Week 3 In The Big Ten: Reports From The Eyewash Station

Submitted by LSAClassOf2000 on

WEEK 3 IN THE BIG TEN:  REPORTS FROM THE EYEWASH STATION

As we are aware, the Big Ten has not exactly gotten out of the gate this season at a blistering pace. Just this past weekend, for example, Rutgers chokes away a lead against a Penn State team that seemed to be forever 3rd and 6, Iowa had the impudence to lose to Iowa State and saddle them with the CyHawk trophy, Indiana loses to Bowling Green, Minnesota gets curbstomped by TCU, Kent State really had Ohio State on the ropes for a few precious seconds when their bus parked across two spaces in the parking lot…and so on. Let’s just say that the explanation for all this probably sounds a lot like this:

So, let’s embark on a discussion of where Michigan sits after three weeks, and again, we’re going to rely a little more on a discussion format here as averages still don’t mean much at the moment. Still, for what it is worth, here are Michigan’s summary averages and where they sit with regards to the conference as a whole:

Scoring Offense – 28.7 points, 9th

Scoring Defense – 18.3 points, 5th

Now, 10.4 points in the positive for a differential may not be impressive to some, but slap a minus on the same number and you can be Purdue. Just saying.

Total Offense – 436.3 yards, 5th

Total Defense – 252.7 yards, 1st

The defense has definitely been doing its job.  Actually, we’ve been gaining 2.1 yards more than our opponents so far on average on a per play basis, which is excellent.

Rushing Offense – 242 yards, 3rd

Rushing Defense – 80 yards, 3rd

On one side of the run game, a huge turnaround. We have made 44% of last year’s entire net rushing in three games. We’re also quite good at stopping the run so far too.

Passing Offense – 194.3 yards, 12th

Passing Defense – 172.7 yards, 3rd

Cumulatively for pass defense, we’re 52-93 for 518 yards total, good for a 55.9% completion percentage and about 5.6 yards per attempt. When we’re doing the throwing, it’s 48-73 for 583 yards overall, good for about a 65% completion percentage and about 8.0 yards per attempt.

Other notes – Michigan’s 1st down differential is quite good, averaging 6.1 more first downs than our opponents (all three of them, I know) to date, and our 3rd down conversion differential is 12.1% in the positive, so we win that battle too. Indeed, we’ve managed to allow only 31.8% of all third downs so far against us to be converted.

Here are some of the summary stats for the conference to date. Again, average of three numbers, strength of conclusions, grumble grumble…

 photo Week3ScoreOffense_zps14e042a7.png  photo Week3ScoreDefense_zps80acef93.png  photo Week3TotalOffense_zps88e5b3a7.png  photo Week3TotalDefense_zpsb15f0efa.png  photo Week3PassOffense_zps5a2f1f0f.png  photo Week3PassDefense_zpsc0eff144.png  photo Week3RushOffense_zps16c0fe03.png  photo Week3RushDefense_zpsa6d89902.png

Comments

UMgradMSUdad

September 15th, 2014 at 11:14 AM ^

I added BTN to watch the Michigan game, and did watch much of the Rutgers-Penn St. game. What a crapfest! And sticking with a theme, the commentators sure did go out of their way to polish that turd of a game.

Sac Fly

September 15th, 2014 at 12:01 PM ^

Kirk Ferentz has been a head coach for 15 years and he's still the worst game manager in football.

They had timeouts, but instead of using them to get the ball back with around 30 seconds, they saved the timeout to ice the kicker and let Iowa State run the clock down.