Synopsis for Turnovers: "Turnovers, yeah, that's ridiculous…. You know, we're not good enough to make mistakes and beat anybody. I told you, everybody that earlier, our team understands that. Especially the ones – you're moving the ball, you're inside the red zone, inside the 15 and you fumble it. And then we kick a field goal and it's about this high [hand gesture about head high] and that gets blocked….And then the penalties, we're our own worst enemy in the first half with the silly penalties. That's just ridiculous and we gotta get that cleaned up." Rich Rodriguez.

M has been –7 in TOM the past 2 games. Turnovers have now reached the point that a winning season (6-6 or better) is in jeopardy! Only 28% of teams with a TOM of –5 or worse had a winning record (basis: all FBS—AQ teams for the past 5 years).

To reiterate: turnovers are NOT primarily due to luck. Turnovers ARE primarily due to poor performance and/or inexperienced players. Turnover margins often increase when the relative experience and skill of the opposing teams are significantly different. Over the next 5 games, M will face 3 teams (Penn State, Illinois, Purdue) with similar (or perhaps less) experience at key positions and 2 teams (Wisconsin, osu) with more experience at key positions. How the turnover battle shakes out will have a major impact on how many of those games Michigan can win. If we can maintain a neutral or positive TOM, all of those games are winnable. If not…….(I will make no comment about the chart on the right. It is what it is.)

BTW, blocked punts, blocked field goals, on-side kick recovered by the opposing team, roughing the kicker penalties, etc. are not considered to be "official" turnovers but have the same effect. I will continue to track these also.

Overall, M declined from +1 TOM to –3 TOM and the national ranking climbed to #79. Turnovers lost are now about the same as an average team but turnovers gained are just 69% of the average team. All TOs, except the last interception by Tate, have occurred at important times during the games.

Synopsis for Special Teams

Another mixed review for special teams. Hagerup in now ranked #28 nationally and ended up with 50.3 average yards per punt and a net of the same 50.3 yards per punt! M's overall net punting includes a couple of pooch punts by Denard and Tate and (amazingly to me) the blocked punt by Hagerup is NOT included in his stats – it is included in the overall team stats for punting. Starting field position for the opposition after our kickoff remains at the 29 yard line (slightly better than average). Broekhuizen had a 38 yard FG blocked that was then returned 37 yards to the M48. He also sent two kickoffs out of bounds (which is really just an 11 yard penalty versus the average starting field position after KOs).

National Rankings:

Details for Turnovers:

Here is the Summary by Game. According to the folks at Football Outsiders  a first down TO is worth 5 points, second down TO is worth 4.5 points, and a third down TO is worth 4.0 points (regardless of field position!).

The extrapolation is a straight line [Totals] X [13 Total Games / Games Played]. AQ Best and AQ average is over the past 10 years. AQ Best is kind of funky because the team with the "best" in each category is different so the numbers don't add. But it does provide a point of reference.

Here is the detail of each fumble/interception and a comment providing insight if the turnover (or lack thereof) was significant. Note, blocked punts are not considered a turnover and an interception of an extra point is not considered a turnover (player does not get credit for a interception).

Here is the overall summary by player (data in yellow was affected by this week's game).

Details for Special Teams:

Here are the Punting and Kickoff statistics. (Touchbacks are included as –20 yards when determining net yards.)

Remember here are the correlations of TOM to WLM at season's end.