Inside the Boxscore: Team 136, Game 2

Submitted by ST3 on

    It is often said that the most improvement for a football team occurs between the first and second games of a season. The University of Michigan football had an extra two days to improve, and it showed on the field. However, I'm sure Ira J Harris Coach Jim Harbaugh is not too happy about all those penalties. Fifth year senior Jake Rudock had some issues in his first game, tossing three interceptions. Fifth year blogger ST3 made more than his fair share of mistakes last week as well, giving short shrift to the defense and completing forgetting to include the Burst of Impetus. That's my thing, man. That would be like Brian not posting an intangible cat photo or not posting his bolded alter-ego's comments. I will try to rectify that with the game 2 boxscore analysis.

    Defense is a tough thing to cover. The go to stat is tackles, but that can be problematic. If the tackles are taking place 10 yards down the field, is that really a good thing? Sports Illustrated had an interesting article about tackles in their pro football preview issue. Things I learned from the article include:

*Late arriving players can get assists for just piling on after the initial tackle has been made

*Misidentifications happen routinely as the official scorers have to make a decision in real time

*The number of assisted tackles varies widely from team to team. Some official scorers are really stingy, only giving assists on 7% of plays, while some give assists on 44% of plays.

*When in doubt, some scorers just give tackles to the team's leading tackler, or wait for the mass of bodies to disperse so that they can give the tackle to the last man to get up.

    I was motivated by that article to try my hand at recording tackles for Michigan. I figured this would be the game to try this since I expected Michigan to control the game and keep the number of plays OSU ran to a minimum. I was right about that. I gave myself an advantage of being able to rewind plays and watch them in slow motion. I was able to catch up to the game in real time during commercial breaks. Since I was watching the game by myself, I didn't annoy anyone with this, but I don't recommend trying this while other humans are present.

    Since tackles are so hard to decipher, SI reports that one team records, "defeats," defined as tackles for loss, 3rd down conversion stops, and forced turnovers. I also tracked these as well as QHs, since I've never agreed with the boxscore QH numbers. Enough preamble, lets get on to the link.

Link:http://www.mgoblue.com/sports/m-footbl/stats/091215aaa.html

Retroactive Burst of Impetus

* Obviously, the pick-six was huge, but it didn't crush Michigan's spirit or take away our momentum. It just made it that much harder to come back and win the game. Any of the 5 well talked about passing plays (3 INTs, 2 missed bombs) contributed more or less equally to the loss. Having set up Utah for the bomb and then missing a sure TD took some of the starch out of the Michigan attack. If one of those hit, we could very easily be 2-0 today.

Burst of Impetus

* It's very rare that a couple of back-to-back special teams plays swing field position by 95 yards, but that's what happened at the end of the 2nd quarter. While I felt Michigan was in control of the game at that point, the scoreboard finally caught up with my impression and OSU wilted in the second half.

* Gary Anderson gets the boneheaded coaching decision of the game for two peculiar calls he made around that sequence. First, on 4th and 3, he didn't even try to get Michigan to jump offside. He just gladly accepted the 5 yard delay penalty. Whenever your opponents are happy at your decision, you probably have made the wrong decision. Then, with 17 seconds left, he called timeout to allow his defense to get set. Belichick showed in the Super Bowl how sometimes it's better to let the offense hurry to get something called than to call timeout and let them get organized.

The Two Jakes

* For those that missed the reference last week, The Two Jakes is a Jack Nicholson movie from the early 90's that's a sequel to the more well-known movie, Chinatown. I've never seen The Two Jakes, but I did watch Chinatown this summer. Considering it's such a well-known movie, I was not impressed.

* My hope for this year is that Jake Rudock be an efficient quarterback. He doesn't need to win games by himself. My definition of efficient is 7+ YPA, 60+% completion percentage, and no more than 1 turnover per game. He was at 6.9 YPA and 69%, but he turned the ball over twice (1 INT, 1 fumble.) We're getting there.

* Jake Butt had a more quiet afternoon than last game, with 4 catches for 25 yards, a tackle, and 2 yards rushing on 0 carries. The astute reader will realize that his yards per carry is infinite, NAN, or undefinable, take your pick.

Good Things Come in Threes

* Three running backs caught passes, three tight ends caught passes, and three wide receivers caught passes.

* Darboh and Butt were again the most active pass catchers with 4 receptions apiece.

* Darboh, Bunting, Smith, and Williams each had a long reception of 20 or more yards.

Jackhammers

* De'Veon Smith made some believers out there. He runs so hard. His long gain was only 19 yards so he earned every one of those 126 net rushing yards, 4, 5, and 6 yards at a time.

* Living out west, I get to see the Utahs, BYUs, and other teams that regulary have fullbacks like Sione Houma. I've been waiting for him to bust out ever since he arrived. Those quick hitting bursts up the middle are so much fun to watch. Houma went for 20 yards on 2 carries.

Tacos and Peppers

* I had Michigan with 6 TFLs to the boxscore's 7. I missed Delano Hill's TFL for a 1 yard loss. I actually credited Wormley with 3.5 TFLs as I shared Royce Jenkins-Stone's TFL between the two of them. I also split Ojemudia's TFL between him and Ryan Glasgow.

* The second "defeats" category is 3rd down conversion stops. I had Michigan getting 7 of those and I had two more defeats for 4th down conversion tackles. Morgan and Hill had two of those each. The other 5 were spread among 7 players. If there's a theme, it's that everyone contributed, you know, that whole, "The Team, The Team, The Team," stuff.

* The third "defeat" is forced turnovers. Taco Charlton got credit for that in the boxscore, but upon a second viewing of the play, I gave credit for the forced fumble to an OSU lineman's fat ass. Fumbles are random.

* I had Wormley with 3 QHs. I gave one to Godin and one to Morgan. My definition of a QH is when then defender hits the QB when he is trying to throw such that he can't throw in his normal motion and with his normal follow through. The boxscore gave 1 to Morgan and 1 to Henry. At least we agreed on one.

* For tackles, I had Bolden leading Michigan with 7, same as the boxscore, but I gave him 6 tackles and 1 assist to the boxscore's 4 and 3. At least I disproved the "artificially inflate the leading tackler's stats by giving him tackles when you can't figure who made the tackle" theory, for one week.

* I agreed with the boxscore on Wilson and Morgans' totals, but again disagreed on solos versus assists.

* We each credited 20 players with tackles, but I gave Willie Henry's tackle to #31, whoever that is. I gave out 57 tackles to the boxscore's 50. I must have been in a generous mood. Keeping track of tackles is tough.

* I had Jabrill Peppers with 37 tackles. I must be buying into the hype. J/K.

ST3's STSTs

* Michigan ran 74 offensive plays to OSU's 53. There were 25 punts, kickoffs, FGAs, and XPs. 25/152 is roughly 1/6 of the game, so again, when someone says special teams are 1/3 of the game, politely correct them by stating that special teams are actually 1/6th of the game.

* Oregon State returned one of Michigan's 3 punts for 3 yards. I pledge my allegiance to our new punting Overlords.

Baughscore Bits

* Not that it matters, but UofM had 38:01 time of possession to OSU's 21:59. Yes, I picked the right game to track defensive stats.

* Michigan had 12 rushing first downs, 4x more than last week.

* The defense held OSU to 1 of 11 on third down conversions.

* Much is being made of OSU only gaining 138 total yards in the game. To be fair, they have a "TEAM" rushing line of -51 yards due to the punting fiasco. Even taking that into account, OSU was held to under 200 yards total offense, which is pretty good.

* Kickoff time was 12:06. That's early for the Beavers. The common wisdom is that west coast teams struggle with early eastern start times. The exact opposite happened as OSU only played reasonably well in the first quarter. Once Michigan woke up, it was game over for the Beavers.

WHAT ARE THOSE?

* As I was watching the ESPN gameday show, I noticed a particular sign over Desmond Howard's left shoulder. It was a drawing of a duck's feet with arrows pointing at them, with "WHAT ARE THOSE?" written on the sign. The average viewer likely didn't give this a second thought. I, however, having spent the summer coaching my son's little league baseball team, immediately made a connection. Numerous times during every game this summer, the boys would point at someone's shoes and yell, "WHAT ARE THOSE?" and they'd all laugh and go on with their lives. I still don't know what the exact meme is - I asked my 10 year old son about this and he said something about it being a vine or something - but I found it funny that my 10 year old and a spartan student have the same maturity level.

* The young UofM fan may have found themself looking at Michigan's classic helmet during the game and asking themself, "WHAT ARE THOSE?" They are helmet stickers, and having grown up in the helmet-sticker-era, I welcome their return. Team 136 in general, and De'Veon Smith in particular, earned a whole bunch of them in Game 2.

Comments

WillieMaizeHayes

September 13th, 2015 at 8:53 AM ^

I have a 11yo son who would come home from ymca day camp and say, "I have just one question for you...", wait for me to look at him, and then point at my shoes and yell WHAT ARE THOSE? Then he and his 9yo sister would laugh hysterically. I figured it was just some camp inside joke, now I know they were participating in a national meme (we're on the east coast). I don't know whether to be sad or proud. Either way, thanks for info.

schreibee

September 17th, 2015 at 2:33 PM ^

I stopped reading when you said you weren't impressed by the film Chinatown...

It made me realize I was unlikely to be impressed with anything you wrote.

I could start an entire film school lecture on all the aspects of Chinatown that ARE impressive - but I realized first I'd have to ask what movies DID impress you? The entire exercise may be a total waste of time. For all I know your favorite movie is Doom starring The Rock and you may generally only like movies based on video games?

Trial question: Birdman, yay or nay?

Hail-Storm

September 14th, 2015 at 10:14 AM ^

personally, I like the old "Yellow" better than the true dark maize. Just more pleasing to the eye to me, and really pops against the blue.

Great write up. I love all the monday morning (for when I get to read them) analysis from all the MgoBlog guys. For some reason,

I still feel there is a long way to go. I saw an offensive line beat down a younger smaller line as the game went on, which was good, but I worry about creating holes agianst bigger stronger lines. The offense still lacks big play abilities. Still haven't hit one over the top, or created a huge hole, outside of popping some screens on the outside. It was good to see the ground game pound out yards and limit negative plays. I just am worried about teams that take advantage of the fact that Michigan doesn't go long. Even the reverse was snuffed out. 

CRISPed in the DIAG

September 14th, 2015 at 10:42 AM ^

Chinatown is classic noir style. If you hated True Detective (either one, really), you probably hated Chinatown.  I'm too busy to try to explain what I like about it - but I can understand why people think its boring and moves slow.  It does.

mgobaran

September 14th, 2015 at 1:19 PM ^

At first, I was like WOAH AWESOME. Because IMHO, I think they look really sharp. Then as the game went on, I just kept noticing the stickers, so for me they definitely take away from the beauty of the winged helmet. So it's like they added some, and they take away some. Haven't figured out of the amounts are even yet. 

I also started asking, okay, aren't they going to look cluttered like in 3 weeks. Darboh and Butt are going to be filled to the brim by the halfway point. I mean, there just isn't enough room to give out 8 stickers (IN A LOSS BTW) per week. 

Last and certainly not least, I started questioning why the hell some players even had any! Like, it absolutely bugged me that Braden* had even 1 on his helmet let alone the 3 or 4 he actually had. Why should that bug me? Why should I let something like that bug me? But it did. Whatever.

 

*Props to Braden this week though. Looked improved. Definitely made me eat my words about a possible OL shape up by moving Glasgow over. Proud of that guy. Spielman absolutely loved the guy, which I have to respect his opinion. But I think he may have not watched film on the Utah game, because he offered an absolute FIRE TAKE saying Braden and not Butt would be the only offensive starter on Michigan's team that could start for OSU (YTtOSU).