Reading the Tea Leaves: 2011 Postmortem Autopsy Edition

Last May, I read some tea leaves in anticipation of the 2011 football season.  After careful analysis, I concluded that our defense was likely to go from terrible-to-average, and our offense from great-to-good.  In all likelihood, it was thought at the time, that we'd go 8-4 or 9-3, with a signature victory over either Li'l Bro or Ohio.  A dreary, depressing repeat of 2010's 7-5 was considered the second most likely scenario.  All things pointed to "kinda, sorta better...but not really that much better."  In other words, not necessarily better than Rich Rodriguez would have done in a hypothetical year 4, though qualitatively different.  

Then, at midseason, I read some more.  We'd made it to East Lansing undefeated--with 1 more win than we had when we played them in 2010, and 2 more than we had when we played them in 2009.  Things looked pretty good.  Though 9-3/good 8-4 was still considered the most likely scenario, now that gleaming city on the hill, a 10-2 regular season record, seemed attainable.  Imaginable.  Plausible.  

Then we did it: we went 10-2.  Then we did it some more: we beat Virginia Tech in a BCS bowl.  In doing so, we accomplished a few things we hadn't done in a while, such as:

Winning 10 games for the first time since 2006-7.

Winning a bowl game for the first time since 2007-8.

Winning a BCS bowl game for the first time since...1999-2000.

That, deserves a big round of applause, doesn't it?  So I'd like give it up for Team 132, Brady Hoke and the rest of the coaching staff for exceeding my, and most people's, expectations for the 2011-12 football season.  Huzzah!

But...

That Sugar Bowl victory was a funny one, wasn't it?  We didn't look like the better team most of the team, and our opponents looked like, well, they looked like the another team with really fast DEs and LBs and a moving rock at QB who can kinda sorta run and kinda sorta pass, but excels at shredding us for big gains.  That's right, the Mississippi State team that beat us 52-14 in the 2010 Gator Bowl.  Yet, somehow, this time they only scored 20...and we scored 23.  

Nothing, and I mean nothing, captures the difference between 2010 and 2011 like the difference between our bowl performances.  In 2010 we ran all over the field but couldn't score against good defenses when it mattered, while pretty much anyone with a pulse could score on us at will.  In 2011, we sometimes struggled for yards, but scored as much against the good teams as the bad (excepting, of course, Minnesota).  Good teams couldn't really put the ball in the endzone on us either, even when they picked up yards.  We were good when it mattered; no, we were better when it mattered.  

Comparing Performance to Expectations (and 2011 to 2010) 

To finish off the diary series, I thought I'd look back at the previous sets of predictions and see how they fared.  The initial prediction of 9-3/good 8-4 was predicated on certain concrete ideas about how much we'd improve vs. our performance in 2010.  So let's get compare those to what actually happened:

1. Defense.  

Initial Prediction: A major improvement from wretched (ranked in the 100s) to average (ranked in the 60s-40s).  

Midseason Preduction: These guys might be a top 30 defense.   

Postmortem: To put it mildly, the defense exceeded all expectations.  We weren't an average defense, as predicted back in May, or even a somewhat above average defense, as predicted at midseason.  Rather, we were the #17 defense and #6 scoring defense.  That's up from #110 and #107 last year.  

Or, to put it in more objective terms:

2. Offense.

Initial Prediction: A moderate decline in total yards and scoring.

Midseason Prediction: A moderate decline in total yards, but no decline in scoring.

Postmortem:  We did decline in total yards from #8 to #42.  But, in scoring, which is much more important, we went from #25 to #26.  

In objective terms:

...and there you have it.  We gained fewer yards but scored more points on offense.  We allowed fewer yards and even fewer points.  Oh, and we kicked a few field goals, thanks to the Brunette Girls of the world. 

Conclusions

For one thing, we now know that Mattison is a Defensive God.  He, Hoke and the whole defensive staff pulled off something I previously thought impossible...turning a laughing stock into a top-tier unit in exactly 1 year.  If we doubted that the problem was coaching before, we know it was now.  This unit was the best we've had since 2006-7, and didn't have nearly the talent that defense did.    

For another, we now know that Borges can roll with the spread, and will tailor his schemes to what he has around him.  Looking forward to 2012 and beyond to the Devin Gardner year(s), this will serve us well.  He might not be the offensive genius Rich Rodriguez is, but he's a crafty fella who knows how to win.  Should work even better in the Shane Morris + deadly line of maulers era.  

Finally, we can dig into the stats a bit and see that one of the underlying constrasts was in Time of Possession.  I

t used to be common sense that you tried to dominate ToP, and then the revisionists came around and said that there was no evidence slow offensive teams did better than fast offensive teams.  Now, instead, you were supposed to jettison the possession game and score quickly.  Or not.  Because it didn't matter.  

What I learned this season was that ToP may not matter in many cases, but it sure does when you're exactly the kind of team that has close to zero depth on defense.  Then you really should keep them off the field if you can.  Oregon can do the uptempo thing because they have lots and lots of depth on defense.  They may not be Alabama, but they have a legion of solid dudes they can substitute in and out, and that's exactly what they do.  

In 2010 and 2011, by contrast, we had an uneven group of starters, and wisps of smoke behind that.  Brady Hoke's decision to slow things down paid off for us in 2011, even if it meant losing a little razzle-dazzle in the process.  Going uptempo or playing the possession game is a choice you make based on your personnel, not an ideological question with a "right" and a "wrong" answer.  In 2011, we chose the right course for that roster, and it made a world of difference.