ESPN post-NSD Way-Too-Early Top 25

Submitted by MGoBkExam on

It feels like a lifetime away but here is ESPN's take on the Top 25 post-NSD yesterday. They did a 'Way Too Early' Top 25 right after the bowls so they basically just updated that based on on recruiting classes panned out. 

http://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/18586725/alabama-crimson-tide-florida-state-seminoles-remain-top-2017-way-too-early-top-25-national-signing-day

Obviously Alabama is #1 because why not. I didn't realize that they play FSU (#2 on list) the first game of the year in 2017. Note that Florida (M's first opponent in 2017) does not make the list.

In terms of the Big Ten:

Team (Way-Too-Early #1, Way-Too-Early post-NSD)

OSU (#6, #4)

PSU ((#4, #5)

Wisky (#9, #12)

M (#12, #14)

MSU (NR, NR)*

*Character is not quantifiable thus ESPN was not able to fully get their minds around how good State is going to be next year.

 

Toasted Yosties

February 2nd, 2017 at 10:37 AM ^

For all the talk about Penn State's deep threat offense, I'm hoping we surprise them in Happy Valley with some deep threats of our own and that our newly stocked defense once again dismantles their offense.

Sauce Castillo

February 2nd, 2017 at 12:33 PM ^

There's a lot of career NFL back-ups that were phenomenal college QB's their senior year.  I'm more focused on the "how great he can be his senior year".  Wilton made some great strides throughout the year and now having a 2nd year and being more comfortable, sky is the limit as far as what he can help the team achieve. 

Sauce Castillo

February 2nd, 2017 at 12:36 PM ^

That sounds like we are throwing away a year just because we don't think we have a chance to win it all.  This isn't the NFL, you don't get a better draft pick by throwing the young guys out there and losing.  What if you were to put Peters in and he wasn't ready?  Then you wreck his confidence.

Heptarch

February 2nd, 2017 at 2:42 PM ^

I wasn't clear:



I don't want it GIVEN to Peters just so he gets a year of experience.



Like you, I want Peters to earn the job AND get that year of experience.  We both know that under Jim Harbaugh, no one will be given anything.  I guess I thought that was a given and didn't need to be explained.  

MI Expat NY

February 2nd, 2017 at 12:50 PM ^

I don't want it to happen just because it gives Peters a year of starts under his belt.  I "want" it to happen because I think Peters winning the job indicates a higher ceiling for next year's QB play than if Speight wins the job (whiche he could conceivably do with little improvement).  

I Like Burgers

February 2nd, 2017 at 3:12 PM ^

You sure about that?

Brady at Michigan: 61.9% completion pct, 7.5 YPA, 2.6:1 TD to INT ratio as a senior, 2.6 INT per 100 passes (2.0 INT per 100 passes his senior season)

Brady in NFL: 63.8% completion pct, 7.5 YPA, 3:1 TD to INT ratio, 1.8 INT per 100 passes

 

Brady's TD:INT ratio for his career at Michigan was 1.7:1 due to a bad 14 TD, 10 INT junior season, but the QB he was his final season was pretty much the QB he's been for his entire NFL career.

People forget how good Brady was at Michigan.  He was a clear notch better than Henson for the two seasons (98-99) they shared snaps.  Henson was barely completing more than half of his throws.

Pepto Bismol

February 2nd, 2017 at 3:41 PM ^

Tom Brady was excellent at Michigan.  This is not revisionist history.  This has nothing to do with the Patriots.  There are actually people who preferred Brady to Henson for the fact that the offense moved under Brady and it didn't under Henson.

This is identical to the O'Korn crowd.  I despise both that were too starstruck by their ability to throw a football over them mountains to realize who was better at actually playing quarterback.

 

And then, against all odds, I find myself kind of in the Peters camp.  I don't want to brush aside Speight, but I want Peters to be too good to hold back.  I think there's a pretty firm ceiling for Wilton Speight.  I could definitely be wrong.  I have to remind myself that he has two years of eligibility left.  But I do have that Henson/O'Korn-ish "Ohmigosh what if he's the best ever!" feeling right now about Peters.  I feel dirty.

lbpeley

February 2nd, 2017 at 2:38 PM ^

I can't believe a post counting on the intangibles got that much love here.

Were they the pick six, pick in osu's red zone, the goal line fumble in The Game; the absolute fuckfest that was the Iowa game; or the unwatchable first 2 and half quarters of the bowl game?

He had a few video game numbers against total garbage competition, a few "didn't completely fuck us" games against better competition, and 3 games where he hurt us way more than helped. Granted, in the last 2 of those he was hurt to an undetermined level.  

In Harbaugh I trust, but if Speight is a hands down winner of the job for next year then Peters isn't all that or Speight finally pulled his head out and made leaps and bounds for improvements. Either way I'll be a little less than bullish on our O if Speight is never challenged for the spot.

Maynard

February 2nd, 2017 at 11:43 AM ^

I actually have always thought that kind of offense should be used more often in college football. I am a believer in that young people make mistakes often when under pressure. So if I am a coach I blitz like crazy on defense and I throw the ball deep a lot on offense when possible. Risk/reward. Your guy catches it, it's a possible touchdown. Pass interference, you get a new set of downs and you're closer to the endzone. Interception, not much different than a mediocre to good punt. On the other hand, if you depend on more plays of a few yards running the ball or more passes to catch, the more chances there are for error closer to your own end zone.

Chuck it. Send that bitch down the field to DPJ, Black, Collins, McDoom, etc. Take your pick. Send em all. Bet one will be open.

DualThreat

February 2nd, 2017 at 1:04 PM ^

Just because it sounds cheezy/video game-ish, doesn't mean it wouldn't actually work.

Lessoning your chance for negatives (repeatition/long drive errors + near field turnovers) while maximizing your potential for reward (touchdown, PI, far field INT/i.e. Punt)  is the markings of a sound strategy.

NittanyFan

February 2nd, 2017 at 1:16 PM ^

His five factors --- Explosiveness is the highest rated of the five factors at 35%.  Higher than factors like "efficiency" (25%) or "finishing drives." (15%)

The NFL remains more about efficiency and red-zone scoring.  But the college game is different: risk/reward offenses tend to succeed fairly well.  The numbers agree with your thoughts.

DualThreat

February 2nd, 2017 at 4:18 PM ^

I got the itch, so here goes some conceptual numbers just for fun:

Odds of successfully gaining 4 yards on a given play = let's say 90%.  (This may be high, but it gives the "slow but steady" strategy a big benefit of the doubt.)

Based on the above, the odds of gaining a first down in 3 plays would be 90%^3 = 72.9%.

Odds of successfully gaining 40 yards or more on a given play = let's say 40%.  (This may seem a tad high, but remember it should include some baked in benefit of a PI call.  While the PI penalty itself is not 40 yards in college, it is beneficial enough that it should be favorably incorporated into this percentage slightly.  Hence "rounding up" to 40% odds.)

-------------------------------------------------------------------

So, assuming these odds, let's consider a strategy of systematically driving down the field, 4 yards per play, starting at your own 25 yard line:

75 yards needed / 10 yards per first down = 7.5 first downs need.

72.9% odds of getting a first down to the 7.5 power  = 9.3% <- This is the odds of scoring a TD on a drive if you were solely driving slow but steady.

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Switching gears, let's consider a strategy of "EFF IT, I'M GOING LONG" all the time:

75 yards needed / 40 yards per big play = 2 big plays needed.

40% odds of hitting a big play (40 yards or more) to the second power = 16% <- This is the odds of scording a TD on a drive if you were bombing it every play.  EDIT:  And actually, this is just the floor value, because this is assuming you got CONSECUTIVE big plays and ignores the fact that a) you get a third down try and b) that you get 3 fresh downs after the first big play.  So, yeah, this number should actually be much higher!

-------------------------------------------------------------------

So, based on my completely infallible assumptions (lol), your odds of scoring a TD are much higher if you just bomb it.

Umm, yeah, so "EFF IT, I'M GOING LONG".

 

 

NittanyFan

February 2nd, 2017 at 6:56 PM ^

Bored at work ... so simulated the effects of Interceptions (drive obviously ends) and incomplete-incomplete-incomplete prior to 2 first downs (drive ends due to a punt/FG attempt).  A use of Markov Chains from probability!

If the chance of a 40-yard-play is 40%, and the chance of an interception is 10% (B1G teams as a whole threw intereceptions ~2.8% of the time in 2016) ------ this offensive strategy results in a TD 49% of the time.

If chance of a completion is 40%, chance of an interception is 5% ---> 55% chance of TD.

If chance of a completion is 30%, chance of an interception is 5% ---> 39% chance of TD.

If chance of a completion is 30%, chance of an interception is 10% ---> 35% chance of TD.

If chance of a completion is 20%, chance of an interception is 5% ---> 21% chance of TD.

If chance of a completion is 20%, chance of an interception is 10% ---> 19% chance of TD.

If chance of a completion is 10%, chance of an interception is 5% ---> 7% chance of TD.

If chance of a completion is 10%, chance of an interception is 10% ---> 6% chance of TD.

I completely ignored sacks here, given that the loss on a sack is rather negligable vs. the gain on a completion.

As I said, I was bored  :-)

 

maize-blue

February 2nd, 2017 at 10:49 AM ^

I think their offense clicks when Barkley is running the ball effectively and their QB is scrambling around chucking those deep balls. They more or less seem to be based around luck and big plays. It works for them, but if you can shut down one of those two guys they don't have enough to make up for it. Penn St. doesn't scare me one bit and they don't play defense well.

NittanyFan

February 2nd, 2017 at 12:52 PM ^

PSU's defense (14th best in America) had a higher ranking in 2016 than their offense (18th best).

I won't disagree that PSU's offense may be over-rated going into 2017.  But likely under-appreciated on the other side of the ball.  The advanced metrics didn't think the defense was terrible in 2017, and PSU will have 8 returning starters, with 3 5th-year Senior starters on the DL.

I Like Burgers

February 2nd, 2017 at 3:21 PM ^

The PSU that played Michigan was much different later in the year

People just remember the defense that faced Michigan that was missing two starting LBs, lost a third to a targeting call, and then saw a RS FR walkon replacement go out with a knee injury.

Those same people will also argue "we totally would have beaten FSU with Jabrill Peppers."  Funny how injuries can change a defense and a game.

In reply to by ijohnb

stephenrjking

February 2nd, 2017 at 11:14 AM ^

(I want to put this caveat up front: This responds to ijohnb but in my experience ijohnb is not at all guilty of what I am about to address)

Optimism is all well and good when we are looking at sports, but there is a point where it can become problematic, and this is particularly a problem with low-information fans: When fans believe Michigan "should" destroy some opponent or another, and then Michigan doesn't because football is a challenging and complicated game, the excessive optimism becomes a problem. It causes fans who had such irrational beliefs to adopt various stab-in-the-back theories for why Michigan lost.

That's where low-info posters flood onto message boards like this one and insist that Michigan absolutely would have won if only their coach wasn't an ignoramus coward, or the QB wasn't a hopeless imbecile, or that the Heisman Finalist LB/DB hybrid wasn't totally overrated. Because, in their mind, Michigan really deserves to blow out this or that team, there must be one and only one problem that is stabbing the team in the back and keeping it from achieving its true destiny.

So when I see low-point posters crow about how Michigan is going to totally waste PSU in Happy Valley next year, nevermind that PSU returns way more talent and that Michigan hasn't blown out a good team on the road since the Carr era, I expect that when an entirely understandable struggle occurs (win or lose) people like that will appear on boards like this and call for the firing of Tim Drevno or Don Brown or the defenestration of Wilton Speight or Ian Bunting or something. Totally convinced that they know the One True Solution.

And this may be a problem this coming year with a young, patchwork offensive line and an extraordinarily young defense. I'd hate for a guy like Lavert Hill or Cesar Ruiz to become a scapegoat in the eyes of low-information fans for not being able, in their second and first years in the program respectively, to play at a level of guys like Jourdain Lewis or Steve Hutchinson. But excessive optimism is prone to causing people to make such evaluations.

Even those here who are trashing PSU, (not low-info guys in this thread as far as I can tell), let's not get so carried away that we fail to recognize that our team will have some growing pains next year.

alum96

February 2nd, 2017 at 11:27 AM ^

I don't know how some of you guys argue with a guy with 20M MGoPoints.

To that end, I am cosigning with you.  It's a UM blog - there is a lot of optimism as always.  

PSU is 10/21 - that should give some time for UM to improve.  UM has not won big games on the road in a very long time.  If Harbaugh can institute that mental toughness than even a senior laden team failed to produce, in this group - I will be impressed.   We couldn't do it vs a much less explosive Iowa team with our best team in a long time and certainly best defensive unit since 97.

When people look at these rankings, and chest beat they do seem to forget the state of our OL.  I'd refer to them about 10 posts down on the MGoBoard "depth chart".  Any comptent DL faced is going to be scary next year. PSU usually has some pretty good defensive lineman.  We are going to have to score a good amount of points in Happy Valley; Speight/Peters will need to be upright to do so...

Indiana Blue

February 2nd, 2017 at 11:57 AM ^

Harbaugh has never lost in Happy Valley (haha).  Our ONLY fear is that the B1G sends anti officials to manage the game.  I believe it was something like 17 - 2 in penalties last time we were at Penn State.  Even this year Penn State caught every break against ohio ... maybe a payback from 2 years ago, but whatever.  

Mark it down ... Michigan will beat Penn State on 10/21.

Go Blue!

ijohnb

February 2nd, 2017 at 12:19 PM ^

hear you.  I was not really serious.   I actually do think we will beat them, but Penn State is going to be good next year and that will be a really tough game on the road.  I just really like making fun of Penn State and am not ready to give it up yet.