its like a death of 1000 cuts. At the midpoint of Wisconsin's 20 something consecutive running plays, you could have substituted the entire Wisonsin offense with EMU and theres a pretty good chance they would have kept moving the ball on us. Momentum in the game of football is an emotional thing. I know that pisses the math/chart/FEI maniacs here off because the cannot grasp or quantify it. Thing is if you've played the game(albiet not at the div. 1 level) you just instinctually know what it feels like and how it effects outcomes.
First downs gentleman, thats where you begin the process of victory over your opponent. Thats "MANBALL". Doesnt matter how you get them(pass, run, option, wing T, veer) just that you impose your will on your opponent repeatedly and with consistency.
August 19th, 2011 at 9:07 AM ^
"As all good Michigan fans know, Manball can be effective in most games as long as you have better talent and you aren’t playing from behind."
You can't play manball (which for me is power running on first and second and maybe play action on third) from behind. Just doesn't work real well.
What comes to mind is the tosu teams with Troy Smith at QB....they spread it out and let Troy use his talents. I don't think anyone was questioning their toughness...their athleticsm on a national scale, maybe, but not their toughness.
I would also say that Alabama under Saban was "Manball"....but they were effective.
My point. Either works. It depends on how talented you are. Plus the sign of a good coach is using what you have to be most effective. Pragmatism is the key. I think Hoke/Borges have shown they will do that.
August 19th, 2011 at 9:36 AM ^
"Myth 5: Offenses With Running QBs Have Worse Defenses"
When did anyone, and I do mean anyone, ever say this? Was it a random commenter? I just don't get this myth specifically, and this exercise in general. How do we normalize for injuries, quality of opponent, or the countless other components of college football that make it a complex and unpredictable game?
August 19th, 2011 at 12:48 PM ^
Besides, arguments in favor of "statue" QBs tend to come from PASSING OFFENSE partisans. You know, people who want the QB to PASS MORE.
As much as I like and respect the Mathlete, this is an example of the cognitive dissonance in this post. These "MANBALL myths" are:
1. largely made up by people who position themselves as anti-MANBALL or pro-spread
2. basically irrelevant to evaluating our current coaching staff, which has shown itself to be flexible, practical and really not terribly ideological about how the offense is run
FTR: we're running a hybrid west coast pro-style/spread n' shred offense in 2011. NEITHER HALF OF THAT SAYS MANBALL.
August 19th, 2011 at 9:43 AM ^
August 19th, 2011 at 12:13 PM ^
Great stuff Mathlete.
August 19th, 2011 at 12:48 PM ^
It's broken down into teams where QB carries 100+, 50-99 and less than 50 times. Got some questions:
How many seasons of data are used?
In college sacks are counted as a running play. Did you leave sacks in or did you take sacks out?
If the play was a pass play but the QB ended up scrambling, did you leave that in or take that out?
The last two questions mainly concern whether the number of QB carries that you counted were actually plays called where the QB was the designated runner or whether it is a mix of plays that consist of a) designated plays with the QB designed to run, b) pass play that was a sack that ended up in the stats as a run and c) pass play that broke down and the QB ended up scrambling and thus what was supposed to be a pass play ended up in the stats as a running play.
August 19th, 2011 at 3:17 PM ^
...MOAR explosions and car crashes.
It already has a bunch of Busters constructed from straw, so no crash test dummies are required.
August 20th, 2011 at 2:17 PM ^
Sometimes the analysis around here is all "but it's SCIENCE!"...but usually a Mythbuster-style we're not really scientists we're just using it and missing gaping holes in logic while we're doing it type of study; presented as FACT, but usually just opinion backed by bad data and pretty points on a graph.
Comments