What is this diary? Each week, I take a deep dive into the box scores and team pages from Pro Football Focus, Game on Paper, College Football Data, and more for as many Big Ten teams as I can manage. Often, life makes it impossible to cover every team, but I try to always cover OSU, MSU, PSU, and whoever Michigan is playing in the coming week.

I try to generate a couple blurbs based on the statistics I find compelling from each game/team. Really, there’s no formula. This is just a very paper-based, statistical approach to evaluating teams. And, also, sometimes I watch a little bit of film if I don’t believe the statistics and want to know what the heck is happening (see: Drew Allar).

Note. Since I had some free time this Sunday, I decided to try to get the Michigan content done and published before all the hard work the guys do makes my stats/takes irrelevant. You can think of this as the first released single to the album I'll drop later this week.

MICHIGAN defeated MICHIGAN STATE (49-0)

JUST THREE MORE WEEKS

I’m so sick and tired of the “they haven’t played anybody” narrative. Has Georgia played anybody? Kentucky is 25th in SP+, then Auburn is 44th, South Carolina is 50th, and no one else on their schedule is in the top 90. Meanwhile, Michigan’s best game is against Rutgers (49th), then Minnesota (59th), Nebraska (61st), and Michigan State (69th). So, you’re really telling me, you who argue with me inside my head, that Georgia has played somebody? Considering the stratification of talent in the FBS, that is a pretty limp argument. I say all this because I don’t have opponent-adjusted metrics from JBudDavis yet, and can only give you this:

The further to the bottom right a team is, the better they are. This team is (oh, don’t do it… please, don’t do it… it’s probably too soon… but also it’s not… and you’re half-Jewish… is that a real excuse?… and you’re great-great-grandparents escaped the pogroms in Western Russia… is that a real excuse?… we need comedy to survive… even if this hardly counts as comedy… screw it, go big or go home…) blitzkrieging everyone they play on a level that even Georgia hadn’t in years past.

(I’ll also note that Kentucky was 33rd in last week’s F+ rankings [they haven’t updated], and if you think there’s a big difference between 33rd and low 50s to a Top 2 team in the country, then you’re absolutely kidding yourself.)

THIRD QUARTER DOMINANCE

If you follow the NBA at all, you might have heard once or twice that the Golden State Warriors are/were an excellent third quarter team. Generally, this portended pretty positive things for them; they were able to make adjustments at halftime, come out firing, and bury teams in double-digit deficits before the 4th quarter started. The same can thus far be said for the 2023 Michigan Wolverines. With a 14-0 third quarter win against the Spartans, the Wolverines have now scored 107 points (13.38 per game) and have yielded 0 points (0 per game) in 3rd quarters this year. Compared to what they’ve done in all four quarters combined, the offense has actually underperformed on a per play basis: they’re averaging just 6.4 YPP in the 3rd quarter, compared to 6.8 YPP throughout the whole game. (It’s certainly possible that this could in part be attributed to the weekly dose of Tuttle Time.) Meanwhile, the defense goes to a whole other level: they have allowed just 4.0 YPP on the season throughout entire games, but in the third quarters alone they’re allowing just 2.5 YPP. Don’t forget that the defense has caused five turnovers and taken two of those to the house (thanks, Mike), meaning the defense is out-scoring other teams 14-0 in the 3rd quarter. Wowza. Jesse Minter deserves a raise.

THEIR OWN BEST FRIEND

Michigan has done an exceptional job not shooting themselves in the foot this year. They do not turn the ball over. They have five turnovers on the year which equals 0.6 turnovers per game (4th best in the country). Take away McCarthy’s weird, outlier performance against BGSU and you’re down to 0.3 turnovers per game (that would be second best in the country behind Oregon). They also do not take penalties. They’re second in the nation in penalty yards per game (24.8), behind only Army (18.5), and third in penalties taken per play (0.3), behind only Army and North Texas. This team just does not want to beat itself.

A NEW HEISMAN FRONTRUNNER

I was pretty pessimistic last week that J.J. McCarthy’s absurd efficiency could win out over Michael Penix Jr.’s absurd volume and nearly-as-absurd efficiency. Then, Penix posted a poo-poo (65.9% completions; 6.7 Y/A; zero TDs; two INTs) against Arizona State (who people point to being poo-poo, but they actually have a solid pass defense [26th in adjusted EPA against the pass] which is worth mentioning) and now McCarthy is Vegas’ betting favorite to win the Heisman. Below is a table with the five players (all QBs) with odds of +1200 or better on FanDuel.

LSU fans will probably be clawing up the walls if we don’t address the fact that, yes, Jayden Daniels has better rushing numbers than McCarthy, or, should we say, more rushing numbers. He has 624 yards and five TDs on the season to McCarthy’s 219 yards and three TDs, but McCarthy bests him in Y/C (8.4 to 8.2), in missed tackles forced per carry (0.43 to 0.37), in 10+ yard runs per carry (0.31 to 0.28), and in PFF’s elusiveness score (112.1 to 98.4). Especially considering what Oklahoma did against UCF this week, this case is closed until further notice.

(And, no, Sooners and Seminoles, I do not want to hear it, so pipe down. Your QBs might also have five rushing TDs a piece, but they’re both averaging under 5.2 Y/C. Hell, McCarthy has more yards than Jordan Travis despite the fact the latter has rushed it almost twice as many times this year as the former.)

BLAKE CORUM'S "OPTIMIZATION"

Thanks to DesertGoBlue’s interest/support last week in the comments section, we’re going to revisit keeping track of Corum’s usage on the ground. Last year, he (a) became super-extra-awesome around 120 carries, and (b) got hurt when he got to about 240 carries. As it stands, he has 110 carries on the season, just 10 away from his “optimization” number.

Below is our graph. Blue bars are cumulative 2023 carries; red bars are cumulative 2022 carries. Numbers above the blue bars are yards per carry for that game.

Now, it’s fair to say that he doesn’t look optimized. I’ll have more on that next weekend. Some know that I’ve been working on an alternate equation to determine line yards; I find the current method rudimentary to the point of being almost pointless. With my new formula, we will answer the couple-weeks-old question: “Is Blake Corum the same as he was last year?” Stay tuned.

SNAP DISTRIBUTION BY POSITION

Per 4th phase’s request, here are a bunch of pie graphs showing snap distributions by position on defense.

It’s hard to tell what’s informative. A lot of the numbers are skewed by being cautious about injuries, but I think this all mostly indicates that Michigan feels very comfortable with: 3.5 of their DTs (YMMV on Benny), 4 of their DEs, 3 of their LBs, 3 of their CBs, and 4 of their Ss. That’s damn close to fielding a genuine two-deep of awesomeness.

As we’ve known all year, CB depth is questionable at best. It would’ve been really nice to see one guy get up to a high-teens share, but it makes sense that with a complicated defense like Michigan’s that Amorion Walker and Jyaire Hill need another year. I will say that I thought Ja’Den McBurrows looked good against State, and the PFF grading bears that out: he received a 78.7 defensive grade on 27 snaps.

Apologies, Tex_Ind_Blue. I will take a look at those high-leverage-game snap counts for the Georgia Bulldogs of yesteryear very soon.