"Against Good Defenses" Argument

Submitted by Ziff72 on

I have no hope that we will not compare offenses to the 2010 offense for decades to come and the pros and cons of spread vs pro style whatever that means nowadays, but could we please stop with the "well the offense was no good against good defenses it only worked against scrubs".    Yes. Exactly.  You are right.  Fin.

That is why they are good defenses. They stop teams.  This is the argument Paul Johnson fights at Georgia Tech.   Everytime GT doesn't rush for 400yds and score 60pts they say "aha they figured it out".  No.  Stop.   They have players that are on scholarship too and sometimes they stop us. 

 When the other teams have better athletes and they are experienced and well coached there is only so much scheme can do for you.  

Nebraska used to go down to the Orange Bowl and watch their 50pt a game offenses get dismantled by Miami and Florida St teams in the 80's. Was the scheme flawed?  No.  they had better athletes.  When they got better athletes in the 90's they rung up 60 on Florida with the same schemes and they stuffed Spurriers high flying offense in the toilet.

So when arguing the merits of a particular offense make the correct comparison.  Don't say "we scored 40 a game against the scrubs but only 20 against quality competition the offense wasn't that good".  The correct argument for last years team for the anti RR/spread group would be to compare our scoring/yardage against OSU/MSU/Wisc/Iowa/Penn St vs what the rest of the Big Ten did against those teams(Out of conference strength of schedule is to variable to get a decent comparison and to exclude Big Ten outliers gives you too small a sample size so I think this is one of the more accuarate comparisons) . 

Thank you and please return to your regularly scheduled programming of trashing Penn St.

 

M-Wolverine

November 10th, 2011 at 2:42 PM ^

Exactly what that post does....

Sure leaving space for posts like this by consolidating the Penn State threads was a good idea?  Maybe we have too much space.  Illinois? Bueller? Bueller?

Hannibal.

November 10th, 2011 at 2:49 PM ^

Yeah Lloyd's teams regularly got punked even with tons of talent.  The 2000 offense was the best we have had since at least 1992, but they only scored 10 against Wisconsin, 14 against MSU, and they completely tanked in the 2nd half against Purdue.  The 2003 offense didn't score against Oregon until that game was out of hand and they didn't do jack shit against Minnesota for 3 quarters.  They also got pounded by USC.

Engin77

November 10th, 2011 at 3:04 PM ^

that stadium was deafening; UM couldn't hear themselves on the sidelines. Early on, most of Navarre's passes were thrown to tacopants, later it was said the steep crown of the field (to facilitate drainage in the rainy pacific NW) took awhile to get used to. If you want to piss off a Duck fan: when discussing that game, observe that the outcome would have been different had the game lasted five more minutes.

sheepdog

November 10th, 2011 at 3:08 PM ^

I think we will stop analyzing this when Michigan returns to being a GOOD DEFENSE.  Honestly, I don't really care if the offense scores 50 points a game or 28 pts a game.  At the end of the day, if you don't have a good defense, you don't win championships.  Obviously there are exceptions, but I would much rather resemble LSU or BAMA than Oklahoma St. or Oregon.

LSU/BAMA = average/above average offense and supperior defense.  Which is why they are the two best teams in the land.

Maize and Blue…

November 10th, 2011 at 4:30 PM ^

are above average.  Their QB play is horrible and all they did to each other was load the box and dare the other to pass.  Since neither could you got a snoozefest.  Neither coach wants to lose because of a poor decision by their QB so they pound the rock and play field position.  I hope we get to see LSU against either Stanford or Okie State because I think they will result in interesting games.

M-Wolverine

November 11th, 2011 at 1:49 PM ^

LSU is the #20 scoring offense, and Bama the #23; Total offense Bama is #30, though LSU is a lame #87.  It could easily be argued that Alabama is "above average". The fact that their QBs aren't great really isn't any more a disqualification than Michigan having a yardage creating QB, a couple of good linemen, and a bunch of other guys who wouldn't sniff the field on those two teams offenses, yet still ranks fairly high.

El Jeffe

November 10th, 2011 at 3:44 PM ^

Yeah, I don't understand what some people's definition of a good offense is, I guess. If having a good offense requires that you score an equally absurd number of points against all defenses, then I don't think any offense past about 1930 would qualify.

Sometimes teams have your number, sometimes you have a bad day, sometimes they'rn match up well agin your'n and you don't score much. It happens, and it happens with more regularity against better defenses than against worse defenses. I don't get the debate.

coastal blue

November 10th, 2011 at 4:12 PM ^

I mean, by some people's definition Oregon should give up on their offense because they scored 15 points and had 317 yards against Cal (18th ranked defense in the country) and 19 points and 446 yards against Auburn (60th ranked defense in the country). Clearly it isn't working out for them because they can't score 40+ points against everyone and even looked mortal against certain teams....luckily they had the 34th ranked defense to help them out.

The FannMan

November 10th, 2011 at 4:16 PM ^

Actually, the correct comparision would be how well the rest of the league did against the good teams' scrubs after they were down by three touchdowns in the 3rd quarter.

Ziff72

November 10th, 2011 at 5:31 PM ^

Instead of a rational discussion why don't we all get "Camp ID Badges" so that we can just automatically put up our dicky  comments and it would save time.

For instance you can be in the "Hate RR" camp.  You can just click the "Dick" button and it will give you a drop down to say

1. Didn't work in the Rough Big Ten

 2. Didn't work against elite defenses

3. It was turnover prone.

4. You guys are stat nerds

5. They only scored when the other team let them.

The FannMan

November 10th, 2011 at 6:58 PM ^

First, your post wasn't close to a rational discussion of anything,

Second, I didn't say any of what you seem to think I did.  Nice straw man, though.

Third, get a sense of humor.

Fourth, any time you resort to name calling = you lose.

So yeah, nice effort bro!

The FannMan

November 10th, 2011 at 7:54 PM ^

Oh no!  You down voted me!  I am soooo hurt.

Look man, I am going to disengage.  If you want to call people names and then hide their replies that is your business.  As noted by others above, yours was not a good post.

 

ClearEyesFullHart

November 11th, 2011 at 1:36 AM ^

6.  It was a pretty good offense, but not demonstrably better than Borges's

I may be a dick, but if we're going to compare, that's how I see it.

ClearEyesFullHart

November 11th, 2011 at 9:16 AM ^

     Oh how I have missed our little opportunities for learning.

     Today we're going to learn about supporting our conclusions.

     Have you got your big boy pants on?  Because this might take a minute, you might want to try to go potty before we get started.  K, you ready now?  That's a good job sweetie.

     Sometimes it makes us feel happy when we tell someone "You're wrong" or "You're stupid"  when we dont agree with them.  But when you grow up, you'll realize that different people have different points of view.  And when you attack people without giving any support for your attacks, that makes you seem even less intelligent than you are.  And you want to be a smart, smart boy when you grow up, dont you little buddy?

     You see, last year Michigan played 4 of the same teams that they played this year, so we can compare.  In't it cool when we have actual numbers to back up things we are saying on the internet?  I think so too.

    Last year against Notre Dame, MSU, Iowa, and Purdue, Michigan scored 100 points!  That's 25 points a game.  That's really good, isn't it?

   Yeah, well this year against Notre Dame, MSU, Iowa and Purdue, Michigan has scored 101 points.  That's a little better isn...wait...dont cry...You're right sweetie those are stupid, stupid numbers.

     Maybe you should go get your blankie and take a nap.  Teacher will put that nice Josh Grobin song you like on.  We can pick this up again tomorrow when you're feeling better.

Ziff72

November 11th, 2011 at 9:40 AM ^

You are aware that each year you lose a lot of your best players in college becaue they only stay 4 or 5 years?  Comparing our offense to last years based on adding up scores against last years teams has almost no relevance.

That goes back to the make up a random stat to support my argument theory.

ClearEyesFullHart

November 11th, 2011 at 10:15 AM ^

     The only way to determine conclusively if 2010's offense was better than 2011's would involve a time machine and a serious waste of resources.

     Assuming that is not going to be possible, performance against common opponent(or at least as common as is possible) has the least amount of uncontrollable variables.  It still isn't great, but its the best we've got.

     Look, I'm not trying to say that Borges's offense is better.  We just cant say for sure that its worse.

     And really, why would we want to?

blue in dc

November 10th, 2011 at 6:44 PM ^

Currently our offense is rated 17 in FEI, not the same as 2, but still not bad. We don't have a horrible offense this year - it just hurts more this year when they screw up because the defense can actually keep them in games this year.
<br>
<br>If I get to discount last years low scoring games against good defenses, can I do that for Borgess too?

NateVolk

November 10th, 2011 at 7:09 PM ^

Considering we have no one with anywhere near NFL talent on the offense, I think we do pretty well. We run into problems where we face defenses that have have a couple elite players and a bunch of solid well-coached guys. The people who think the offense can do better and diagnose problems like play calling and scheme are right I hope. 

This weekend would be a great time to have some of that improvement because for the 3rd time in 4 games we'll be playing a team with equal or better talent on their home field. Those are hard games to win.

 

MGoStrength

November 10th, 2011 at 8:21 PM ^

Look, here's the bottom line.  We beat below average teams because we are better than them.  We often lose to good teams because they are better than us.  When teams are above average, but not great, sometimes we win and sometimes we lose.  It's not scheme, that's just where we are as a team...we are better than average, but not great.  We are doing what our talent says we should.