Ups And Downs: Season-To-Season And Historic Production Changes

“A HIGH-LEVEL LOOK AT OVERALL PRODUCTION”

After an afternoon of disappointment followed by reflection, I decided to take a look at the last ten years of Michigan football and conduct a little “then and now” look at it. I had most of this data already, so it was reasonably convenient for me.

I added the South Carolina data into the figuring of seasonal averages for rushing offense and defense, passing offense and defense and scoring offense and defense. I then split the ten seasons into “the previous eight” versus “the last two” and provided separate averages for these. Granted, an average of two numbers isn’t exceedingly meaningful, but it aids in approximating a few other items. More specifically, increases or decreases in productivity between the two periods. Recognizing the dangers of the “average of averages”, given that there are so many data points involved, I will accept the summary statistics as a decent approximation and a good basis for discussion.

So you can see the trends between the first two seasons with this coaching staff, I figured out the percent change along the six metric between the two years, but then I also did this for the “Hoke Era”, if you will, versus the previous eight years so it is possible to see, at a high level, some of the effects of the change.

DATA AND RESULTS:

DISCUSSION:

There shouldn’t be too much in here that you didn’t already surmise.

For one thing, in some of the numbers anyway, you will clearly note what has been called “The Denard Effect” around these parts when it comes to offensive production, particularly rushing and scoring offense.  Between this season and last, the 17.9% decrease in average rushing can be explained by injuries and by role and scheme changes in the offense. It will be interesting to revisit this analysis next year for this reason. The other thing that will not shock anyone is the drop in passing overall during the current regime, but the uptick from last year to this year, mainly due to “the Gardner effect”, if you will.

An interesting statistic to me as well is that, despite appearances, the pass defense did get better this year compared to last despite what I would term the absence of pure pass rusher, at least in my opinion. The rush defense actually took a step back statistically, although you watching the games makes that difficult to believe for me sometimes.

There are plenty of springboards for discussion in this, I believe, but I am interested in what the MGoCommunity thinks.

ADDENDUM (at the request of Blue In Seattle - excellent idea, BTW):

FOR THOSE OF US SUFFERING THROUGH WINTER: