Last year, I did (mostly) weekly stats reviews of the conference, but creating a dozen or so PNG files, uploading them to Photobucket then posting all of them in some order that made sense in the diary started to get cumbersome, so we’re going to do this a bit more corporate this year and run with a quick little scorecard (or three actually) built from the summary stats of the conference.

It also made sense to me to do this every three games as a “health check”, if you will, and of course after the first three, most Big Ten teams have had one or two tomato cans at least so this iteration probably will not be the most telling. The results so far are interesting all the same, however.

So, here’s passing, rushing and scoring offense and defense – you will note that in the parentheses, you can see how each is expressed.

Some items of note here:

-          “Indiana Syndrome”; ostensibly prolific offense and a defense that is just north of non-existent

-          Purdue is the only team that is, on average, giving up more points than it gets

-          Purdue would also be a fun game if we played them, looking at their rushing defense

-          Penn State probably would get more passing yard if Hackenburg were standing

-          Minnesota gets close to 350 yards per game on offense, and yet…

-          Michigan State’s passing defense average so far remembers Oregon well

How is Michigan doing though? Well, you can see clearly that the strength of this team is turning out to be the defense, but that’s what we expected anyway. What is nice also is seeing  185 yards of rushing offense on average per game so far (three games, sample size, grumble grumble). It has been a while, and even if it continues to work, albeit at a slower pace in conference play, we should do well enough.

Here are some special teams numbers:

One thing to note here is that kick coverage is affected by touchbacks, so this is average net shown here. Michigan is close to 40 yards here, which is pretty good despite being in “yellow” here. Much of that, as you can see, is due to some compression in those numbers. Kick returns average 26 yards for Michigan, and if you scan over to the punting numbers, the return game might stand some improvement, but overall there is some marked improvement in this part of the game too.

Also, 11 people on the field all the time. Weird, right?

Here are first and third down numbers with differentials. This is more informational, but you get at least a little insight into who is moving the ball better and who is getting stops on a regular basis. Again, against some of the teams the Big Ten has played collectively, it only takes will power and a mean stare to prevent the other team from converting. That will change, as will these numbers, soon enough.

Michigan’s numbers are about what you would expect from watching the games – the offense works in fits and spurts sometimes, hence the “meh” first down numbers. On third downs, you can see the defense clicking rather loudly, if you will.