The Michigan Difference - Wisconsin Edition

Here's this week's update to The Michigan Difference, updated with stats from this week's games.

Another bipolar game against Wisconsin.  The final offensive output was pretty good, but the defense couldn't stand up to their rushing attack.  We remain #5 in Total Offense (TO) and are now #112 in Total Defense (TD).

Disclaimer: The NCAA stats are not linear, of course, and a difference of 1 yd/gm can be a large or small difference in rankings depending on how closely spaced everyone is.  So as I cautioned, this isn't a hard-core statistical exercise.  This analysis is pretty one-dimensional because it's long and complicated enough as it is.

I think the greatest value in this is to look back at the early games and see how well we did in comparison to what other teams ended up doing against them - what seemed like a good or bad performance at the time may look different in retrospect.

Part the First: Offense

We know our offense is great, but what kind of damage has it done to the Total Defense (TD) ratings of our opponents?  Here they are thus far:

What would these guys' defensive stats look like if they hadn't played Michigan?

*Opponents' average Total Defense yards per game, minus the Michigan game

**Michigan's Total Offense in game as a % of the opponent's average TD minus the Michigan game

Iowa, Illinois, and Wisconsin's defenses really wish they hadn't played us.  They'd be in the top 20 nationally but for one game.  Michigan has gained above our opponents' average yardage yielded in every game thus far, and their Total Defense rankings have suffered as a result.  What's the damage?

Average change in Total Defense ranking for all opponents:  -10.1 places.

Looking at the offensive performance versus the quality of the defense:

There is little correlation between Michigan's Total Offense for a game and their opponent's average Total Defense (minus M).  Whatever is limiting our offense's output in a game, it is not directly related to the number of yards the opponent usually gives up.  This would suggest that the offense tends to be limited by itself, rather than the opponent.

Part the Second, Defense

So the flipside of this, then, is how much has our defensive suckitude helped out our opponents stat sheet?  Where would they rank in Total Offense without having played us?  We'll run the same tables again, but from the opposite tack:

Wisconsin is easily the strongest offensive team we've faced thus far.  The results of the game show that.  MSU was pretty good, the rest varying degrees of average to bad.

* Opponents' average Total Offensive performance, minus the Michigan game

** Opponents' Total Offense as a percentage of their average offensive performance, minus the Michigan game

Here's a nifty graph of our opponents' Total Offense against Michigan, versus their average Total Offense per game without the Michigan game:

In this case, we do have a reasonably good correlation.  Our defense does worse against better offenses.  That would suggest that we're talent-limited somewhere (either coaches or players) and the opponents' offenses tend to have their way with us.  In other words, our defense doesn't shut anybody down.  The more yards our opponents average per game, the better they'll do against us.

To summarize:

Average boost to opponents' Total Offense NCAA ranking: +5.9 places

From this perspective, the Wisconsin game was our 4th worst defensive performance of the year.  As bad as we looked, three other games were worse.  We were up against a very good offense, and it showed.

Part the Third:  Summary

In subtly maize-and-blue graphical form:

New observations for this week:

• Many of our previous opponents had good weeks offensively, making our defense look a bit better less bad in those previous games.
• Wisconsin is easily the best team we've faced yet.  Offensive and defensive performances were close to mid-pack, but we got our butts kicked.
• Our offense remains impressive and will keep getting better.
• Our defense is terrible and had better get a lot better.
• Winning is still a lot more fun than losing.