FG kicker? We don't need no stinking FG kicker

Can you do a statistical analysis of how it worked out on 4th downs where they didn't go for it, but tried to, you know, kick field goals instead? Cause I'm pretty sure that going 4 for 293 is going to hurt output whether it is 4th and 1 or 4th and 31. The real question is whether, all other things being equal, having a guy who could put the brown oblong thing between the yellow things would have made a difference in the number of goalpoints scored. And seeing as they missed a BUNCH of field goals, I'd say that one is pretty obvious.

I'm a pretty open-minded guy... But when someone suggests that having a kicker MISS a shit-ton of kicks actually HELPS scoring output, I begin that clenching-unclenching thing.

Are you seriously suggesting that missing kicks led to more points... And using that as proof that OTHER PEOPLE misuse statistics?

I read your early paragraphs, felt bad that you had been allegedly victimized, and decided to agree with you. That WAS an ineffective offense, especially when it matters. You can make statistics say whatever you want them to, and in this case, the stats are being manipulated to support an offense that would not work in the big ten.

In your "bottom line" paragraph it seems odd to me that you claim the defense played well against MSU, Iowa and OSU. Michigan gave up 34, 38, 37 points respectively in those games. Now if points matter as you have made a large point in this post why does it not matter for the defense to be judged as playing well?

In 2007 Lloyd Carr's last year if Michigan had given up 34 points every game their record would have been.  2 wins 9 losses and 1 tie. (would have to take the bowl game out as they wouldn't have made it. 

I'm not mathlete, but would it makes sense to break down each B1G team's effectiveness into something like points per 100 yards of offense? Seems like that might give a good comparison of UM's offensive efficiency. If this has already be done, please ignore.

Scoring DOES SO matter -- you're dead wrong on that point, Brian.

^^^ Goddammnit, come on people. Does anyone acually read what Brian writes?

"failed experiment". I'm looking forward to seeing some real progress in all phases this fall. Go blue.

+1 for the entertaining post...On many occasions I screamed "!@#$ the kicker!"

Thank you for validating my visceral and abhorent behavior during the 2010 Football Season.  I am officially healed.  Happy 4th!

/s -smidgen

Im not a statistics guy, which means my opinion technically cannot count here, but here goes anyway....

The three games against MSU, Iowa and OSU (PSU was not televised in my area) would have likely gone differently if the offense had scored in the first half the way people on this blog keep insisting the stats say our offense could. Our defense was awful, and the only thing that might have helped would have been a LEAD. If you watched those games, you cannot help but have had the feeling that if UM had gotten off to a fast start, gone up 14-0 or 10-0, that things would have gone differently. Even on our d, Iowa was not built to score 45 points FROM BEHIND. 

So often, people on this blog are turning to stats to tell me things that just aren't passing the simple eyeball test. In short, stop pissing on my head, and telling me its raining. I watched the games, too, and our offense wasnt able to score to take a lead and remove pressure from the d, any more than the d was able to stop opponents and take pressure off the o.

How about when your "field goal" kicker can't kick off straight and hits two straight kickoffs in the fourth quarter out of bounds during an attempted comeback vs the Hawkeyes, killing all comeback momentum. Don't downplay the kicking game. It played a role in RichRod's demise. Last year brought back visions of 1979 when we had a FG kick blocked that could have beat ND and a punt blocked that cost us the season-ending game vs Ohio State. Embarrassing.

Let's face it, the reality of this argument falls somewhere in the middle.  Anyone defending the offense based on yards is immediately disputed by someone calling 'scoreboard' and anyone bashing the offense will be met with an avalanche of stats with an emphasis on yards.  Brian did an admirable job trying to summarize this situation in his post, but there are some things that are difficult to answer when you study a complicated game played by young kids/men and filled with emotion.

• Did it take too long for the coaches to adjust in the first half?
• Was the offense or its implementation flawed in the redzone when you can't SPREAD out the D?
• Did the opponents go more into prevent mode when up big?
• Were the players too up tight or pressured in tight situations and more prone to turnovers?  Thus they played more relaxed in second halves?

In the end there were many reasons that Rodriguez was fired, and the offense wasnt on the top of the list.  But it did hurt him a lot that in the biggest games he not only lost but they felt like blowouts for much of the game.  If just one or two of those games saw the offense start strong he probably saves his job.

I don't know if the offense was as good as the stats suggest, but it would have been fun to find out.  But RR wasn't going to get a guy like Mattison to come in and fix the D so maybe it wouldn't have mattered.

as soon as the writer said, "The guy got a bum deal. Was undermined from the get-go."

Both are false and the narrative supporting such assertions is just as false. Efforts to revise history by RichRod apologists don't change the facts.

RR cannot win in the Big Ten and he proved it, and the "bum deal" was never true. It is a laughable claim to make for any coach who goes 6-18 in conference play. Did Bill Lynch get a bum deal at Indiana? Coaches who win don't get "undermined," coaches that prove they cannot win suddenly blame it on a "divided fan base. It's a complete joke. Here's a cure for underimining: Win some games in the conference in which your team plays. Or at least be competitive.

RR screwed up the first team he had all on his own, he made the recruiting decisions to bring in players who could not stay in school, he established the one-man offense and the three worst defenses in school history, which may as well have been pylons on the field for the opposing offenses to run by. If he had gone 6-2 every year in Big Ten play instead of averaging 2-6, suddenly he's not undermined, he's still the coach. I'll buy the argument that yards of offense are a meaningful stat in a game or two in which other factors contributed to the team falling short. I don't buy it as a three-year statistical excuse.

Judging a coach by wins, over time, is the right way to judge him. Especially when his teams didn't just lose -- his very best team from his last season was non-competitive against the best teams on the schedule, never even flirting with victory in those games. Hard to believe there are still people out there seeking out stats to defend him after what we just witnessed for the past three seasons. He was making Michigan mediocre for the next decade, and he just about had us there. A fourth year for him, and we would've been doing well to go. .500 in the Big Ten. Indeed, we would not have hit that mark.

I felt that the spread ought to work BETTER in the red zone, or at least inside of 10 yards or so, simply because of forcing the d to send men all the way out to the sidelines, thus effectively removing a corner from being able to break down onto an off tackle run. Even though the depth is compressed, simply spreading the width of the field, as opposed to compressing every guy on the field within the hashes seemed a no brainer way to make it easier to go up the middle . 

As for the stat guys' points, well, yeah, Im a scoreboard kind of guy, and I feel the way I do, because when we look at a successful season, we always start with wins and losses, THEN might break down into HOW many yards did Tim Biakabatuka slam down OSU's gullet? But wins and losses are always first, and are ALWAYS decided by who scored more points.

I gather that the attempt being made here is to disassociate the offense's performance from the the disadvantages the d and kicking game forced upon them, and analyze it in a bubble, but I feel that fails because I often saw a winded, tired d take the field after yet another sub 2 minute scoring drive our offense blew right past some oposing d. Next thing you know, UMASS is running around our guys, because they're freaking tired, and they aren't the Bill's d from the late 80s. 

I was and remain a big supporter of Rich Rod's. The guy got a bum deal. Was undermined from the get-go.

Do you really feel this way, or did you just tack this onto your post out of fear of getting negbanged? I don't think these kinds of disclaimers are necessary anymore. As the months have gone on, peoples' blinders are coming down. It's no longer taboo to note that going 6-18 in the Big Ten (3-0 against IU and Minn and 3-18 against everyone else, no less) is catastrophically bad.  I think he's a nice guy and I wish him well, but he didn't get it done here.

Results:

If you're rejecting advanced stats (FEI) which actually measure whether the game was in the balance, then just go back to the basics. There's plenty of noise in there but you're still looking at a team that generally scored 33% more than opponents typically allow.

Be careful not to mistake lack of perfection for non-awesomeness. I watched a lot of Oregon games last year, and there were plenty of times when their well-drilled, spectacular offense made huge mistakes, because they're 18-22 year olds.

I'm addressing the field goals in Dear Diary today.

The failure of driving down the field time after time and walking away with nothing to show for it can crush all your momentum. I understand that 27>21, but the amount of disapoointment in a 12 play-70yrd- 0pts drive is devastating. We need a kicker!!

IMHO I think we would be better off with having a great PK then FGK. I dont have any statistical data, but all i can remember is every opp. starting drives around the 40yrd line after every kickoff,  run one play and be beyond mid-field!!!

I watch a ton of non-Michigan football games every season on TV, just like the rest of you.  And one thing that always bugged me last year was that it seemed like every team in America had a solid field goal kicker.  Remember when UConn's no name kicker booted a 52 yard FG in the cold, December weather to give them the Big East title?  Our kickers couldn't make chip shots in 70 degree weather.

We still would have struggled big time last year but missed field goals, especially easy looking ones, are a real momentum killer.  2 missed FG's in the Notre Dame game took promising drives nowhere.  We should have had that win wrapped up earlier than we already did...not that I didn't love the Hollywood finish.  We tried a 40+ yard FG in the Illinois game and that stunned me.  If it was a miracle for us to make a 20 yarder, why did RichRod think we had a chance at double that?  I believe we attempted a couple in that travesty of bowl game that weren't even close either.   

Those of us familiar with our long history know that FG kickers have never been our strongest point despite names like Mike Gillette, Remy Hamilton and JD Carlson.  Between 1990 and 2006, we were dead last in all of college football in FG %.  (That was something we discussed often on Rivals before I moved here).  It was never pretty but we could make do and it wasn't asking too much to get a 30+ yarder.  Last year went far worse than anything I had ever seen.  There is no excuse for a kicker to not be able make a 25 yarder.   

It was an old link from around 2006.  I can't find it now.  It said we were dead last for 1-A teams during that time period.  That surprised me too. 

Off the top of my head, JD Carlson was so/so in 90 and 91.  Peter Elezovic was awful in 92 and 93.  Remy Hamilton made 26 FG's in 94 but dropped off the following season.  Kraig Baker, decent during the championship year and Jay Feely decent the following year.  Hayden Epstein was very inconsistent from 98-01.  He had lethal kickoffs but I remember him missing many FG's.  Phillip Brabbs, GOD bless him for that kick in the Washington game but he was awful all year. 

I wish I could find the link but it's expired. 

Why is it that Penn State and Iowa are considered in our "toughest" opponents, but Illinois and Notre Dame aren't? I understand that in this post the discussion is mainly about the Big Ten, but let's be clear here: Notre Dame ended up 8-5 and Illinois ended up 7-6 (and beat Penn State...), yet somehow Iowa (8-5) and Penn State (7-6) are considered better opposition.

As for the diary, saying that not having a quality field goal kicker is somehow beneficial to an offense is preposterous. You must at least have the option of being able to complete a field goal for going for it on fourth down to be an advantage against a good defense. Also, field goals serve the purpose of stopping the bleeding. It can be deflating to a team to march down the field and then miss a field goal. 

Finally, the 2010 offense was good, with flashes of greatness. But that shouldn't be the real argument: The real argument should be over this question: was it going to be better in 2011? 

I enjoyed reading your piece and the way you  explained your reasoning.

However . . .
Not so fast my friend.

As you alluded to football is all about field position & scoring while preventing the opposition from doing the same.

I am resolute in the belief in spite of all your arguments that kickers score lots of points and are a necessary part of any successful team's arsenal. As a longtime Michigan fans we all have experienced the dire consequences of games turned by unsuccessful attempts to split the uprights.

In order for Michigan to compete at the highest level again we need superior talent at this as much as any other position on the field.

In order to Lead, we need the Best.

I don't care how many stats you throw around to try to prove your point, it defies logic to come to the conclusion that a bad field goal kicker helps your offense. Go back and watch the games from last year and count how many times the offense was put in awkward, difficult situations because we couldn't make a field goal when that was the obvious path forward. Plus that screws with a team psychologically when they know they don't have a reliable option for that in case they fail.

The so-called “conventional wisdom” about going for it on 4th down is far too conservative. If you just look at the stats, one analyst after another has shown that teams kick the ball far too often, in relation to the likely outcome if they went for it every time.

In 2010, Rich Rodriguez was forced to go for it in situations where he probably wouldn’t have, because he didn’t have a FG kicker he could trust. Nonnair’s analysis, sure enough, shows what it should: that Michigan scored more points that way than if they had attempted FGs and made them every time. Needless to say, Michigan almost certainly wouldn’t have made them every time, which made the Rodriguez’s 4th down strategy even more sound.

But now, here is the HUGE caveat: Michigan never had a game in 2010 where it needed a field goal in the 4th quarter to tie or win. That’s because all of its losses were by double digits, and in the close wins Michigan got late touchdowns, rather than FGs.

The odds of going another full season in which a FG kicker isn’t actually needed, are slim. So of course, Michigan does need a kicker. If it’s 4th and 1 at the 20 yard line with a minute to play, and you’re down by 1 point, you want to have a viable option to kick the ball.