Calling The Mathlete: Any team ever been this turnover prone consecutively?
From my limited exposure to turnover ratios, primarily from reading Steele and this blog, my understanding is that a team with a poor turnover ratio one year (or a team with a very positive one) can typically be expected to regress to the mean the next, meaning either improving to roughly average or digressing to average. Yet we see M having three consecutive years of horrifying turnover issues. Has this happened before? I ask this because after today's horrifying display (on both sides to be fair) I am starting to believe that this turnover problem is not random, and must have something to do with coaching-what I am not smart enough to say. But I can't see how this is a random bad luck occurrence any longer.
November 13th, 2010 at 4:53 PM ^
It's a combination of using first year starters at QB 3 years in a row and an insistence on calling plays that the offense can't execute without error reliably, especially against Big Ten defenses.
November 13th, 2010 at 5:00 PM ^
Of course Denard is a first-year starter, but 10 games in, his decision-making can still be awful. Those two picks were unspeakably bad. Hopefully he's learning from his mistakes, but I'm not sure we've seen an improvement in this decision-making thus far.
Still, a win is a win. And we have 7 of 'em!
November 13th, 2010 at 5:06 PM ^
Considering this is the first year he's ever attempted reading a coverage, he's about as good as he can be at it. The only problem now is that his athletes aren't that much better than their cover man anymore, and there's enough film to scout against major RPS wins that got players open earlier in the year.
November 13th, 2010 at 5:45 PM ^
I think it would be very interesting to look into what teams recently have seen a stretch like this. As far as this stat goes, we're paying the price for having another first year starter. But its not like its been a bad decision, though.
But, you mention Steele.
His turnover, turnaround shows us a lot of improved teams. But, his record tracking only accounts for teams improving their overall record, not neceassrily their TO margin. Granted, the improved TO margin is implied, but still the backbone is that teams with the super bad TO margin, in this case a minus double digit, will improve their record first.
Somehow, Michigan has managed this 2 years in a row. That tells me there is a major leap out there, record wise, if we can ever get this under control
November 13th, 2010 at 6:26 PM ^
Has any team has 5 turnovers 2 games in a row and won both of them