CALM BEFORE THE CONFERENCE SCHEDULE

NOTE: The format will alter slightly next week – conference averages will become the focus of the remaining entries in this series with cumulative averages and the OOC / Conference breakdown probably being the format of the entry which comes immediately after the regular season ends in December.

This past weekend was a relatively light one for the Big Ten, with only six teams active, four of them playing against a fellow conference opponent (i.e., two conference games). Altogether, it makes the record of the conference 1-1 in the non-conference games, with Iowa and Ohio State being the victors in the two in-conference games.

SCORING OFFENSE AND DEFENSE:

There hasn’t been much of a shift on, well, most metrics, but we’ll go over these briefly all the same. Ohio State still tends to be the most prolific scoring team in the Big Ten, with Indiana and the schedule of teams that play even less defense than even they do trailing by only a few points. Once again, the two stingiest teams are Michigan State and Penn State, with Purdue being the stingiest with itself, as you can see on the differential graph.

TOTAL OFFENSE AND DEFENSE:

Once again, not much movement here due to the light week – nine teams still average over 400 yards per game on offense, with Michigan being the ninth of those nine. The more notable division here is in yards allowed, where Michigan sits in the top six with some fairly respectable numbers then there is Minnesota followed by air in a lot of cases. On the yards per play differentials, you can see that it is basically still Wisconsin, some guys and then Purdue.

RUSHING OFFENSE AND DEFENSE:

There are not really any shocking twists in the Big Ten rushing game right now – Wisconsin, Ohio State and Nebraska run the ball quite a bit normally and do it very well, so the top quartile right now is expected. Michigan is ninth, but with a number that actually isn’t terrible if it is a seasonal average. When it comes to stopping the run, Purdue is bad at it, but Indiana is worse and the Boilermakers must at least enjoy that.

PASSING OFFENSE AND DEFENSE:

The passing averages are another area where it is one team – Indiana in this case – and then a large chunk of the conference within earshot of one another, all followed by an underperformer – Minnesota here. As for defending the pass, Nebraska and Northwestern are the worst at it so far, and as you might guess, Michigan State is the most successful at it to date.

THIRD DOWNS:

When we’re talking about getting third downs, there are four teams in the Big Ten that are converting half of theirs or better right now – Illinois, Iowa, Northwestern and Indiana, with Michigan at a reasonable 48.1%. On the flip side of the ball, only two teams are allow more than 40% of third downs to be converted, and those would be Northwestern and Purdue.  On the differential graph, you can see the ongoing progress of Boilerquest as well.

SPECIAL TEAMS ITEMS: