Doug Nussmeier, Advanced Stats Take
There are two main metrics by which I look at an offense, with different philosophies emphasizing different elements. I look at how well an offense does at converting first downs ([# of plays gaining a first down]/[# of first downs started]) and how good an offense is at stretching the field with explosive plays (Any yards gained beyond the first down line).
Below are the season numbers for each of Doug Nussmeier’s seasons alongside of the last 11 Michigan seasons for reference:
Blue=Michigan Red=Alabama Purple=Washington Gray=Fresno St
The top right quadrant is the Oregon zone. Offense that are really good at both. They consistently generate first downs but also produce big plays. The lower right quadrant is feast or famine. Lots of big plays, but can’t consistently convert first downs. The top left is probably where Brady Hoke wants to be, not consistently pushing the tempo or the big plays, but able to grind out first down after first down. The bottom left is for offenses that can’t do either well.
The Washington Years
As noted by Brian, in 2009 Nussmeier took over a tire fire of an offense. If there was a dot for 2008 Washington, you wouldn’t see it because it would be even lower and left of 2008 Michigan! His first year the offense improved along both dimensions and moved to bad but not awful. 2010 saw a bit more explosiveness but in year three the offense took a major step forward along both metrics.
Consistent improvement over three years is a very good sign. In fact, if you compare 2008-2011 Washington and Michigan, every year but 2010 is very similar and demonstrate a lot of positive improvement.
The Alabama Years
For a reference starting point, 2011 Alabama was most similar to 2004 Michigan. That was the team that beat LSU in the national championship. You can have an offense like that when you have a defense like that allows 37 bonus yards/game and an absurd 42% first down conversion (MSU was 59% this year).
In his first year turned the mediocre 2011 offense into a very good chain moving offense in 2012. For 2013 the moved further in that direction. The 82.7% first down conversion in 2013 was the third highest number since 2013. Some of that was due to the overall regression of defenses in the SEC in 2013. Texas A&M actually set the record this year with 82.9% conversions.
Expectations
This does seem to be the coordinator who can do the things that Borges can’t while still fitting into Hoke’s desire for what his team’s offense looks like. Where Michigan has spent the last three years moving backwards, every single Nussmeier coordinated offense has shown year on year improvement. There aren’t going to be fireworks or a spread offense, most likely, but there should be a lot of first downs and hopefully consistent improvement.
From a watchability standpoint, this won’t be the fun offense many of where hoping for. It is a system that in the presence of elite talent and great defense can do everything you need it to. I have a working hypothesis that if your goal is national championships this is the way to go. Great defenses seem to have lower variance than great offenses. Put a team together around an elite offense and you get 10 amazing games and 2 games where the wheels fall off. Build it around a great defense and you are probably in all 12 games. Elite offense is great for making the leap from bad to good but if you want to get good to great, it has to start on defense. I’ll be pulling some more data this offseason to test this out.
January 9th, 2014 at 8:18 PM ^
The talent and/or player development. I think overall we will see an improvement in the offense from what Borges could deliver in 2014. I hope our young OL develops! I was thinking we would go 8-4 or 7-5 next season. Now I can see 10-2 or 9-3 with victories over at least one of our top three rivals on the road, may it be ND, MSU or OSU.
January 9th, 2014 at 9:09 PM ^
I didn't set any for 2014 assuming Borges would run it, and I wouldn't set any for Nussmeier.
Nussmeier has a National Championship on his resume, but so does Borges.
I'm excited, but only because I dreaded what the 2014 offense would look like -- i.e., slightly improved, but not enough by half. At least here we're replacing that dread with uncertainty. But uncertainty isn't great. While it's unlikely the 2014 offense will be worse than 2013, it's anyone's guess as to how much better they'd be whether it's Borges or Nussmeier running it. That said, I think Borges' best years are definitely behind him.
What I'll mainly be looking for is what Nussmeier does with this offense; namely, I want to look at a formation and personnel package and not know what's going to happen. Borges may have forgotten more about Xs and Os and Jimmies and Joes than I've ever learned, but that scarcely matters when the defense's key is something as simple as who's behind center.
The good thing is that he has an entire offseason to do it. What's gonna suck is the wait.
January 9th, 2014 at 9:37 PM ^
to put a number on 2014 wins and losses, but I do think you raise the right point about player development. Nussmeier is walking into a pretty good situation. We have a heap of maturing offensive players anxious to improve, and a new OC coming from a program that puts a strong emphasis on teaching techniquie and execution. Combine that with better offensive structure and coherence, and we could see a vastly improved offense in 2014. Not dynamic like the Denard days, but efficient.
Next year's formula:
offensive maturity + better technique and execution + better offensive structure and coherence = way better offense in 2014.
Only one of those things was sure to happen next year with Borges returning.
January 9th, 2014 at 9:02 PM ^
The key, as I see it, is that if you map out Nuss' career, you see progression nearly every year, and no BAD offenses. With Borges, you had some truly great years, but they were interspersed with regressing years, and with truly bad years. The argument was that the "bad" years weren't really his fault, being hamstrung by the coach. But now we know that's not true. Brady won't touch the offense.
January 9th, 2014 at 9:25 PM ^
Borges has called some brilliant games, but he was too inconsistent. If that could be pinned 100% on the players that's a reason to keep the OC, but a lot of stuff he said rankled me -- and no, I don't mean "Michigan Man" platitudes or lack thereof. Stuff I've heard from old farts I've had to work with, and realized they were idiots -- how long he'd been doing this, and how he'd never experienced anything like this before. It doesn't matter WHAT the guy does for a living; someone who relies on the past to justify the present is someone who's stopped learning.
I was pinning my hopes that what experience Borges does have would matter enough to develop the O-line into something that could overcome his predictability, but really if you think about it, the ceiling for that is mediocrity. I had zero confidence he was ever going to beat Narduzzi.
January 9th, 2014 at 9:48 PM ^
January 9th, 2014 at 9:54 PM ^
Delete.
January 9th, 2014 at 10:34 PM ^
February 18th, 2014 at 9:25 PM ^
Haha, in practice yes, The real question it seems is by how much? 2014 will tell us.
January 9th, 2014 at 10:53 PM ^
What are we to make of this ESPN article (LINK) with this paragraph:
In the Sugar Bowl, the flaws of Nussmeier's scheme were put under a heavy spotlight: the protection broke down, McCarron faltered and three turnovers ultimately doomed the Tide. Alabama's most potent weapons -- guys such as O.J. Howard and Derrick Henry -- were underutilized, and a back-and-forth commitment to the running game turned the offense from dangerously dynamic to utterly predictable.
Honest assessment? Or sour-grapes after Michigan hires Nussmeier away?
I'm guessing sour grapes ... Alabama outrushed OU, outpassed OU ... and gave up 5 turnovers. Is it even in the ballpark of fair to say that game's performance was an leading indicator of problems of Nussmeier's tenure as OC?
January 9th, 2014 at 11:18 PM ^
Whether it's an accurate assessment is a different story altogether, but Alabama fans were no happier with their OC than any other fanbase ever seems to be. They're always "utterly predictable," they always underutilize their best weapons, every success is credited to the players and every failure to the coordinator. They've said this after every loss (with the necessary edits--sometimes he ran too much, sometimes he passed too much), and why would anyone expect anything different?
January 10th, 2014 at 1:34 AM ^
You can watch the whole game in less than an hour on youtube.
Alabama moved the ball just fine, thank you, averaging 7.94 yards/play and I think they only punted twice. What happened? AJ McCarron threw an INT into triple coverage, which he NEVER does (tough to blame that on Nuss), Yeldon got accidentally stripped by his own player in the red zone, and McCarron got stripped for a scoop-and-score and threw an INT that wasn't terrible, but still out of character.
There is a legitimate argument that 'Bama abandoned the run too soon (Yeldon averaged 4.24 YPC and Henry averaged 12.5 [!!!] YPC), but they moved the ball pretty easily when they weren't giving it away to Oklahoma. The problem was the 7 sacks they surrendered, and perhaps a little better run/pass mix would have allowed them to maintain productive drives without giving the green to Oklahoma to pin their ears back and try to kill McCarron.
But guys, 'Bama put up 516 yards of offense while getting sacked seven times, and did it against a defense that was #20 in the country and had allowed just 5.38 yards/play in the Big 12...that is insane. The 'Bama defense lost this game, and the Saban worshippers are afraid to admit it.
January 10th, 2014 at 2:53 AM ^
Defense is Saban's baliwick so he's not going to blame himself, but some fans have. Of course the fans criticism of 'Bama's defense pales in comparison of the offense. Got to throw in the obligatory OL criticisms as well.
It is interesting to read their fan comments, the scale is different because they lost just the two games, but if you didn't know better you would think you were reading about Michigan these past few months.
January 10th, 2014 at 9:36 AM ^
All he has to do is find a run game and not be ranked #1,876 in negative plays and he'll be a hero.
January 10th, 2014 at 10:05 AM ^
Ok, so maybe I haven't had my yerba mate yet and I'm not thinking straight. Seems to me that ([# of plays gaining a first down]/[# of first downs started]) is always pretty close to 1. If you gain a first down, don't you get to "start" it?
January 11th, 2014 at 10:06 PM ^
But there are also the first downs at the beginning of each drive.
January 10th, 2014 at 10:12 AM ^
January 10th, 2014 at 10:45 AM ^
February 18th, 2014 at 9:26 PM ^
Oh, the irony.
January 10th, 2014 at 11:24 AM ^
Are you kidding me? After the last six years, if our offense is good enough to win 10 games or more, Michigan fans will be giddy from so much fun.
The offenses Bo ran during his first decade of dominance weren't "fun" in the way people think now. They were heavily ground-oriented, and simply churned out first downs by the bucketful, with occasional long gainers and even less frequent long pass completions. Even when we were running the triple option, it was far from a wide-open attack. What enabled us to crank out so many points and large victory margins were our defenses, which far more often than not stifled opposing offenses and kept handing the ball back to our offense.
Things became more dynamic when Carter arrived and we developed a more consistently effective passing attack, but even then it was still a between-the-tackles running attack that was our mainstay. Oddly enough, Michigan fans thought that was plenty of fun.
January 10th, 2014 at 11:43 AM ^
I upvoted you because I feel the same way. People will estatic when they finally see an offense that can actually get RBs to the line and through it. That is the only thing they have to figure out. We'll have the athletes to throw 60 yard bombs, run smash mouth or whatever and be as dynamic or simple as needed.
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