Football Outsiders: Michigan Number.....6?
Interesting to see how this has progressed as the season has gone on. Can't wait until seperate defense and offense rankings are available as well. I believe that comes around week 7 or so? Anyways
Rankings?
Rankings
http://footballoutsiders.com/stats/fei
Why Michigan be so good?
Now I'm not an expert on how FEI rankings work, but to the best of my knowledge, they clean up things that raw yardage totals don't.
What in the hell are you talking about?
Remember when SDSU accured a bunch of meaningless yards late in the game against Michigan? That's what I'm talking about.
Anything else?
Yeah, if your defense starts off at it's own 20 and allows 3 points, it did just as good, probably better, than if it starts on the other teams 5 and gives up 0 points.
But wait, this thing actually thinks Michigan is going to win more than 1 of it's remaining 7 games...
Shut up, alter ego, have you seen any Big Ten games this year? Even Vegas is starting to think Michigan might be pretty good this year.
So....expectations slowly raising, everyone? Any other thoughts on things you guys can find interesting in this weeks rankings?
October 5th, 2011 at 1:21 PM ^
His preseason prediction for Michigan was a legends division championship. The numbers really liked Michigan coming into the year, and they were as down on Nebraska as anyone. That plus replacing GERG with OMGRAYLEWISCOACH and the season long tire fire that is OSU's qb situation were good signs
October 5th, 2011 at 1:21 PM ^
His preseason prediction for Michigan was a legends division championship. The numbers really liked Michigan coming into the year, and they were as down on Nebraska as anyone. That plus replacing GERG with OMGRAYLEWISCOACH and the season long tire fire that is OSU's qb situation were good signs
October 5th, 2011 at 1:54 PM ^
Took me a few seconds to see through the mountains of Old Spice foam to figure out who you were referring to. [drinks another redbull]
October 5th, 2011 at 1:46 PM ^
Regarding expecations. With our previous undefeated starts, we won but we weren't getting any better. Same mistakes and I feel like as we played we basically provided good coaches with a blueprint to beat us. We also had the advantage of a totally new style of QB play each year (moving from Sheridan/Threet to Tate's wily nature coupled with accurate short throws and then to Denard's insane speed). Once there was enough film in the can, everyone figured out how to beat us. Our defense might as well have been traffic cones and coaches were finding ways to stall out our scoring offense.
This year we've improved every game. We're still iffty in a lot of places though. However I don't think we shown anyone on film "Hey we're really bad at X, force us to do X and you can beat us". I think we did that the last two years even as we went undefeated.
So I'm expecting us avoid any kind of blowout (short of Wisconsin smooshing us in the coference game) and a respectable bowl berth. Enough we can call the season a success, everyone in the program is happy and there isn't any postseason grumbling that might scare off recruitings. I'd love a two lose conference season, crushing some hapless ACC/Big East team in a bowl and riding into the post season on an "up and coming" hype wave.
End of the day though, this conference is so weak that even Lloyd's 5 loss team would have pillaged its way through conference play this year. So while I love what I'm seeing on the field, I won't feel totally free of doom until I see how we do against Saban's Well Oiled Machine of Death.
October 5th, 2011 at 2:09 PM ^
But I'm seeing this is a small sample anomaly at this point (further, preseason expectations remain part of the ranking until after Week 7). As was pointed out in the mgopodcast this week, we should have a much better sense for where the team stands after the next two games.
We're #6 to FEI and #9 to Sagarin (Predictor); Michigan State is #25 to FEI and #17 to Sagarin. That game is on the road, and they'll have an extra week to prepare.
If we handle our business on the road these next two weeks, at that point I'll be comfortable putting ths team on the fringe of the top 10. Which is something I never imagined I'd be saying this season.
Hoke uber alles.
October 5th, 2011 at 2:13 PM ^
I'm drinking more kool-aid than I can handle at the moment.
*keep telling self: it was just Minnesotaaaaaaaaaa...*
October 5th, 2011 at 3:51 PM ^
but on the other hand, I feel like Wile E. Coyote. Not sure if theres a falling anvil out there with a block M on it or not. I dont think there is, but I try not to get my hopes up too high, because I will then feel responsible if things dont turn out correctly. I'm highly superstitious when it comes to Michigan football, but not other areas of my life...is that wrong?
October 5th, 2011 at 3:23 PM ^
be rated in the top-10 of any national type poll. The data slice is way to small and subjective at this time. After we play(beat) Sparty, then maybe I'll give Michigan that much in the way of credit.
A comeback win over a wishy-washy ND team, a strong victory over the HC's former team and a drubbing of HS team masquerading as a Big Ten team, all at home, doesn't a top-10 team make for me.
Let's see how Michigan fares on the road and against our second-biggest rival on the road before getting too giddy.
I firmly believe Michigan can win every game they play this season, but I also see the opportunity for a couple of slip-ups along the way. The maturation of this team has been on a steady increase. I'm curious to see how they handle their first road test.
October 5th, 2011 at 3:28 PM ^
That point being that we haven't proven enough yet to deserve being considered an elite team.
That said, who on the list above or just below us has?
Alabama, LSU and Oklahoma do all look very good, and Wisconsin looked dominant against Nebraska.
But Clemson? Is that a team that strikes fear in the hearts of Saban and the Hat? What about Stanford, playing in a worse conference than we are...with really only three challenging games left on its schedule (and one of those being Notre Dame)? GT? WVU? A&M? Florida?
Granted, Oklahoma State and Oregon do look better than we do so far, or at least more proven (IMO), but Oregon has a loss and we don't. Boise State does their usual beat one good team, then beat 11 crappy ones en route to playing well in a bowl game, which makes them hard to analyze comparatively.
Things can change fast at this point. We can either show we deserve the high rankings by beating NWestern and then Sparty away, or we can lose 1 and show we're better but not that much better; or, lose both and look an awful lot like we did last year at the same point. I'm guessing we do either option a or option b, and think option a is a distinct possibility.
But we've done better than a lot of other schools up to this point, and that's all you can base rankings off of.
October 5th, 2011 at 11:36 PM ^
in the Top 25. So there's only a few undefeated teams out there getting less love from the pollsters. (Not sure how many undefeateds lurk outside of the Top 25.)
Anyhow, it is a very tenuous #11 or #12. Last week, Baylor was undefeated @ #15, four spots ahead of us. After taking an away loss to undefeated KSU, they now sit at #25.
As surely as there was a ladder up to #11/12, there's a chute waiting to slide us straight out of the Top 25 should we lose to NW.
October 5th, 2011 at 2:58 PM ^
the way this particular metric calculates SOS uses the likelyhood of going undefeated against the team's schedule. michigan's schedule is much weaker than expected this year because of the down year in the Big Ten, so we're more likely to win all our games.
October 5th, 2011 at 3:29 PM ^
may be the most comprehensive rankings out there. They take so many teams into account when calculating particular team's strength against others. Poorly worded, I know, but I think FO's methods are sound, I just think it's too early to call Michigan a top-10 team. When we steamroll Sparty in EL and put up big offensive numbers against that defense, then I'll start talking about top-10 rankings.
The schedule certainly seems to be working in our favor at this point. I think FO has osu ranked too high considering their Titanic-like offense though.
October 5th, 2011 at 4:28 PM ^
Good stuff. I typically trust the FO guys, and looking at the future schedule I definitely see the possibility of this team winning 10 games. I mean, OSU and Nebraska went from scary losses to potential wins after the past couple of weeks, and who else on the schedule looks that tough? I'm sure they'll gack away a game or two, but this is still a legitteam.
Also, it is nice to get back to a time when UM being considering a good football team doesn't feel like a cruel joke.
October 5th, 2011 at 4:43 PM ^
Looking down the list of top 25 schools on any list you can dig up, do you have the feeling "We should beat them"? I am not sure I get that feeling. I love our new coaches, I love the vector this team seems to be on, but I agree with our coach that we are wildly over rated. I will believe that we can beat any of the teams on that top 25 list when I see the final box score. Until then, I have sworn off kool-aid. I am old enough to remember Jonestown. Not going there. Not doing that. This team has not shown enough in my mind to be considered a top 25 team.
October 5th, 2011 at 6:42 PM ^
The last column that states expected win total....
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<br>Is this projecting we go 10.7-1.3?
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<br>If so I like!
October 5th, 2011 at 7:47 PM ^
FBS MW is how many they project a team to win and FBS RMW is how many projected wins out of the remaining games on the teams actual schedule. This means that the first number which puts Michigan at 10.3 is what the average team with our FEI rating would win. The 2nd number is specific to Michigan's actual schedule. The 5.7 means they expect us to win that many more, giving us 10.7, slightly above what the average team in our position would do.