Meeechigan Dan

Source Material: Original Post, Definitions, 2002 Class, Problems, 2002 and 2003 Classes.

The generally low level of activity on the last couple McBean posts is because the season is upon us. Or the posts aren’t very good. My ego and the advice of wolfman81 are sure it is the former; it appears this project is ideal for the off-season when football filler is welcome.

The plan, therefore, is to shelve for a few months the massive posts that rank the players class by class in exchange for amusing ourselves with surgically precise mgoboard posts that ask about individual players. Each recruiting class has a good handful of players on the bubble, and it is my goal to increase the survey participation beyond the current group of hard core McBean aficionados. This will take the form of an mgoboard post that has a short preamble, a link to source material and a survey about a single player.

My goal will be to get to 25 or 30 votes on each bubble player. If the mgoboard post falls off the front page before that total, then I will repost it at a later date. This should allow us to get to a statistically useful number of opinions about borderline players for when we finish the project in the off season.

Here is an example:

Preface: In August, I launched the McBean Rating System and asked the mgocommunity to help me rank every Michigan recruit at the end of their career as a point of comparison to their initial rating (using Rivals)*. Jake Long was a four-star recruit coming in and, after his career, he was a five-star going out. Kevin Grady was a five-star recruit coming in and will likely be a three-star going out. This subjective rating system depends heavily on definitions designed to maintain the same relative number of players in each Rivals rating bucket. The goal of the project: to develop a “collaborative, ongoing post-recruitment rating system that will allow us to determine if, in the Rich Rodriguez era, perfect-fit three-stars are more desirable than random four-stars.” In other words, to answer the Pat White question once and for all.

Player: David Harris
All American: No
All Big 10: Senior year
Drafted: 2nd round (47th)
Rivals: ***
McBean: ****
Bubble Question: Was David Harris a four-star or a five-star player at the end of his career at Michigan? (Please review the definitions.)

Good idea? Bad idea? Additional information needed? Board? Diary? Do you think this will be productive?

*Since that time, I can no longer take ownership of this project as there have been significant contributions from several mgobloggers; this is a mgoblog community project now.

Note: The spectacular rollercoaster start to the season distracted me from our McBean effort. Back to work. Source Material: Original Post, Definitions, 2002 Class, Problems.

There was a flurry of concern about how our definitions, particularly the proliferation of McBean two-stars when we rarely recruit any Rivals two-stars, necessarily results in an overall decline in performance for any given class. This is a big deal when you recall that the purpose of this project is to allow us to judge whether a staff’s recruiting and talent development exceeds or falls short of expectations. We can say right now that they will almost always fall short of expectations; the question is how much. One day, we may adopt a variation of the proposed formula from wolfman81 to solve this problem (I say variation because I don’t think it goes far enough to compensate for the two-star problem – see the 2003 class RMS below, which narrows the gap as it should for a great class, but not enough…I think somehow weighting five-star players may be the answer):

Lastly, you asked me about my formula. It's really just the Root-Mean-Square. So add up for each player (star rating)^2. Then divide by total number of players. (This is the mean of the squares.) Now take a square root so that the numbers are comparable.

Example: Compare these 2 person classes (2 4 stars, vs. 1 5-star and 1 3 star)

2 **** -> Avg = 4.0, RMS = 4.0
1 ***** + 1 *** -> Avg = 4.0, RMS = 4.123

I'll ask the question this way. Would you prefer a class that is half 3-stars and half 4-stars (remember, I'm talking about McBeans here--so 12 All-Conference players and 12 servicable backups) or a class that is half 2-stars and half 5-stars (so we have 12 All-Americans in a single class and 12 guys who never play)? I know what my answer is (especially if we consistently recruit and develop that kind of talent).

I am rolling out this stat below the averages for your consideration.

In the end, we decided to finish out our McBean rating effort and go from there. With three classes in hand, we will be able to gauge the two-star problem and either wallow in that misery, as UMFootballCrazy wants, or create an algorithm to compensate the relative value of players, as wolfman81 wants. The Team Ranking analysis for the 2003 class demonstrates the two-star problem clearly…



…but we’re going to finish and circle back. I will probably even finish the 2005 class, even though we have active players.

So, mush.

Here are the first two final classes, 2002 and 2003:





For the 2003 class, Kraus was bumped to a four star, which was near unanimous except to UMFootballCrazy, who doesn’t like to ignore the NFL draft in this instance. I have felt bad for SanDiegoWolverine in the past because he keeps passionately arguing for certain guys and not getting his way – in this instance, he wins as both Rivas gets moved to a four-star (you can’t use the NFL draft as a tie-breaker for kickers/punters and he is a multi-year starter) and Richard gets reclassified as N/A.

JimHarbaughScramble is clearly still grappling with extreme Mundypobia, but sorry JHS, I can’t make a drafted DB a two-star no matter how many times you see this running through your mind:

Here is the preliminary 2004 class, which is our last class that we can call complete (the 2005 class has six active players). There are plenty of issues, and most of them seem to result from overrating our favorite players, like Henne and Hart.



There's a lot to debate in the 2004 class.

Steve Sharik's response to the I Am So Confused post was after it had moved off the front page, so I am reposting it:

These are the characteristics of a successful defensive system:

1. Lots of talent of varying experience levels at ALL positions.
2. Coaches at every position who can coach technique.
3. A coordinator who knows scheme.
4. A coordinator who can communicate what he wants done by his position coaches.
5. All of the above in place w/o change for at least a few years.

Let's examine the two teams in regards to these areas.

Iowa

1. Not really high talent, but does have players used to the system from seniors to freshmen. Seniors teach the younger players what the coaches expect and also hearing the same thing but in different words deepens understanding.
2. In spades.
3. Definitely.
4. That staff has been together for so long, this is absolutely true.
5. The real secret behind Iowa's defensive success.

Michigan

1. No. Most of the talent is concentrated on the DL. Warren is obviously awesome, but Mouton and Brown are highly rated SAFETIES, and are playing LB. Mike Williams and Cissoko are young players, but Williams doesn't have anyone to mentor him. Cissoko...I feel for him.
2. Not sure yet. If I was on staff myself (ha!) I could tell, but then I wouldn't be able to tell you. Man, that was helpful, eh?
3. Yes.
4. Yes.
5. No, no, no. This is the real problem. This system is new to everyone EXCEPT Greg Robinson. He gets to decide not only the scheme, but also how he wants individual techniques taught. Maybe some of them are different than before. This means not only do the players have to learn new techniques, but the coaches have to teach differently than they're used to, perhaps. Continuity and consistency...and that happens when the coaches are so used to it they can coach it in their sleep and, furthermore, the older players can mentor the younger ones.

So, Iowa has 4.5/5 and we have 2/4 and IDK on the fifth (#2). It should come as absolutely no surprise that Iowa is better on defense.

If this defensive staff is still together in 3 years and Iowa is still more successful on defense (assuming they'll have the same staff) then I think it's safe to say that some of the assistants aren't cutting the mustard, b/c I'm pretty confident we'll have better players and will have rounded out the roster; i.e., we'll have quality players of varying experience at all positions.

As for this year, well, maybe we'll have an average defense by the end of the year.

I predict us to lose to MSU, get thumped at Iowa (they're quite adept at defending the spread), lose a close one to Penn State, and then maddeningly lose to Illinois (a la the basketball team at Iowa last season) but get the rest, including at Wisconsin and then, finally, over the Buckeyes. We end the season on a high note with a win over a name brand SEC team in the Outback bowl and finish 9-4.

Thanks, Steve. Even though there are some painful losses in your scenario, I will sign up for it right now. I have a few questions for you:

• You seem comfortable with GERG's knowledge and scheme, which puts me at ease. I assume you were less comfortable with what Shafer was doing?
• Why don't we give more help to our weak corner? How come that corner always seems to be out there by himself against Floyd or Doss?
• How do you explain that our highly-rated LB recruits who we so desperately need - Demens and Fitz - are still not very good in year two? Did we just strike out on both? Is it too early to tell?
• Why has the tackling fallen off so sharply from week 1? Competition? Habits? I was blown away by the crispness of our tackling early and not so much lately.

Thanks, Steve!

Note: The data is from Rivals; I recognize that they have some different class (fresh, soph, etc.) info than I expected on some players, but for consistency, I used their data as published.

I am no Steve Sharik or gsimms, but after watching Iowa play defense Saturday night, I have to report back to Houston that there is a problem, and it’s not just our players. I just don’t buy Brian’s comment in his “Soaring” post that “Michigan's recruiting was wildly deficient in more than one area and will be an anchor going forward.” We may lack depth, but the guys on the front lines are supposed to be studs. Individually, many look like studs – Graham and Warren and Martin and Roh and even Brown this year – but put them together and Indiana shreds us.

Iowa's defense is better than ours. A lot better. This doesn't surprise anyone reading this, but the point I wish to make is not that they are better, but how in the name of Shiva the Destroyer is such a thing possible?

Let's look at the two defenses:

The Iowa defense is younger than ours overall and features a less-experienced secondary that averages 5.3 for a Rivals Rating, or a middle range two-star. Brian says about Michigan, “There is exactly one junior and no seniors at both safety and cornerback.” Iowa has less experience. Yet my gut tells me – with absolute certainty – Darryl Clark will have a far better day against our secondary. Who wants to take me up on that bet?

In general, their players are more lowly rated at every position (possible exception of one LB), often significantly so, with players converted from the offensive side of the ball (a TE turned DL) and one playing out of position.

Now one of two things is true.

• All our studs coming out of high school were overrated and we can say things like Cissoko isn’t good and Van Bergen isn’t good and our LBs aren’t good with a straight face and a shrug towards our bad evaluation of talent over two coaches, or
• Our coaching/scheme is flawed. The front line talent is there (no depth, I know), but they either haven’t been developed or the system hurts their performance.

Occam’s Razor makes it difficult to accept that our stud HS talent was pretty much collectively overrated, and Iowa’s meh HS talent was pretty much vastly underrated. Ferentz would have given a kidney to have Cissoko or Warren or Graham or Brown or Mouton or Martin. He doesn’t have enough organs to bargain with the devil to get those types of players with mega-hype coming out of HS, yet he easily is fielding a better defense that probably would have consumed Indiana whole without any sauce.

As for the “new system” argument – that switching from Shafer to Robinson has resulted in our guys being at the start of a new learning curve – I accept some of that, but not all. Now, I will defer to Sharik or gsimms to tell me whether a new system can transform studs into non-studs, but it would seem to me that stopping Eastern in the first half or stopping Indiana at all would frequently be possible with raw stud talent playing by instinct.

Please understand that I am not traditionally negative, and that I am really seeking an answer from people who know more about football than I do. Is our system/defensive coordinator sound? Are most of our players overrated?  Would Iowa's starters on defense playing for Michigan and GERG be playing at the same high level? Or would Brian be observing that an unrated player (a walk-on, I assume) was playing in the secondary?

Sent to a reasonable OSU fan this morning. A lot of repeat stuff, I know. But it was cathartic.

Dave, in the hopes that you are intellectually honest, I am going to try once and only once to persuade you (like I have a couple others this morning - they failed by the way) and then we'll agree to disagree.
 
RR made huge mistakes - football mistakes - in his first year. He hired the wrong D coordinator, he ignored how to work with the media, stepped on some traditions, etc. That was unfortunate, but those were football mistakes, and I would be an idiot if I threw him under the bus after one year and when he didn't have his players. I will reserve judgment until he has his system and his players, about two more years, although there will have to be stunning progress this year, and I expect there to be. Yes, I would rather have had Les Miles, but I have RR and so he gets a chance.
 
RR is a hard ass. Lloyd was like your grandfather. RR runs a spread. Lloyd ran a pro-set. RR is a West Virginia boy. Lloyd is purebread Ann Arbor-style elitest. You couldn't have picked a more stark change from one culture to the next.  A rational man expects extreme fallout. Bo lost 65 of 140 players from his first training camp because it was grueling. That's what coined the "Those who stay will be champions" phrase. RR is a workout fanatic and we've lost a lot of players, as expected. Last year was a result of that discord. The interviews for the article are with former players, some transfers, some NFL, all Lloyd guys. The two freshmen had nothing but love for the program and were deceived into talking about hours worked as material for the story.
 
RR left West Virginia and they were pissed. Thus he shredded documents (later proven untrue) and was Satan.  RR arrived in AA a culture shock, hated by the AA elite and the Free Press. The establishment does not like the man. In Columbus, like with this story from the Lantern, they hear of a problem, then go ask the staff what their thoughts are and everyone chuckles and concludes more violations means a more honest staff. How do you think this story would have been spun with the Free Press (Rodriguez Leads the Big 10 in Recruiting Violations: The New Era of Recruiting at All Costs at Michigan).
 
Despite RR having the highest team GPA on record (strange how that is supposed to be hand-in-hand with these "violations"), despite only ONE of his kids having any disciplinary issues, he is corrupt and evil and so on. The day before he dismissed his one disciplinary problem, spun as pure evil by the Free Press, the Free Press documented how a kid was reinstated with MSU who assaulted a hockey player with nary a bad word. I wonder how the Free Press would have viewed RR reinstating an ex-convict.
 
Dave, if you can't understand that there is a vendetta in the press against RR, you choose to be blind. That's your choice. You may think RR is a media dud (he is) or that he can't coach (his record speaks otherwise, but perhaps he can't at this level, we'll see), but to think he is corrupt and, for example, OSU is not is to live in a pretend world. If you have any intellectual honesty, you'd acknowledge bullshit when you see it. Don't be mindless.

Source Material: Original Post, Definitions, 2002 Class.

I think the McBean Rating discussion compels me to stop for a moment and tackle a couple problems.

Before that, I wanted to give a summary of the informal voting that took place in the last thread as it related to the 2002 class (note: it would be helpful if more readers would vote – the number of votes was small, although the justifications were scholarly). Here was the 2002 class career ratings proposed after the McBean Rating definitions were debated:

The following votes were then cast:

David Harris
Five-Star: Two votes
Four-Star: Three votes

Matt Gutierrez
Three-Star: Three votes
Two-Star: Zero votes

Mike Kolodziej
Three-Star: Two votes
Two-Star: One vote

Single votes for Bihl as a four-star, Breaston as a four, Tabb as a three and Riley as a three.

All votes are not equal as arguments of varying persuasiveness were offered. In the debate, wolfman81 almost perfectly captured what still remains a point of contention: how to use the NFL draft in our assessment -

Notice that in all of these cases, I consider the college career first. If there is some doubt about what category the player should fit into, only then do I consider the NFL draft. The NFL draft is a tiebreaker, but only when there is a tie to be broken. In my mind, 1st team All-American = 5-star McBean. All-Conference = 4-star McBean. Starter = 3-star McBean. There can be exceptions to this rule (Tom Brady was not All-Conference, but I think he should be 4 star due to his leadership on the field and other intangibles. As he was drafted, the NFL assessment backs this opinion up. The fact that he will likely be a first ballot NFL hall of famer cannot bump him up to the 5-star discussion; at the same time, it does not harm my 4-star rating.) But, I think that this rule sets a minimum standard.

The new 2002 McBean Ratings are as follows with only one change – Harris drops to a four-star. Mark Bihl was pushed hard as a four-star, but his career falls short of making a significant impact, just as Harris clearly falls short of an elite career.



The conclusion one would then draw from this data is that the 2002 class dramatically underperformed. To give you an idea, this would represent a drop in the team rankings (if the rankings were based upon average stars) from 10th to 21st, using an average of the 2002 through 2009 data.



Now, the problems:

• How do we handle the math for players like Dann O’Neill, Quinton McCoy and Taylor Hill? Players who never saw the field and did not stay. My original method counts these players in the Rivals list, but does not count them at all in the McBean list. For example with the 2002 class above, the 21 players in the Rivals list are all counted and the denominator is 21. For the McBean review of their careers, McCoy and Berishaj didn’t have a career at Michigan, so they are not counted and the denominator to determine the average star rating is 19. If we eliminate the two players from the Rivals list, do we fail to take into account the reference point of our evaluation: the quality of the entire incoming class as judged by a recruiting service? Yet, by taking them out of the McBean career list, do we fail to punish the staff for recruiting players who could generally be considered a bust? However, if we rate them a zero or even a two, we ensure that pretty much every class will underperform badly (counting both as a zero, the McBean average would drop to 2.81!). I am both befuddled and in need of a paragraph break.

• Second, the ease with which we rate invisible players as two stars devastates our average rating. We rarely recruit two-star players, yet because every team logically has many anonymous backups (seventeen preliminary McBean two-stars over the first five classes I’ve looked at), we have exceeded a ratings Chandrasekhar Limit and pulling each class down into a black hole of underperformance. Case in point, I offer the 2003 class which, if this class doesn’t qualify as a recruiting success and overperformer, then none will:  

EDIT, August 29th, 9:24am: Gentlemen, after reading below and thinking about the problems presented, I feel we made a mistake with the definitions. Any viable Michigan players - this includes backups who do not see the field - should be get three stars. We could use this yardstick: any player who makes the two-deep during his career gets a third star. Also, we should be more generous with four stars for good starters like Bihl and Kraus.

Here's my reason: we must remain connected to our baseline system, Rivals. It is our point of comparison. Without a close connection, we can make no claims about under and overperformance. We recruit many three-stars, and while individually each kid hopes to be the next Pat White, the 30,000 foot reality is that those three-stars, en masse, are destined to be the backups. They are not underperforming, they are performing as expected.

This pushes some - not many and not enough to unbalance the finite four-star numbers - up a notch, because Mark Bihl and Adam Kraus cannot coexist with a three-star backup.

So, I am thinking we need to predominantly loosen our three-star standards to allow us to recognize backups as meeting expectations.

Thoughts?