Defense through 4 games, drives & points allowed
I charted the opponent scoring plays/drives and wasn't surprised to actually see the points generated from turnovers/bad punting/coverage.
Of the 84 points Michigan has allowed, 63 are on the defense, though another 29 points came on drives the opponent started after a turnover or a UM punt of less than 30 yards.
What I was shocked to learn is that only 13 points have been allowed by this defense after Michigan kicks the ball off. By my count, UM has kicked off 28 times this year (4 games [start/half] + 20 TD + 4 FG). ND had a TD and a FG drive of 75 and 68 yards, and CMU had a 59 yd FG drive. In total, UM's defense has allowed only 6 scoring drives of 60+ yards.
Gave me some hope that much of the crap I've seen in the past two games is fairly correctable ... take care of the ball and play the field position game.
September 23rd, 2013 at 11:32 AM ^
September 23rd, 2013 at 11:39 AM ^
the offense/special teams have been putting them in poor position most of the time and they have been standing strong. it may not look pretty all the time watching akron drive up and down the field but the D holds well in the redzone
September 23rd, 2013 at 12:01 PM ^
September 23rd, 2013 at 12:21 PM ^
But, if you're playing Florida A&M, and you're only up by 40 or so...and it's 4th down...and you're on your own side of the field...GO FOR IT!!!
September 23rd, 2013 at 11:37 AM ^
the return of JMFR will only improve the D.
Would be great to see him in action against Minny in a few weeks.
September 23rd, 2013 at 11:37 AM ^
what the LAMEstream media want you to think!
/sobored
September 23rd, 2013 at 11:38 AM ^
September 23rd, 2013 at 11:42 AM ^
and with Jake almost back, it should continue to improve. Our defense will be solid throughout. Games where I can see the defense needing the offense to also play well to get the win would be vs Northwestern and Ohio (would have included Nebraska, but their defense continues to look like a JV squad)
September 23rd, 2013 at 11:58 AM ^
I don't think UM's offense can play a poor game against MSU and expect to score many points. I doubt MSU's offense will be able to mount to many long drives against UM's defense, but UM's offense and special teams can't be giving MSU's offense the ball on UM's side of the field.
September 23rd, 2013 at 12:08 PM ^
I think we're a better overall team than Staee, but I'm worried about a bad mismatch between our receivers and their corners. Funchess is a bit of a solution to this, but then we have a bad blocking mismatch up front.. Both our interior O line and either FItz or Green are gonna have to come to play that day. I'd assume Fitz given Staee's pass rush.
September 23rd, 2013 at 12:11 PM ^
September 23rd, 2013 at 12:56 PM ^
That game just go a lot tougher after seeing this O the past two weeks.
September 23rd, 2013 at 11:43 AM ^
My hope is that the offense, somehow, gets it. Soon. The D has tightened up (and finally we're seeing an easing of the reliance on the front four only) and now it's up to the O-line and Devin to get it together.
September 23rd, 2013 at 11:47 AM ^
September 23rd, 2013 at 11:51 AM ^
to be "field goal range"?
September 23rd, 2013 at 12:07 PM ^
September 23rd, 2013 at 12:21 PM ^
How does one tally 11 points?
September 23rd, 2013 at 11:50 AM ^
September 23rd, 2013 at 11:50 AM ^
Sort of related to this -
After four games, the averages aren't quite as meaningful as they will be later in the season, but we're actually not that bad in this regard in relation to the rest of the conference at 81% - that's 34 out of 42 chances. The only teams that have allowed fewer red zone TDs than Michigan (19) are Michigan State (10) and Ohio State (18). Overall, we are giving up 19.8 points per game on average.
September 23rd, 2013 at 12:54 PM ^
Also very hard at this point to evaluate just how good or bad the opposition has been. ND is still unknown. UConn lost to Towson but now they may actually look decent for an FCS team, and MD may be pretty good.
September 23rd, 2013 at 11:56 AM ^
TOTAL POINTS GIVEN UP BY MICHIGAN THROUGH FOUR GAMES
21 on defensive touchdowns
22 on drives of less than 30 yards set up by turnovers or poor punting/coverage
41 on drives of 50 yards or more
Not sure how that would compare to national averages.
breakdown:
UCONN:
defensive touchdown
9-yard touchdown drive following muffed punt
56-yard drive following decent punt w/ good return.
Akron:
defensive touchdown
9-yard field goal drive following 21 yard punt
67-yard touchdown drive following terrible punt (but M was on the 45)
75-yard touchdown drive following good punt and coverage
Notre Dame:
defensive touchdown
20-yard field goal drive following 42-yard punt w/ 18 yard return
29-yard field goal drive following 21-yard punt
68-yard field goal drive
75-yard touchdown drive following kickoff (touchback)
90-yard touchdown drive following well executed pooch punt
CMU:
1-yard field goal drive following turnover
19-yard field goal drive following turnover
59-yard field goal drive
September 23rd, 2013 at 12:09 PM ^
A field goal drive of less than 10 yards is not on the defense at all as a three and out has to count as a victory for the defense under any circumstances. To be fair, drives of more than 10 yards that end in a missed FG should also be included since whether the other team makes the FG does not depend on the defense.
September 23rd, 2013 at 7:24 PM ^
Our opponents have missed three field goals.
Akron:
9 plays, 47 yards (45-yard missed FG)
3 plays, 0 yards (55-yard missed FG)
UConn:
7 plays, 36 yards (46-yard missed FG)
So two of these were fairly successful drives, but they still only ended up in pretty long FG attempts.
September 23rd, 2013 at 11:58 AM ^
UConn scored 21 points against Michigan. 7 on the fumble in the 3rd quarter, 7 after the inexcusible punt fumble, and the 7 on an actual football drive. UConn had to go 9 yards to score after the punt fumble.
56 of UConn's 206 yards were on the touchdown drive. 26 of the remaining 150 were on a 26 yard pass on 4th and 29 against a heavy prevent defense.
The defense has been great. More turnovers would be nice but aside from that you can't complain.
September 23rd, 2013 at 3:21 PM ^
But the hilarious thing on ESPN they said UCONN's QB sliced thru our defense and picked us apart for 150 yards.. and Whitmer was the player of the game lmao..
September 23rd, 2013 at 3:37 PM ^
And laughed. Chantel Jennings recently joined their Big Ten Blog network at the Worldwide Leader, and I've been very unimpressed. She was linking to Drew Sharp almost every time she did the lunchtime links (hasn't since I emailed Adam and Brian ... hmmm), and her game wrap was a joke.
"Gameball goes to: Whitmer. Coming into the matchup with the Wolverines, Whitmer had thrown only three touchdown passes all season. Against Michigan, the 6-foot-1 signal-caller threw for 159 yards and two touchdowns with just one interception while picking apart the Michigan defense."
She also cites the numerous big rushing plays our defense allowed:
"a defensive line that gave the Huskies huge holes to run through time and time again."
I looked at the play-by-play. 78 yards on 21 attempts. 11 of those 21 attempts went for 2 yards or less. Yes, in the 2nd quarter we allowed 12, 10, and 16 yards within 5 rushing plays. Outside of that, nada. The entire second half they ran for 12 yards on 7 attempts (before picking up 13 on draw plays when we went to prevent).
September 23rd, 2013 at 7:49 PM ^
Was she sober when she wrote that up? Rentschler Field isn't a dry stadium...
September 23rd, 2013 at 12:01 PM ^
If we don't turn the ball over...we're not all trying to figure out solutions for this team.
I'm not saying we would've won the last 2 games 72-0 like we should...like other teams did this past weekend. But we definitely wouldn't be in a panic of any kind. We would have just took our 35-13 W's and kept it moving.
Turnovers are absolutely destroying this team.
September 23rd, 2013 at 12:05 PM ^
3 straight games where a turnover has allowed the opponents defense to score a TD.
There are definitely some issues that need to get sorted out, but the turnovers have made the last two (and to a lesser extent the ND game) closer than they should have been.
September 23rd, 2013 at 1:22 PM ^
A stat once, and can't back it up, but some talking head noted that for NFL games, if a team scores a defensive TD they win a ridiculous amount ... like 75-80%.
If that's the case, our 4-0 record is quite improbable. Maybe that's my take-away from this team. They're improbably good.
At some point in the first half, I realized that our offense was Maverick from Top Gun after Goose dies. The shitty Maverick who can't engage. It seemed apt at the time ...
September 23rd, 2013 at 1:58 PM ^
September 23rd, 2013 at 9:19 PM ^
That seems like an inflated percentage to me. The Detroit Lions are 0-1 when scoring a pick six. Washington Redskins are 0-2 when scoring a pick six this year. Also Michigan overcame their only pick six of the year to beat Notre Dame.
September 23rd, 2013 at 12:16 PM ^
Agreed. If we had zero turnovers on Saturday, the game would have been something like 35-10 or 42-14 and everyone would be fine. The defense was more or less excellent and the offense could actually move the ball okay on the ground. Touissant had 120 with 5 yards per carry and Gardner probably averaged 10+ on called runs. Gardner just had the worst game of his career throwing the ball.
We're lucky this week is a bye. Gardner needs some time to cool off and step out of the spotlight and the line needs some time for in-practice competition. I would like to see Bryant, Braden, and maybe even Kugler get a serious look in practice this week. I actually think the line performs well individually, but the unit has problems. Maybe a single different person changes the dynamic some.
September 23rd, 2013 at 12:17 PM ^
is "Average Opponent Expected Points Per Drive" developed by Football Study Hall. Basically, what they do is compare the actual number of points that teams score to the number of points expected from their field position. For example, drives starting on the 1 yard line (99 yards away from a TD) yield on average 0.76 points per drive, whereas drives starting on the other 1 yard line average 6.34 point per drive.
They haven't released their week 4 statistics, but as of Week 3, Michigan was well above average in this statistic. So that means that for the opponent's starting field position, our defense is good.
Here's a visual representation of our offense and defense:
September 23rd, 2013 at 12:35 PM ^
September 23rd, 2013 at 5:42 PM ^
September 23rd, 2013 at 10:12 PM ^
If you just select the Big 10 teams, Michigan is on the efficient frontier.
Also, Tableau is an awesome software program.
Also, also, the graphic below can be edited.
September 23rd, 2013 at 10:50 PM ^
Does that say that Rich Rod has a better defense?
September 23rd, 2013 at 12:21 PM ^
See the Nick Baumgardner column in mlive.
Link: http://www.mlive.com/wolverines/index.ssf/2013/09/column_with_61_turnovers_in_30.html
Can a bye week fix a systemic problem? Hopefully, we'll see improvement at one position at least.
September 23rd, 2013 at 12:33 PM ^
September 23rd, 2013 at 1:27 PM ^
Mike Hart left.
Looks like 2011 was an anomolly. Hopefully we have not regressed to the norm ...
September 23rd, 2013 at 9:22 PM ^
You have to go back to 2006 before you find a Michigan team that averaged less than 2 turnovers a game. 2006 was unusually low, with only 12. Late Period Carr teams (2001 and later) averaged about 1.6 turnovers per game.
September 23rd, 2013 at 12:41 PM ^
September 23rd, 2013 at 1:54 PM ^
Only thing i would like to see is more press coverage. Our corners give way too much of a cushion.
September 23rd, 2013 at 3:10 PM ^
We have an extreme bend don't break philosophy. In the red zone, we are good, but let's also remember the fact that many teams do struggle scoring touchdowns in the red zone with such a short field and the extra defender being the end line along the endzone.
If Devin stops turning it over and putting the D in bad situations, we'd be better. Not a whole lot better, but just a little.
September 23rd, 2013 at 3:31 PM ^
is tied for second in sacks with 9, which ties them with MSU, Ohio and Nebraska. Indiana with 10, is the conference leader. Michigan is fifth in sacks allowed, one more than Ohio and its veteran Oline.
It's always interesting when you actually apply numbers to the big picture and stop relying on memory of what you find disturbing as a way of gauging reality and whether things are worse than they really are.
The most important stat going forward is always won-loss.
September 24th, 2013 at 6:39 AM ^
September 23rd, 2013 at 4:27 PM ^
is not the problem! Devin has TEN turnovers. As a team we only have 12 turnovers.
September 23rd, 2013 at 9:19 PM ^
September 23rd, 2013 at 9:21 PM ^