The Big Ten Is Unkind To Us Sometimes: The Weekly Summary
THE BIG TEN IS UNKIND TO US SOMETIMES: WEEKLY SUMMARY
So…well….how is everyone?
One thing I have changed at the request of a few people is that Michigan’s averages are now highlighted in yellow. Hopefully, this will make it easier for anyone who reads this simply to get a gauge on Michigan, but also for those who want the immediate picture of where Michigan football within the Big Ten on these metrics.
SCORING OFFENSE AND DEFENSE:
There isn’t a lot of movement here even despite our own Saturday – we still sit in a group of teams that can definitely score a fair amount, so there is that at least. Ohio State, Indiana, Wisconsin and Nebraska round out that group, or more precisely, we round out the group they are in. Michigan sits comfortably behind Northwestern when it comes to scoring defense, a little south of the conference mean.
TOTAL OFFENSE AND DEFENSE:
The Michigan State game was definitely not our best moment, but hey, look at the numbers, right? Actually, we’re doing OK here as a team. We gain yards at about the average pace of the conference and we are above average on defense. The deeper dive, however, is in the tempo-free area and you can see there that while we’re in positive territory, it isn’t by a lot.
RUSHING OFFENSE AND DEFENSE:
For Michigan specifically, it is the same story that it has been all year and you can see it below – we have trouble running the ball consistently and now wished that sacks did not count against rushing yardage in the NCAA. However, we’re still pretty good at stopping the run. We played a team on Saturday, however, that gives up less than half of what we do on the ground, and that’s saying a lot.
PASSING OFFENSE AND DEFENSE:
As we figured would occur with Gardner at the helm, we’re pretty decent through the air and have the 4th most prolific passing attack in the Big Ten. On the other hand, those of us who have chewed our cuticles to the knuckle over the pass rush will not want to look at the passing defense average below. We are sitting right between Northwestern and Indiana right now.
THIRD DOWN DIFFERENTIAL:
Michigan took a tumble in this metric after Saturday, so this will not look very pretty either for some. We were near the top in converting third downs for most of the season actually, and we fell all the way to 8th place in the conference. The differential will show that we’re starting to fight this battle to a near-draw, which is a little worrisome.
FIRST DOWNS:
We still average more first downs than we allow, but the gap here has also narrowed after this past Saturday.
SPECIAL TEAMS:
