Wild Card Weekend = Michigan Weekend

Submitted by Swayze Howell Sheen on
Undoubtedly this has been written about elsewhere, but since I am too lazy to google for it, instead I bring it to your attention myself. What am I talking about? Well, the fact that the weekend of pro football brought so many familiar faces onto the TV that it made me wonder: are there an unusually high number of Michigan players on playoff football teams? 

Sir Charles

                      The Real Sir Charles

The answer, as Lee Corso might blurt out while having an on-air stroke, is 
"Mrgharaaw", by which he would mean "Yes!" 



  "Not so fast, my fribealllgn.... burp."

Using this very handy pro football reference site (which allows you to download CSV files of all rosters), I downloaded the rosters of the weekends' eight wild-card teams, and then "analyzed" them to find the following breakdown of which schools the players on the active rosters went to. Here "analyze" means "ran a few python scripts which spit out some numbers, most of which are probably wrong".

The big answer: Michigan dominates. Indeed, they come in #1 across those eight rosters, beating out USC and LSU by two players. The top "10" teams, with lots of ties (and the number of players on the rosters, in parentheses) are:                              
  • 1. Michigan (14 players!)  
  • 2. LSU (12)  
  • 2. USC (12)  
  • 4. Ohio State (11)  
  • 5. Miami (10)  
  • 6. Notre Dame (9)  
  • 7. Florida State (7)  
  • 7. Georgia (7)  
  • 7. Michigan State (7)  
  • 10. Alabama (6)  
  • 10. Arkansas (6)  
  • 10. Auburn (6)  
  • 10. Boston College (6)  
  • 10. Colorado (6)  
  • 10. Nebraska (6)  
  • 10. Oregon (6)  
  • 10. Tennessee (6)  
  • 10. Texas (6)  
  • 10. UCLA (6)  

The Michigan players on these rosters, by the way, are:                                         
  • Arizona: Alan Branch, Steve Breaston, Gabe Watson  
  • Baltimore: Prescott Burgess  
  • Cincinnati: Leon Hall, Dhani Jones, Morgan Trent  
  • Dallas: None  
  • Green Bay: Charles Woodson  
  • New England: Tom Brady, Pierre Woods  
  • New York Jets: Braylon Edwards, Jay Feely, David Harris  
  • Philly Eagles: Jason Avant                                                  

As you can also see from this list, most of the players were guys who saw the field plenty on Saturday and Sunday. You can also see: not much reason to root for Dallas.

If you group by conference, however, some of the more usual suspects pop to the top of the list, alas:
  • SEC (57)   
  • PAC-10 (50)    
  • ACC (47)     
  • Big Ten (45)  
  • Big 12 (39)  
  • Big East (25)                                               

Why does the Big Ten fair so poorly in this one? Well, as you can see above, Michigan, OSU, and Michigan State (surprisingly?) held up their end of the bargain. It is really one school in particular that failed us: Penn State, with only 2 players on these rosters. Of course, the sample size is small, but it makes one wonder about Penn State's success at placing players in the NFL. Only a more thorough study of all NFL rosters over the years would paint a more accurate picture.  
                                                                                                      

Joepa

                 Don't "Go to Penn State"
NFL
Michigan football
we rule

Comments

Marley Nowell

January 13th, 2010 at 12:50 AM ^

Big Gabe played a lot in that game and Branch recovered the Packer's first fumble. Braylon needs to get over the dropsies but on the bright side Jay Feely is already the best punter in Jets history

Joined: 07/31/2008

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AC1997

January 13th, 2010 at 8:25 AM ^

Seeing stuff like this makes me proud....and also makes me wonder how Carr struggled so much in his waning years. But that's a topic for another day I guess..... What about the four teams with byes? Off the top of my head: Colts = Hart Chargers = None? Saints = None? (Arrington was on IR for them) Vikings = Hutchinson

Joined: 09/19/2008

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st barth

January 13th, 2010 at 10:46 AM ^

It's frustrating to look at all the talent and see that the teams of Carr's later years were not more dominate. It's almost unfathomable to me that the Henne/Hart years produced a record of only 1-7 in bowl games & against ohio state. I know some people like to point to Tressell dominating Carr but I still feel that the real difference maker in three of those osu loses was troy smith, fucking troy smith. Bowl games were full of tough luck too. In recent years we've lost to a loaded USC twice in the Rose Bowl and also came up short against Vince Young's Texas team. It's just the nature of sports, I guess, that even good teams don't always win. A lot of luck is needed too. Nonetheless, we were frustratingly close to having a really good run.

Joined: 12/02/2008

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Blue in Seattle

January 13th, 2010 at 2:10 PM ^

Remember a certain QB for Syracuse in 1998? Lloyd was working with the National Championship defense, almost at that point, and Donovan had his way with us, Troy Smith was just OSU realizing the times were changing, while the Bo Legacy defense mentality charged onward. I haven't done the analysis, but my impression of the Lloyd era was that every Big Ten team that started installing Mobile QB's and/or spread receiver alignments, starting racking the points up on us. Mostly we held them off with our own incredible Pro Style Offense lead by Brady/Henson/Navarre/Henne, who also had incredible receiving groups (too many to name really, or I'm just lazy looking them up) While it sounds like "Lloyd bashing" I think even Lloyd would admit he wasn't the best person for the job, in fact I remember him saying that while he was interim coach. Stated another way, Lloyd was a great coach in most things. But recognizing that the startegies were changing, and taking action by recruiting to change Michigan's strategy were not on that list of great things. Hart was successful because he fit in Jake Long's pocket. I know a lot of people like Mike Hart because he did end up carrying the ball, and was paired to Henne for 4 years. But to me he was a smart mouthed egocentric person, and the biggest sign that Lloyd had lost it. Bo never let players mouth off like that ( except interestingly enough Harbaugh and the OSU guarantee, but the story on that is Bo was very pissed off, and Harbaugh was only saved because of his family and that he was the ball boy for Bo, and maybe because he was at the end of Bo's tenure) And if you check this site, http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Who_were_the_quarterbacks_for_the_michigan_wo… you'll see that Moeller's QB's did better in the NFL than Lloyd's

Joined: 07/02/2008

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ntclark

January 13th, 2010 at 8:53 AM ^

If you want more data, here's another analysis of all NFL playoff teams instead just the wildcard games. Michigan leads all teams with 20 players, USC and LSU are second with 18. The SEC has 104 to the Big Ten's 97 players, as well. You can go back a couple years, too. The most interesting thing to me was that 118 players didn't come from a D1 school.

Joined: 01/14/2009

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dahblue

January 13th, 2010 at 10:47 AM ^

As a recovering Lions fan, rooting for Michigan alums is the only joy I can get out of NFL football. I merely hope that the new RichRod-style players continue the Michigan tradition in the NFL. I fear they won't...but hope that's wrong.

Joined: 11/09/2009

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AC1997

January 13th, 2010 at 12:40 PM ^

I still think that if Carr had coached the team all the time like he did in his last game against Florida the team would have been better. I also think you could start to see even in 2006 that the back-ups were woefully worse than the upper-classmen starters. So any injury, fatigue, or substitution would result in a significant drop off. And to make you further slam your head in the table, look at the 2006 roster sometime: -- 15 of the 22 starters are in the NFL. -- Of those 15 in the NFL, 7 of them are significant contributors on their team (8 if you count Branch) That's stunning, especially considering how far this team fell since Bo died in 2006. My theory is that the back-ups and recruits from 2006 on were significantly less talented and more poorly coached in Carr's last two seasons but we didn't notice because they were so good in 2006.

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Michigasling

January 13th, 2010 at 2:10 PM ^

Also because I live in NYC where the Cowboys are the evil empire. But they are the only playoff team without at least one player or ass't coach on their roster. As for the Saints, Arrington was on IR last year; this year he's on the practice squad. And yes, Jonathan Goodwin is their starting Center. But a trend that bothers me, especially during a tumultuous recruiting season, is seeing how many of the Michigan alum starters, who get their face time on certain networks, are identifying themselves as from their high schools (the under-appreciated but high-performing David Harris for the Jets, for example) or Braylon saying he's from Lloyd Carr's Michigan (which is true, of course). It's absolutely their right-- Larry Foote used to do that last year when with the Steelers, and his loyalty can't be questioned, coming back home to play for the Lions-- But wouldn't it be nice for those kids on the fence to see how many Michigan guys are where they want to be? Even if it is from a different regime. At least they could count on the pride and loyalty to the school of the Big Boys while the little ones are growing up.

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Yo_Boy

January 13th, 2010 at 3:00 PM ^

As I read this, I couldn't help wonder what the overall NFL looked like. So, being the nerd I am, I threw all the rosters into a pivot table and found the following: Miami 41 LSU 40 Texas 37 tOSU 37 Georgia 35 USC 33 N Dame 32 Michigan 29 Florida 29 Tenn. 29 Cal 28 FL State 26 Maryland 24 Other Big Ten schools: Purdue 22 PSU 21 Iowa 21 MSU 21 Wiscy 19 Illinois 15 Minne 14 NWestern 8 Indiana 7

Joined: 10/31/2009

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InRodWeTrust333

January 14th, 2010 at 4:04 PM ^

Teams without Michigan players compiled a 73-103 record this year, just a 40% winning percentage. Teams with Michigan players had a combined record of 183-163, a 52% winning percentage. Teams without Michigan: Cowboys (good), Falcons (average), Bills (fail), Panthers (average), Bears (fail), Browns (super fail), Jaguars (average), Chiefs (dead kittens), Raiders (killer of kittens), Bucs (why?), Titans (CJ ftw).

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