Dear RR; For the love of god, pls ONSIDE KICK!

You don't know jack shit about football but please continue to post because it is actually entertaining.

Jesus christ, another "derp RR doesn't understand rivalries!" post? Seriously?

I'm not sure I like your tone.  Please save that for a week with an L.

What exactly would we be losing by trying a few onside kicks?

All of those "punt" and "FG" drives, for one.

Among all their drives in regulation, the averaged 27 yards. Considering most onside kicks give it to the offense at our 40 or so, that means on average they would drive to our 13 on every drive. Enjoy that one.

I'd rather Rich continue to play sound football, teach the boys the correct way to play, and count on his defense to make some important stops.

No shit..  our kickers are having a hard enough time just kicking the ball straight and you think they could actually execute a perfect onside kick without it going out of bounds on the 45?  You sir are an idiot

BlueSeoul negged every person in this thread that disagreed with his stupid thread.

I think the underlying theme to your post rings true. The kickoff team put the defense in a precarious position throughout the entire game. Speculation can definitely be made as to what may have been were Michigan able to put Illinois inside their own 30 on a consistent basis.

And we should go for it on 4th down every time, too!  Even if we are on our own 10.

Um.  Sarcasm.

Why are you the way that you are?

I hate.....so much....the things you choose to be...

In all seriousness though, let's settle for actually keeping a kickoff in bounds and MAYBE, just MAYBE, our ridiculously young defence can improve enough that preventing a 70-80 yard drive isn't such an outrageous proposition.

We can't even keep regular kickoffs in-bounds. The idea of trying an onside kick with the current state of our special teams scares the living daylights out of me.

The funny thing about yesterdays missed FG, was at halftime he didn't miss from the same spot. I don't know if the kickers get nervous during the game or what, but they were practically down the middle and the had more then enough elevation.

HIM NOT UNDERSTAND RIVALRY

I AM ANGAR

Forget the onside kick. Learn to cover kickoffs.

I would rather kick it deep (Sure they return it pretty far but still) and take our chances with them moving the ball on us. If we onside kick, we're giving them even better field position and would only have to drive 15-20 yards to be in field goal range. You have a 20% chance of recovering an onside kick (I looked it up) so just kick it off and maybe the defense even forces a turnover.

Does anyone know who is on the kickoff team? I have looked but can't find the depth chart for it. That may answer a lot of questions.

You should probably stop trying to explain yourself and move on with the little blog-dignity you still have

     If we utilized that strategy with some regularity, the opposing teams would almost be forced to use their "hands" team on most kickoffs.  We could then kick deep and probably not give up as many yards on the returns.  This is not an original idea but I think it has merit.

#1 Even though the coach is not going to read this and certainly will devise his own game plan apart from what fans think, it is perfectly acceptable for a fan to give his/her opinion. So stop being a douchebag to the poster.

#2 I was extremely thrilled by the win yesterday! The defense showed promise at times. They still give up massive amounts of points including two WIDE open TD passes. If our defense is struggling and we have to win via a shootout then its IMPERATIVE to give our offense as many possessions as possible. Our defense is not forcing turnovers either (yesterdays turnover by Illinois was a gift). I was thinking last week that if we are struggling on defense so much then why not try more onside kicks or atleast maybe ONE onside kick (I don't think Michigan has done it once this year).

Some of you have gripped about the low percentage of success with an onside kick but then again I would argue about the low percentage success our defense has had on stopping a third down. At worst you give a defense that is already struggling horrible field position. I have no doubt the percentages would still be the same for an opponent to score a td REGARDLESS of field position. For those of you who are numb in the head and fail to see otherwise, I point the massive points put up by mediocre offenses as proof of my argument.

By the way, those field goals and the punts were a product more of Ron Zook's conservative by the book nature rather than our defense stopping them cold. The Illini should have gone for it on fourth down rather than punt and had they attempted it there is no doubt in my mind they would have converted. A coach who adjusts for different teams and disregards playing by the books will see his offense score at will on our defense. Therefore, it would be more beneficial to attempt to produce turnovers.

I wouldn't be averse to trying a surprise onside kick once in the next three weeks, but it's not something you can do regularly.  The fact that we stunk on kickoffs and kick coverage suggests to me that . . . we should probably practice those a little more.

Still with the "understanding rivalries" garbage?  Aside from being asinine and nonsensical, it completely undermines anything else you say.

This is a smart strategy that would increase the likelihood of a win.  It won't be adopted because coaches are risk-averse.  It will be pooh-poohed by MGoDenizens because it goes against conventional wisdom and they prefer to "play tough defense" and "keep the defense's spirits up" instead of considering good ideas.

It would probably go out of bounds?

I close my eyes whenever the special teams are on the field.  Its safer that way.

Our kickers have enough trouble keeping it in-bounds, let alone doing what's required for a successful onside.

There were some MGoBlog reader's campaigning for onside kicks every kick behind me at the game. Was that you Blue Seoul?

Couple of thoughts:

• I think RR does need to amp up the agressiveness just a bit. We did go for it on 4th a few times, but on that 3rd and 3 play where the pass bounced off of Webb's hands (just before Broekhuizen missed the FG), I would have liked to have seen a run play with the assumption that we would go for it on 4th. On the other hand, if Seth (not typing that last name again) had made it, we would have gone up by 10 and all the blue hairs would have been nodding silently in approval.
• As for onside kicks, I agree with the disagreers to the OP; on the other hand, Brian made an interesting point on WTKA last week about how if you onside kick a lot and then show an onside kick, then the other team has to put their hands team in, and then if you kick deep, you're dealing with a bunch of WRs instead of backup LBs blocking. Just a thought. Also, I have long been a fan of lining up in wacky ways to get the other team to burn timeouts. Lining up for onside kicks a few times might accomplish this.

Michigan has lost six straight to Tressel.  Carr lost four of those, and RR has lost two.  So I find it highly inappropriate to bring out the tar and feathers quite yet.   As for RR being "outclassed" by MSU coaches, the talent and experience level of the two teams may have had a bit to do with it.  It would be really nice if you would just let everyone enjoy the win instead of finding a flimsy excuse to continue the witch hunt. 

Also, I don't think, despite your last paragraph, that you are in much of a position to be giving RR any ultimatums quite yet.  Otherwise, though, the post was sorta OK.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hfYJsQAhl0&feature=related

Gosh guys, comments like "obviously you've never played football before are somewhat short sighted. There are a lot of people who would have said the same thing a few years ago about going for it on 4th and 1 from the 50. Now almost everyone knows that it's correct to go for it in that spot (end game and half scenarios excluded). That being said, I don't think all the arguments in this thread for onside kicking (THERE IS NO S) are fully fleshed out and reasonable either. I am not convinced by platitudes such as "we can't stop anyone anyway" or "you can't put your defense in that situation. I am, however, convinced by math.

In a diary that I posted last week I used a simple algebraic formula to talk about onside kicking after a 15 yard penalty on the receiving team. It was a=b*y-c*(1-y) where a was the expected points of a drive given a deep kickoff, b was the expected points of a successful onside kick, and c was the expected points of an unsuccessful onside kick. y represented the chances that kick would be successful. Figure out the expected points and you can solve for y to figure out how often you need to be successful for an onside kick to be successful. 

Using the expected point values found at http://www.advancednflstats.com/2008/08/expected-points.html we can see that under normal circumstances, with an average drive start at the opponent's 41 an onside kick recovered at our own 45, the formula would be: -1.5=1.6y-2.7(1-y). Solve for y and we can see that an onside kick will need to be successful over 27.9% of the time to be a good gamble, as long as Rich doesn't start onside kicking every time, thus decreasing the schematic advantages that a surprise onside kick inherently possesses.

I think it's also worth noting that the 41 is probably not the true average starting field position that Illinois would enjoy. I also think that even teams that cover kicks well should be more aggressive in their use of onside kicks as there is generally a great gulf between how likely a surprise onside kick needs to be recovered and how often it actually is recovered.

Oh and OP, I think Rodreguez is one of the best coaches in the country as far as 4th down and other game management decisions go. Sure he's more conservative than I think is optimal at some points, but he's way more aggressive on a week to week basis than every other coach in the Big Ten and almost every other coach in the country.

I also think your comments re: the rivalries are totally off base.

more onsides?  I'll grant that this isn't the best possible articulation of the points made, but what exactly is so objectionable?  Onside kicks make sense especially if the chance you get a stop isn't much different from the chance you recover (which is the same thing as a D stop, plus some field position).  40% is the number Advanced NFL Stats used as the chance of recovery for a surprise onside. 

M TDs allowed per possession (in regulation, not counting obvious run-out-the-clock drives):

vs. ILL - 5/16 ~ 70% chance of a stop

vs. PSU - 5/9 ~ 45%

vs. IOWA - 5/11 ~ 55%

vs. MSU - 4/10 ~ 60%

vs. IND - 5/12 ~ 60%

In Big Ten play, we've given up TDs at a 40% or so clip.  That doesn't include field goals because those are wins for our defense given our offense.  Nor things like fourth quarter drives up a couple scores so they probably aren't trying that hard to score since low-variance clock killing will still get them a win, because I didn't feel like adding more subjectivity. 

So is it that hard to believe that there was an opportunity to take an onside to get an extra possession?  Whittling away that 20% isn't that tough.  Any time you're losing by more than one score to a team that's not that different in talent (i.e. you'll probably score at the same rate) it becomes a more favorable play.  Or let's say your expected rate of scoring is slightly worse than the other team's and you don't expect to win the turnover battle since you have a young offense and a meh defense.  The MSU-Iowa-PSU trio were pretty much tailor-made at various points for the onside.  If things look bleak and you aren't expected to win, introducing some higher variance plays make sense unless you need to save face by not getting blown out.  I think this explains at least some of Rich's conservatism this year.

It could be a good thought to save it for OSU, since the fanbase obviously would count that win as more important than others.  But that's only if Tressel would expect it far less if RR hadn't used it in the season.  I'm not sure if that's true or not.