A few thoughts on UFR

Submitted by Lordfoul on
I absolutely love the UFRs that Brian creates twice a week, every week during the Season.  Thinking about the amount of work this must entail is mind-boggling.  Thanks Brian.

While reading the offensive UFR for ND I had a few thoughts:

  1. I concentrated mostly on Forcier's performance and I thought that the plays he messed up on sounded like perfect learning performances in the film room.  It will be interesting to see how well he picks up on his own mistakes and corrects them.  And at his height, I would have expected more batted down throws from him.  Some of this can be attributed to his rolling out, but not all.
  2. Expanding on (1), it is so cool to see the game in this detail.  Perhaps this is how it feels, to some lesser extent, to review film as a player on the team.  Sweet.
  3. It seems wrong somehow to not include plays like Stonum's return in the detailed analysis.  Maybe big plays on special teams could get into the offensive UFRs?
  4. A small peeve:  There is no mention of the score going into each drive.  Adding this would serve to emphasize the situational importance of each drive.  Case in point: Michigan's second to last drive they are losing, but there is no way to know this following the UFR until reading to the end of the drive notes.
Again, thank you so much Brian for devoting your life entirely to Michigan Football.  This type of coverage is something none of us MGoBloggers could have dreamed of 4 years ago. 

Edit:  Actually half of the special teams is covered in the drive summary area at the bottom of each drive (punts, FGs).  If a pre-drive summary were added it could include kickoff and punt returns while also letting the reader in on the score going into the drive.  Two birds and all that...

UFR

Papochronopolis

September 17th, 2009 at 7:56 PM ^

UFR is a dream come true. Based on how awesome RR was with play calling, etc., it would be cool to see a coaching scale...like when it's a good play call/bad play call it could be like "Coach +1/-1". That would make it easier to quantify how much is the coaching and how much is the players making plays (or both). Coaching could've been like +15 this game huh?

Joined: 09/17/2009

MGoPoints: 1863

jmblue

September 17th, 2009 at 8:28 PM ^

That would be pretty hard to quantify. A lot of plays (both good and bad) in any given game don't unfold the way the coaches plan. For instance, we apparently called for Forcier to roll out on the 4th and 3 play, but he saw an opening up the middle and took it. Do you give the coaches credit for that? I don't know.

Joined: 11/07/2008

MGoPoints: 102715

Nickel

September 17th, 2009 at 11:56 PM ^

I think it'd be too hard to give a +/- for coaching to individual plays. For example if the defensive coordinator calls a safety blitz that meets the running back in the hole for a no gain was that really a great coaching call or was it just lucky that the offensive coordinator hadn't called a screen on the same play? Over the course of a game I think it's possible to see some trends for how well a coach is adjusting, but individual plays really come down to rock/paper/scissors where you throw something, the other guy throws something and a result gets spit out a few seconds later.

Joined: 06/30/2008

MGoPoints: 2731