Measuring Michigan's dominance over their opponents with a bonus '97 comparison

At the close of the game last night, one of the announcers said this was Michigan's 11th win by 21 points or more this season. I thought that was an incredible measure of how dominant this team was. 

Then I saw the thread about who the best team Michigan played this season and it got me wondering, was Michigan the best team each of our opponents played this season? Obviously, yes...but how to show it. 

Then it got me thinking about a good way to compare this team to the '97 team. 

So I started playing with numbers and here's what I can say... this team was incredible on both defense and offense against their competition, and....better than the '97 team overall. Here's one look at some numbers to show it. 

I wanted to see how close Michigan came to giving up the fewest points and scoring the most points against each opponent this season and how their overall margin of victory compared to each opponents worst defeat. 

Here's the info for how well Michigan's defense performed holding opponents to their worst scoring output for the season:

Points For is what the opposing team scored against Michigan.

Season Worst was Michigan's opponents worst game against their other opponents.

Delta is the difference between Michigan's result vs. the opponents worst scoring result. I.e. East Carolina scored 3 against Michigan but Navy shut them out. The difference between what Michigan was able to do against East Carolina vs what Navy was able to do was 3 points. 

Out of 15 opponents, Michigan held that opponent to their worst scoring output on the season 5 times (highlighted in yellow). In some cases you can see Michigan shared that distinction with another team...poor, poor, wretched Iowa offense. 

Overall Michigan gave up 10.4 points per game. 

The smaller the delta number, the closer Michigan is to being the best defense that team played. The bigger the number means another team did a better job than Michigan. Overall Michigan was very close to being the hardest defense each team faced this year. That can be seen in the individual delta numbers as well as the average (4.7). The one outlier was OSU's abysmal 3 point performance against Missouri. If you take that out, the team that held OSU in check best this season was ND at 17 points (albeit, ND still lost). If you throw out the Missouri result, ND's 17 cuts Michigan's delta for OSU to 7. That would reduce Michigan's overall average delta to 3.8. That number will be important later. 

Summary: Throw out some of the garbage time scores by Michigan's opponents and it is clear, week after week, this was the toughest defense any of our opponents faced all season. Save for Maryland when they went up against...Nebraska???

We all knew the defense was good. How about the offense?

Points Against is how many points Michigan scored against the opponent.

Season Worst is the most points that opponent gave up to another team on their schedule. 

Delta is the difference between Michigan's points scored against that team vs. what the best performing other opponent did against that team. 

6 times Michigan scored the most points against an opponent this season (highlighted in yellow).

Overall Michigan averaged 35.9 points per game.

Michigan's average delta of 5.9 points means they were close to being the most prolific offense each of Michigan's opponents faced this year. While not as close as the defense at 4.7, that is still incredible. Looking at the individual delta's, there were three times other teams scored about 2 TD's more than Michigan did against that opponent. Note: Washington gave up those 42 points and still won. My goodness USC's defense was bad.

So what does it look like when you pair the defense with the offense? Here's Margin of victory:

First three columns show opponent and the score of their game against Michigan.

Margin of defeat should be clear.

Season Long Largest Margin of Defeat is that opponents worst game of the year as far as getting blown out. 

8 Times!!! 8 Times out of 15 opponents Michigan gave that opponent their worst defeat of the season (highlighted in yellow). That is incredible. Even more impressive is the delta average of 4.1. On average, Michigan was only a little more than a field goal away from giving every opponent their worst loss of the season. Look at those individual Delta numbers. They are simply glorious. The weird outlier here is Maryland. This is where "events" come together to skew things. Maryland was a trap game and JJ was injured so Michigan only won by 7 which is in-line with how Michigan outscored OSU & Alabama as a reference point.  At the same time, Maryland somehow got blasted by PSU as an outlier. Drop that Maryland delta to 9 (the largest other difference) and Michigan's average delta drops to 2.3 points. That would mean Michigan was less than a field goal away on average from being each opponents worst defeat of the season.

Given the significant variances week to week in college football and the ability for a team to just not have it one week that Margin of Victory chart is simply amazing showing how consistently dominant this Michigan team was. 

Now you have a better idea of how amazing this team is and how to read the info, here are the complete charts for 2023 & 1997. You can decide which team you think is more dominant in their era. 

2023:

1997:

The '97 defense gave up slightly fewer points per game and had a slightly smaller delta.

See note from above about how the Missouri/OSU game skewed the defense data and without that the two defenses are basically equal.

The '97 offense wasn't anywhere as close to dominant. With an average delta of 18 points. That means on average, other teams scored 18 more points than Michigan could against the same opponents. 

The Margin of Victory numbers really tell the difference. Only twice did Michigan give their opponent their worst defeat of the season. On average, they were 12.3 points per game from doing so. 

For those wondering about the green shading. Those are the teams where Michigan was not their worst in any category. I.e. other teams held them to lower scores, and other teams scored more on them, and other teams had a higher margin of victory. For all other teams, Michigan gave them their worst day in some manner or another. 

And for Nebraska & MSU, well, let's just say they hope never to see this Michigan team ever again...just like those other 13 opponents.

Congrat's on an amazing season Team 144. Thank you for the many memories.